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As often as four days a week, Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island fly loops overhead as pilots practice touch-and-go landings. The noise is immense. New research shows that the noise isn't just disruptive -- it presents a substantial risk to public health.

Exoplanets are a fascinating astronomy topic, especially the so-called “Hot Jupiters”. They’re overheated massive worlds often found orbiting very close to their stars—hence the name. Extreme gravitational interactions can tug them right into their stars over millions of years. However, some hot Jupiters appear to be spiraling in faster than gravity can explain.

WASP-12b is a good example of one of these rapidly spiraling hot Jupiters. In about three million years, thanks to orbital decay, it will become one with its yellow dwarf host star. Both are part of a triple-star system containing two red dwarf stars. The hot Jupiter orbits the dwarf in just over one Earth day at a distance of about 3.5 million kilometers. That’s well within the orbit of Mercury around the Sun. Thanks to that orbit and gravitational influence, one side of the planet always faces the star. That heats only one side and puts the surface temperature at about 2,200 C. Eventually heat flows to the opposite side, which stirs up strong winds in the upper atmosphere. The planet doesn’t reflect much light, and astronomers have described it as a pitch-black world.

As if all that isn’t odd enough, the gravitational pull of the nearby star distorts this hot Jupiter into an egglike shape. It’s also stripping the planet’s atmosphere away. So, it’s no wonder astronomers described WASP-12b as a doomed planet.

Artist’s impression of WASP-12b, a Hot Jupiter deformed by its close orbit to its star. Credit: NASA What’s Tugging on Hot Jupiters?

According to conventional theory, a hot Jupiter planet like WASP-12b should create strong gravitational tidal waves between themselves and their parent stars. Those waves transfer energy, which tugs at the planet. That pulls the planet right into the star. Such a fiery death is definitely in WASP-12b’s future. But, there’s just one problem: it’s getting sucked in faster than gravitational tidal waves can explain. What’s happening?

A team of scientists at Durham University in England studied WASP-12b and they’ve come up with an interesting idea. What if this hot Jupiter’s fate is determined by magnetic fields? That’s what Durham’s Craig Duguid proposed in a recently published paper. Duguid’s team thinks the strong magnetic fields inside some stars can dissipate the tidal waves generated by orbiting hot Jupiters.

Artist’s concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b, parent star devouring its hot Jupiter planet. Artwork Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

How this works isn’t completely confirmed yet, but here’s the basic idea. Inwardly propagating internal gravity waves (IGWs) (such as those from the nearby hot Jupiter) move through a star. They eventually run into the star’s magnetic interior. If that magnetic field is strong enough, it transforms them into magnetic waves. They move back outward and eventually dissipate. In the process, however, that dissipation causes a huge energy drain. The result is still the same as with gravitational tidal waves: the hot Jupiter loses energy and plows into its parent star. And, it could explain why some hot Jupiters spiral into their stars more quickly than expected.

Exploring the Magnetic Mechanism Idea

In the paper, Duguid and his team used models of stars with convective cores—such as F-type stars with masses between 1.2 to 1.6 solar masses. Astronomers suspect these experience weak tidal dissipation. The team used the known properties of these stars’ interiors, along with estimates of their magnetic fields. For these stars, a convective core is the dynamo that generates the magnetic field. Although it’s classified as a type-G star, WASP-12 fits into the study, thanks to its near-solar mass and radius.

So, is it just gravitational tidal waves pulling the planet in, or could the proposed magnetic field action be at work? Duguid and colleagues concluded that the magnetic field idea is very possible. They write, “Our main result is that this previously unexplored source of efficient tidal dissipation can operate in stars within this mass range for significant fractions of their lifetimes. This tidal dissipation mechanism appears to be consistent with the observed inspiral of WASP-12b and more generally could play an important role in the orbital evolution of hot Jupiters—and to lower-mass ultra-short-period planets—orbiting F-type stars.”

Need More Data about Hot Jupiters

It’s an interesting result. There are a great many hot Jupiters in the exoplanet archives, simply because they are the easiest exoplanets to observe. Some of them are spiraling in faster than expected. This leads the authors to suggest that additional studies of similar-type stars and their hot Jupiters could confirm the magnetic mechanism. In addition, future observations could help astronomers also understand the tidal wave theory and help place some constraints on the types of stars where it would operate.

For More Information

Scientists Explain Why Some Exoplanets are Spiraling Towards Their Stars
An Efficient Tidal Dissipation Mechanism via Stellar Magnetic Fields

The post Why Hot Jupiters Spiral into Their Stars appeared first on Universe Today.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are well known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way but there are more. It is surrounded by at least 61 within 1.4 million light years (for context the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away) but there are likely to be more. A team of astronomers have been hunting for more companions using the Subaru telescope and so far, have searched just 3% of the sky. To everyone’s surprise they have found nine previously undiscovered satellite galaxies, far more than expected. 

Data from Gaia (the satellite collecting accurate position information of astronomical objects) suggests that most of the satellite galaxies orbiting our own are newcomers! Even the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are now known to be newcomers. Whether any of these will fall into orbit around the Milky Way is as yet unknown, largely because we do not have an accurate measure for the mass of our home Galaxy.

The recent search hopes to expand our understanding of this corner of the Universe with the first detailed search for companion dwarf galaxies. The paper from lead author Daisuke Homma and team from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan reports on the findings of their survey using the Subaru Telescope. 

Based on Mauna Kea in Hawaii The Subaru Telescope is an 8.2m diameter telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. Until 2005 it was the largest single mirror telescope in the world with a gigantic 8.2 metre mirror. In all telescopes, larger mirrors collect more light bringing with it the ability to see fainter objects and finer levels of detail. A number of telescopes have now surpassed Subaru’s massive light collecting power but multi-mirror telescopes are becoming more popular. 

As the cornerstone of the study is a drive to understand dark matter distribution. The concept of the Universe being dominated by cold dark matter nicely describes the large scale model of the cosmos. It struggles however, to describe the structure in the local Universe predicting hundreds of satellite galaxies to the Milky Way. Until recently, we only knew of a handful of satellite galaxies contradicting the model in a quandary known as the missing satellites problem. The team from Japan hopes their work will help provide clues to understand this problem.

The paper reports that the previous data obtained before 2018 of an area of sky covering 676 degrees2 revealed three candidate satellite galaxies; Vir I, Cet III and Boo IV. Data released over the three years that followed covering 1,140 degrees2 revealed two additional candidates; Sext II and Vir III. Unexpectedly, the model suggests there should be  3.9 ± 0.9 satellite galaxies within 10 pc within the virial radius of the Milky Way (based on the density distribution of the Milky Way). Instead the team found more, nine to be precise! It seemed then that the missing satellite problem was no worse than expected, indeed there were too many galaxies!

The team acknowledged that their research was based on statistically small numbers and several assumptions had been made based on an isotropic distribution of satellites. To progress this further, there will need to be follow up studies of stars in the satellite galaxies and high resolution imaging.

Source : Final Results of Search for New Milky Way Satellites in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program Survey: Discovery of Two More Candidates

The post Does the Milky Way Have Too Many Satellite Galaxies? appeared first on Universe Today.

Many artificial intelligence (AI) systems have already learned how to deceive humans, even systems that have been trained to be helpful and honest. Researchers describe the risks of deception by AI systems and call for governments to develop strong regulations to address this issue as soon as possible.

Astronomers have proposed a new theory to explain the origin of phosphorus, one of the elements important for life on Earth. The theory suggests a type of stellar explosion known as ONe novae as a major source of phosphorus.

While intergroup interaction is a prerequisite for initiating peace and stability, there is the risk of further escalation from direct interactions. A shortage of an impartial electronic contact session may cause the process to become destabilized. Interactive AI programs may help reduce prejudice and anxiety among historically divided ethnic groups in Afghanistan during online interactions.

A new approach to transport ticketing offers a step towards an integrated, transparent system that works efficiently for both ticket providers and passengers across all modes of transport.

A new approach to transport ticketing offers a step towards an integrated, transparent system that works efficiently for both ticket providers and passengers across all modes of transport.

Employers are significantly more likely to offer job interviews and higher salaries to graduates with experience of artificial intelligence, according to new research.

Employers are significantly more likely to offer job interviews and higher salaries to graduates with experience of artificial intelligence, according to new research.

Engineers have demonstrated a simple computational approach for improving the linearization of power amplifiers (PA), such as those used in mmWave systems and other telecommunication systems. The proposed technique involves training small neural networks to directly estimate the coefficients of a polynomial for digital pre-distortion (DPD) based on their frequency response during calibration sweeps.

Sufficiently advanced aliens would be able to capture vast quantities of energy from their star using a massive structure called a Dyson sphere. Such a device would give off an infrared heat signature - and astronomers have just spotted 60 stars that seem to match

I discuss the war in the Middle East with Malgorzata a lot and, like  Roseanne Roseannadanna, I ask a lot of questions. Andrzej had written a precis of his view of what’s going on there for Listy, and Malgorzata translated his Polish into English just for my sake. I thought I’d post Andrzej’s take on this site, but if you read Polish, you can see the original on Listy here.  (Yahya Sinwar is of course the leader of Hamas.)

As you can see, Andrzej is incensed at Biden’s decision to withhold arms from Israel and sees this as a sign that Biden is concerned more with his own reelection and with achieving comity with Iran than with defeating the terrorism of Hamas. Remember, these are Andrzej’s views, not mine, but I have to say there’s substantial (though not complete) overlap

Biden-Sinwar-Khamenei Pact

Andrzej Koraszewski

The former U.S. ambassador to Israel said there was no doubt that Biden had sided with Hamas. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American President announced that he intends to stop supplying weapons to Israel (with the exception of missiles for the Iron Dome). In other words, the American President announced that he would try to avoid too many Jewish casualties, but eliminating the threat to Israeli civilians interferes with his plans to cooperate with Iran.

According to The New York Times, this is a “turning point”. We are actually seeing a qualitative change. Biden said out loud what he had quietly said for days. Restrictions on American arms and ammunition supplies had actually begun earlier, although there were official attempts to deny this. Now, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the American president, citing concern for the Palestinian civilian population, decided that he must save Hamas from final defeat and create the conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state under Hamas.

We hear that it is still just a threat, that supplies will be halted “if,” but the Pentagon confirms that they have already been halted.

Is the American president naïve, or is he just pretending that he does not know what he is demanding? In all the months since Hamas started the war, American condemnations of Hamas have been nothing but empty words. There has been no firm pressure on Qatar or Iran, no demand for the expulsion of Hamas leaders from Qatar, no demand for the immediate release of Israeli hostages, no threats to move the U.S. military base out of Qatar, and no ultimatum to Tehran. On the contrary, all the American grievances were directed at Israel, Hamas’s information about Israel’s alleged crimes was taken seriously, human rights were turned into a laughing stock, a tool for constantly accusing Jews, no one blamed “President” Abbas for supporting Hamas’s barbarism, and the American administration gave permission for public hatred of the Jewish state.

The U.S. President has previously asserted that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinians.” He did not reveal the secret of how he knew this, and he also pretended that he had no knowledge of Palestinian opinion polls, or who supposedly represented these Palestinians and how they did it.

Meanwhile, Tehran said on the same day that it may be “forced to change its nuclear doctrine and build nuclear bombs if its existence is threatened.” The fact that Iran either already has nuclear weapons or is a few weeks away from building them has been known for some time. Now they have apparently decided that they have gotten green light from Washington and it is time to stop pretending that they are not aiming at acquiring nuclear weapons at all. Thus, there is no longer a need for a fatwa (which President Obama happily talked about, but which no one has ever seen), which supposedly stated that Islam forbids the production of nuclear weapons.

The new UN statements on readiness to recognize the “State of Palestine” were probably not related to President Biden’s statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it is easy to guess that the atmosphere was already considered favorable for taking this step, because there is a possibility that the US in the Security Council will not block the proposal, and the General Assembly resolution itself will certainly obtain the required majority, so journalists will consider it a binding decision of the UN anyway, and that’s what it’s all about.

So what does this “turning point” for America mean? Israeli historian Gadi Taub, in an article published on the same day, wrote:

In the eyes of the Biden administration Hamas is the smaller problem. The bigger problem is Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. is willing to live with Iran’s proxies everywhere, as part of its “regional integration” policy—i.e., appeasing Iran. But they are unwilling to live with Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. The stubborn Netanyahu clearly does not want to learn from his would-be tutors like U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken how to “share the neighborhood” with genocidaires in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, and Tehran, whom his electorate understands to be bent on murdering them.

Tony Bardan, an American scientist from the Center for Research on Terrorism of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, recently wrote that Israel is facing a choice whether to remain an independent state or to be a client-oriented country in the service of a great power. Bardan reminds us that the latter has already happened once. Herod the Great was practically the governor of Rome, and it ended with the destruction of the temple, and in the following decades the genocide of the Jews and the exile of most of the survivors.

Gadi Taub, describing today’s American frolics in the Middle East—insidious attempts to overthrow the elected leader of the Israeli government and then collusion with a possible “U.S. own” Israeli prime minister—shows that for the Democratic Party, the enemy is Netanyahu rather than Islamic terrorism (not seen as a threat to America and the entire democratic world) and rather than another nuclear-armed enemy of democracy nor a genocidal Hamas.

The American president repeated his usual mantras about Israel’s right to defend itself and about his steadfast support for its ally, while doing everything in his power to save Israel’s genocidal enemy and strengthen its main sponsor.

In a world that has returned to the old rut of murderous Jew-hatred, Israel is dependent on American aid and care. But, Taub writes, the United States keeps Israel on a leash, rationing ammunition, forcing it to uncontrollably deliver humanitarian aid that falls into the hands of Hamas, maintaining its power over the people of Gaza, and in the diplomatic field supporting unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. And while the U.S. helped repel a massive rocket attack by Iran, it forced only a symbolic response from Israel. America’s primary goal today is to ensure the survival of Hamas as ruler of the Gazan fortress.

The United States treats Israel as Jews have always been treated – with superiority and contempt. They invited the prime minister’s political rival (Gantz) to the talks, tried to summon the commander-in-chief of the Israeli army for separate talks, and did not protest when a caricature of an international court threatens to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders. Moreover, there is a great deal of evidence pointing to U.S. government financial and organizational support for Israel’s internal divisions and political destabilization of the country at a time of struggle for existential survival.

Let’s not kid ourselves, the “turning point” is just the climax. Even if not everything is going according to plan and Benny Gantz has not yet decided to cooperate fully, and Prime Minister Netanyahu apparently refuses to give in to pressure, the American alliance with Hamas is delaying the final defeat of this terrorist organization. And the campaign of relentlessly dishonest accusations against Israel is intensifying with each passing day the hostility towards the Jewish state, hostility towards Jews, and sympathy for enemies not only of Israel, but also of America and the rest of the democratic world.

The intentions of the allies are clear: the poster of the BDS movement says it bluntly:

NOTE: A commenter below points out that this is not from the BDS movement, but from an anarchist site. So ignore the figure below.

For Islamists, Hamas’s war with Israel is intended only to open the gate to further fighting. For President Biden, only his election campaign and the expectations of his electorate are important. The option to support the Islamic Republic of Iran was chosen by President Obama, and Biden probably really believes that Israel should learn to live with a Palestinian state armed by Iran and with Lebanon in the hands of Hezbollah. If Israel is not ready for this, so be it—America will continue to pretend to defend human rights. The question of why this human must be a genocidal terrorist might be considered tactless.

Our photo tank is running low, so while I’m gone for the next week you might consider putting together a batch of photos for posting here.  Thanks!

Here is part 2 of Ephraim Heller’s survey of the birds of Bhutan (part 1, with an introduction, is here).  His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here is installment #2 of photos from my April 2024 birding tour of Bhutan. We begin with a photo of the Paro valley, including the Paro dzong. Paro is the site of Bhutan’s only international airport, as it is the only valley near the capital of Thimpu wide and flat enough for commercial passenger jets. Consequently, most international visitors enter Bhutan here.

Today I post my photos of Phasianidae (pheasants, grouse, and allies) and Columbidae (pigeons and doves). Descriptions of the species below are taken from Wikipedia.

Blood Pheasant (Ithaginis cruentus) male and female. Blood pheasants live in the mountains of Bhutan, Nepal, Sikkim, northern Myanmar, Tibet and central and south-central China, where they prefer coniferous or mixed forests and scrub areas near the snowline. They move their range depending on the season, and are found at higher elevations during the summer. With snow increasing in fall and winter, they move to lower elevations.

Male:

Female:

An Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus) female. These are native to Himalayan forests and shrublands at elevations of 2,100–4,500 m (6,900–14,800 ft). It is the state bird of Nepal. The male has spectacular colors, but I was able only to photograph the female, which is darn pretty.

A Barred Cuckoo-Dove (Macropygia unchall):

Mountain Imperial-Pigeon (Ducula badia), Bhutan:

An Oriental Turtle-Dove (Streptopelia orientalis):

A Spotted Dove (Spilopelia chinensis). While native to Asia, the species has become established in many areas outside its native range including Hawaii, southern California, Mauritius, Australia, and New Zealand:

A Wedge-tailed Green Pigeon (Treron sphenurus):

Equipment: All animal photos were shot using a Nikon Z9 camera and Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S lens. Landscape and architectural photos were shot either with a Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S lens or with an iPhone 11.

You can see more of my photos here.

Heavy, prolonged or painful menstrual periods are associated with more days off school and scoring worse on compulsory exams in a UK study

[UPDATE May 10, 4:00 pm Boston Time, 10:00 pm EU time: AURORAS MAY BE ACTIVE NOW!]

I don’t use exclamation marks in blog post titles lightly. For those of us hoping to see the northern and southern lights (auroras) outside their usual habitat near the Earth’s poles, this is one of those rare weekends where the odds are in our favor. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a rare G4 forecast (out of a range from G1 to G5) for a major geomagnetic “storm”.

Though the large and active sunspot from earlier this week has moved on, it has been followed by an even larger group of sunspots, so enormous that you can easily see them with eclipse glasses if you’ve kept your pair from last month.

A monster sunspot group on the Sun right now (May 9, 2024).

Powerful solar flares (explosions at the Sun’s visible surface) and the accompanying large coronal mass ejections (“CMEs”, huge clouds of subatomic particles that stream across space from the Sun toward the planets) keep coming, one after another; the second-largest of the week happened just a few hours ago. In the next 24-72 hours, the combined effects of these CMEs may drive the Earth’s magnetic field haywire, leading to northern and southern lights that are much stronger and much more equatorial than usual.

How far south might the northern lights reach? That’s hard to predict, unfortunately. But it wouldn’t be surprising if they reached midway across the United States, and across much of Europe.

If you decide to go looking, keep in mind that dark skies are so important; the auroras can seem quite bright in a dark sky, but they are easily lost to light pollution from city lights or even nearby street lights. Make sure to turn off your car headlights and let your eyes adjust to the dark for a few minutes. The auroras are typically to the north (in the northern hemisphere), but I’ve seen them directly overhead in a strong storm. They’re most often green, but other colors may appear, if you’re lucky. If you’re not sure whether you’re seeing them, take a photo; the camera can pick up dim light and its color more effectively than your eyes can.

As for when to go looking — auroras might happen at any time, from a few hours from now through the weekend, and would potentially be visible whenever the sky is dark. For more detailed information, there are two sources of data that I find useful to monitor:

• First, at this site, you can find near-real-time data on the solar wind— the flow of particles from the Sun — from the ACE satellite, which orbits the Sun almost a million miles from Earth. If you see a sudden wildness in the data, that’s a good sign that a CME has probably passed this satellite, and will arrive at Earth in less than an hour.
• Second, data on the strength of the geomagnetic storm can be found here — but be warned! It is provided only as an average over the past three hours, and only updated every three hours — and so it can be as much as three hours out of date. But if you see the “Kp index” in the red, up around 7 or above, something significant is happening. In a G4 storm, this index can reach 9.

Good luck!!

A centuries-old maths problem asks what shape a circle traces out as it rolls along a line. The answer, dubbed a “cycloid”, turns out to have applications in a variety of scientific fields

Does the repeated stress on your immune system from getting tattoo after tattoo make you better able to fight off infections? No, no it does not.

The post Tattoos Still Won’t Boost Your Immune System first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

With a bit of training, macaques can make rhythmic movements in time with music, an ability only shown before by a handful of animals

Introduction

The battle to mitigate and stop climate change is the biggest challenge of the 21st century. The rapid build-up of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere due to human activities with resultant global warming and disruption of earth’s delicate climate balance poses a clear and present danger to human well-being and the well-being of the planet. These facts have been well documented by climate scientists and in a series of reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

While there continue to be many climate change naysayers, a majority of people around the world now accept what they can see around them—climate change is happening. Outright refusal to accept the reality of climate change is fading (at least in mainstream media) but new forms have emerged, aimed mainly at delaying any significant climate policy action.1

One major tactic is to belittle and dismiss the substantial progress that is being made on solutions, such as renewable energy and the electrification of transport. Common criticisms are that these are too expensive, intermittent, unreliable, or impractical. We term them “green energy denial.” This view was expressed, we submit, in the article entitled “The Future of Energy and Our Climate” by Marc J. Defant in Vol. 28 Issue 2 of Skeptic magazine. The reality is that while the energy transition is quite challenging, it is inevitable. Substantial progress has been made, and even more effective and efficient solutions are in the works.

Two books provide a good summary of the current situation. One is Michael E. Mann’s The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. Mann is the climate scientist famous for the hockey stick graph of global temperatures. “Outright denial of the physical evidence of climate change simply isn’t credible anymore. So, they have shifted to a softer form of denialism while keeping the oil flowing and fossil fuels burning, engaging in a multipronged offensive based on deception, distraction, and delay,” he writes. “Finally, when all other arguments fail, we’re left with ‘Well—it just won’t work. You can’t do it!’ Inactivists in fact twist themselves into veritable pretzels to explain why there’s no way we can possibly power our economy with renewable energy.” Here is how Mann sums up the problem:

We need to accomplish something gigantic we have never done before, much faster than we have ever done anything similar. To do it, we need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering. We need to build a consensus that doesn’t exist and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise.

Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, covers the solutions being developed to mitigate climate change. Both Gates and Mann agree that while this will prove extremely challenging, it is achievable. According to Gates:

We already have some of the tools we need, and as for those we don’t yet have, everything I’ve learned about climate and technology makes me optimistic that we can invent them, deploy them, and, if we act fast enough, avoid a climate catastrophe. This book is about what it will take and why I think we can do it. Within a few years, I had become convinced of three things: To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.

So, what’s to be done?

Virtually all plans to mitigate climate change focus on large scale electrification. There are several steps required to fully implement this solution. The first step is to decarbonize the electricity supply. This means producing electricity from technologies that do not emit greenhouse gasses (GHG). Fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas should be eliminated from the electricity supply. Many countries have set such goals to be achieved in the coming decades. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy has produced a study2 on pathways to achieve 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. To replace fossil fuels, electricity must be generated from non-emitting sources such hydro, wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear energy. At the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2023, nearly 130 countries committed to tripling renewables by 2030.

A second step is to convert to electrification as many energy-intensive fossil fuel processes as possible. These include transportation, cars and trucks, heating and cooling of buildings, industrial processes such as steel and cement, and others. Electrification will not only eliminate most uses of fossil fuels; it will also reduce the total amount of energy required. For example, electric cars require about 75 percent less energy per mile than gasoline cars because they are much more efficient.3

Electrifying the economy to the maximum extent will require a significant increase in the amount of electricity produced. The Electrification Futures Study by the U.S. National Renewables Energy Laboratory (NREL),4 estimates an increase in electricity demand of about 70 percent by 2050 over 2020 levels in the “high” scenario (mainly due to electrification of transportation). The greater efficiency of new technologies such as heat pumps plays an important role in reducing the size of this increase. In another example, if all cars were to become EVs, it is estimated that this alone will require a 20–50 percent increase in the electricity supply over 2015 levels in the U.S.5 Taken together, these steps will have a huge impact on reducing GHG emissions. It is also a tremendous economic opportunity.

The Cost of Renewables

Renewables will play a key role in the decarbonization and growth of the electricity supply. A key fact that is ignored by the green energy critics is the dramatic unit cost decline in wind and particularly solar energy in recent years. The article “Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?”6 provides an excellent explanation of this development, and is the source of the following graphs. Figure 1 “The price of solar modules declined by 99.6 percent since 1976” is self-explanatory. “The price of electricity from new power plants” in Figure 2 shows how the price of electricity from new power plants has changed over the past 10 years. The most notable change is that both solar and wind are now the cheapest source of electricity in many geographic locations; lower than combined cycle gas plants.

These steep price declines undermine key arguments of green energy critics. This crucial fact is absent from Marc Defant’s Skeptic article. Renewable energy from wind and solar was more expensive than fossil fuel plants in the past, but is now cost competitive, not to mention that investments in renewables have far outpaced those in fossil fuels. In his article, Defant points to countries such as Germany and Denmark that have invested heavily in renewables but have high electricity prices. The high prices they paid as early adopters are what have now driven down the costs for everyone else. And this is precisely the path taken as most new technologies became competitive and eventually standard. It is a price worth paying to avoid an approaching global climate catastrophe. In addition, the winners will own the key technologies of the future.

Germany’s abrupt decision to shut down all their nuclear plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, which accounted for about 20 percent of their supply, along with a failure to build adequate transmission capacity have also played a role in its high electricity prices. Despite this, Germany has had remarkable success in adapting to the cut off from Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine. Many analysts believe that this has provided an impetus not only to Germany, but Europe generally, to speed up the transition off fossil fuels.

Figure 1. The price of solar modules declined by 99.6 percent since 1976.

Figure 2. The price of electricity from new power plants

Figure 3. Battery price learning curve

This data contains a valuable lesson for other technologies that are key to the green transition, such as batteries for electric cars. Wind and solar were beneficiaries of what is known as Wright’s Law, that predates the better-known Moore’s Law in the chip industry, which states that the number of transistors on microprocessors doubles every two years at about the same cost. “Wright’s Law that each doubling in experience leads to the same relative decline in prices, was discovered much earlier than Moore’s Law, by aerospace engineer Theodore Paul Wright in 1936. Moore’s observation for the progress in computing technology can be seen as a special case of Wright’s Law.”7

Figure 3 illustrates the major price declines in the cost of lithium batteries that are used in electric cars and grid energy storage. The price has continued to fall significantly below the price in the graph of $244/kWh in 2016 and was $139/kWh in 2023.8 Analysts such as Goldman Sachs predict the price will fall below the critical threshold $100/kWh in the next couple of years, which would enable EVs to become less expensive than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars without subsidies on a total cost of ownership basis.9

The lower cost of renewables is greatly accelerating their rate of adoption worldwide. Wind and solar provided nearly 18 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. in the first third of 2023, up from 14 percent in 2022. There are news stories practically daily on the success of new renewables projects. Here are just a few such headlines:

• Solar Is Now 33 percent Cheaper Than Gas Power in U.S., Guggenheim Says10
• Renewable Energy Prices Hit Record Lows: How Can Utilities Benefit From Unstoppable Solar and Wind?11
• Is Solar Really Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels?12
• The Era of Cheap Wind and Solar Has Arrived, U of C Researchers Find.13
• In a First, Wind and Solar Generated More Power Than Coal in U.S.14
• Renewables Were the World’s Cheapest Source of Energy in 2020, New Report Shows.15

Defant’s article raises a series of other issues of concern for renewables. These can each be addressed, even though as Bill Gates indicates in his book: “This will be hard.”

Gas and Fracking

Defant’s article promotes alleged benefits of fracking as a cleaner alternative to coal and petroleum, citing its contributions to reducing GHG emissions in the United States. However, the author fails to mention studies that have highlighted concerns about methane leakages during extraction and transportation.16 These can offset the emissions benefits given that methane leaked from fracking has a much higher effect on radiative forcing than CO2. Moreover, the long-term sustainability of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” is rather uncertain at best, as it remains a fossil fuel that is far from leading to a sustainable low-carbon future.

Land Requirements

One notable concern is the charge that renewable energy takes up too much land. Heartland Institute, for example argues that, “solar power requires 43.50 acres per megawatt.”17 This number comes from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) which is an advocacy organization for the fossil fuel industry.

According to an example in a study by the U.S. Department of Energy a solar farm with a total land area of 1375 acres has a capacity of 345 MW, which works out to 3.75 MW per acre.18, 19 This is more than 10b times lower than IER’s estimate! Another recent article states that: “According to a report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, roughly 22,000 square miles of solar panel-filled land (about the size of Lake Michigan) would be required to power the entire country, including all 141 million households and businesses, based on 13–14 percent efficiency for solar modules. Many solar panels, however, reach 20 percent efficiency, which could reduce the necessary area to just about 10,000 square miles, equivalent to the size of Lake Erie.”20

Rare Earth Metals

Rare earth metals are essential for many green energy technologies such as wind turbines, and lithium batteries. Concern about the rarity of the rare earths is raised by Defant. “According to the Institute for Energy Research, the United States imports about 80 percent of its rare earth elements from China, which makes the U.S. highly dependent on what is increasingly becoming an adversary nation.” Note that Defant cites information from the same group as The Heartland Institute (The Heartland Institute often uses the IER as a source. See the source of their claim that 1 MW of solar requires 43.50 acres of land in Land Requirements section above). Elsewhere in his article Defant states that “It should be noted that China has a market share in the solar panel supply chain of more than 80 percent, so the Paris Accords have proven a financial bonanza for that nation.”

Consider now, information to the contrary:

• The World Population Review provides a table of Solar Power by Country.21 This table shows that in 2022 China had 393 GW while the U.S. had 113 GW of installed solar capacity. China has three times more solar than the U.S. and approximately 40 percent of the world’s installed solar capacity. Any wonder why they are the world’s largest producer?
• The Government of Canada has published a table of countries that produce rare earth metals.22 This overview shows that in 2021 China produced 60.6 percent of the total while the U.S. produced 15.5 percent. The report goes on to say: “Canada has some of the largest known reserves and resources (measured and indicated) of rare earths in the world, estimated at over 15.1 million tonnes of rare earth oxide in 2022.”
• An article for Metal Tech News23 states:
  • “While finding economically viable deposits of rare earths is not easy, the real complexity comes with separating these notoriously tightly interlocked elements into usable rare earth metals.”
  • “This gets to the heart of why rare earths are mined in the U.S., yet the country is 100 percent reliant on imports for the metals.”
  • “Several companies in the U.S. and Canada are in various stages of developing new technologies for separating rare earths and establishing facilities to enable rare earth oxides production in North America.”

It is clear that while China currently dominates rare earth metals production, the situation is evolving rapidly.

Finally, the full lifecycle analysis of electric vehicles (EVs) needs to be taken into consideration when comparing them to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, the latter having significant downstream environmental and air quality impacts, and the former having a much smaller footprint overall. Further, while it is true that critical minerals are essential for battery production in EVs, it’s worth noting that resource availability is a dynamic factor, and that recycling and circular economy principles can help reduce the demand for new resources and responsible supply chain regulations will address the extractive impacts of battery production. In fact, there are a number of startups making a profit by recycling the expensive materials in EV batteries.24 This promises to become a significant new business. Additionally, many countries now have recycling regulations, e.g., in Europe.25

Intermittency and Energy Storage

Intermittency and energy storage are the biggest concerns with wind and solar due to the variability of these resources. It should be noted that variable demand has always been a key factor in grid management. So-called base load power sources such as nuclear and coal can take hours or days for power to be changed up or down. Electricity demand is highly variable within a 24-hour period with demand highest during the afternoon or evening, and lowest overnight. Base load is typically between 30–40 percent of peak load. Nuclear can be a source of base load power in a zero emissions grid. However, important issues like nuclear waste disposal, large cost overruns, lengthy approval and construction times, and public acceptance must be resolved.

The grid operator is responsible for balancing supply to demand. In a free-market energy dispatch system, the operator has several options to meet demand at any given time. Generally, the operator will choose the lowest cost option. When available, this is usually from wind or solar since these have zero fuel cost. There are many options available to mitigate the inherent intermittency of these sources. The most common is to select one of the other sources on the grid. The combination of wind and solar may complement each other. Wind and solar from different geographic regions are valuable as weather conditions may be more favorable at other locations.

Various forms of energy storage are used. Hydroelectric power dams provide the largest form of storage. In suitable geographies, pumped storage hydro is an option. So-called gravity storage is a related emerging technology. Grid scale batteries are an increasingly viable solution to manage variability over minutes or hours. Green hydrogen, which is produced through the electrolysis of water from renewables, is a promising emerging technology for energy storage. This hydrogen can be converted back to electricity when needed. Green hydrogen has other potential uses as an alternative to fossil fuels.

Demand response is another solution that has several variants. Variable pricing tied to demand managed through smart metering is one scheme. The customer may use timers to schedule functions such as the dishwasher operation or car charging at night. Water heaters or freezers may be turned on/off intermittently during periods of peak demand. Large industrial users may have agreements and receive compensation for curtailing demand during peaks.

Finally combined cycle gas turbines and peaking plants, which have been used to deal with variable demand on traditional power grids, can be used on a grid with a high percentage of renewables. While not net zero, such hybrid systems can achieve drastically reduced emissions at a low cost.

Conclusion

In considering issues as contentious and important as the extent of human-induced climate change and various methods proposed for mitigating it, it behooves skeptics to examine all the relevant information as well the interests making such arguments. This article, therefore, presents vital information ignored in a previous Skeptic article, and which, we submit, refutes those arguments decisively.

About the Authors

Trained as a biologist, Jean-Patrick Toussaint holds a PhD in environmental sciences and has been Senior Climate Director at the Trottier Family Foundation since 2022. During his career, he has conducted academic research and worked on several environmental and climate files with various national and international organizations. Prior to joining the Trottier Family Foundation, Jean-Patrick was Senior Advisor on Francophone Affairs at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). Jean-Patrick also worked as a science officer at Future Earth and as science project manager at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Lorne Trottier is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded Matrox in 1976, a tech company known for its computer graphics and broadcast video products. The Trottier Family Foundation was established in 2000 and is active in the areas of climate, education, health, and science. The Trottier Foundation has funded a number of institutes including the Trottier Energy Institute at l’ École Polytechnique in Montreal, and the Trottier Space Institute at McGill University. Trottier was a Board Member of the National Center for Science Education NCSE for more than 10 years and is currently a Board Member of the Planetary Society.

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