Take a COOL Guess – the Fun Quiz on Clean Energy and Climate Change Mitigation — Answers in Reverse Chronological Order

April 6, 2024:  382.  See this and this.

March 5, 2024: The post was made by the “seriously unintelligent” one, but again, the two are indistinguishable in the way they think about politics are communicate those thoughts publicly.

February 6, 2024: Scotland

January 19, 2024: A leather jacket.

October 18, 2023:  No.  Per the WSJ: Any climate policy that can hurt cherished farmers or increase food prices is politically risky.

May 13, 2023:  38,658.  Please see graphic here.

April 15, 2022: Nikola Tesla.

February 15, 2022: Maryland.

November 30, 2021: The Fossil Fuel Industry Was More Represented at the UN’s Climate Summit Than Any Country. There were 503 fossil fuel lobbyists there.

November 1, 2021: Sea-level rise.

September 20, 2021: First, people don’t walk around with their sexual orientation tattooed on their foreheads.  Even more to the point, HIV is a sexually transmitted disease; people aren’t having sex in restaurants and on planes.  COVID-19 is extremely transmissible via close contact with infected people.

September 6, 2021: Texas.

September 1, 2021: Wind energy, 42%, per the Los Angeles Times.

August 11, 2021: These figures are almost exclusively driven by the volume of resources, which drives the cost of the energy generated.  There is almost no correlation with the predominant political philosophy of the people living in the state.

July 28, 2021: 9%, according to this piece in Bloomberg Green.

July 18, 2021: Since 2015, the United States has experienced an average of 14 disasters per year that cost at least $1 billion, according to this piece in Science Magazine.

February 25, 2021: $28 billion, according to this piece in the Wall Street Journal.

February 1, 2021: 672.

January 29, 2021: From this article: “After 13 years, justice!” tweeted Friends of the Earth Europe. These folks react following the court ruling in the case that the organization, along with four Nigerian farmers, filed against Shell over oil leaks that have allegedly polluted their villages, in The Hague, on January 29, 2021. The Nigerian branch of Shell has to pay compensation to some farmers from the African country. The company has been found liable for two oil spills. The amount must be determined later, the court in The Hague ruled.

January 1, 2021: 1885.  See US consumes more green energy than coal for first time since 1885.

November 16, 2020:  1) Bridges either span waterways or land masses.  If they span waterways, they’re no higher off the water’s surface than necessary, where wind currents are low.  If they span land masses, the land itself tends to blocks the wind.  2) Wind turbines need to be able to turn to address the wind.  3) There is no consistency to the construction of bridges, thus each project requires a huge amount of one-off engineering.

September 28, 2020: The energy required to pull a volume of air down to the bottom of the container will more than offset the amount of energy associated with lifting the load.

September 15, 2020: 1845 (175 years ago this year).  James Knox Polk (shown in post).

August 27, 2021:  The second of the four (b) is incorrect: Global warming is increasing the frequency of hurricanes.

August 25, 2021:  Since we need to convert mass into volume, we need to know the density of water, which is 1 g/cm³.  Therefore, let’s get everything in centimeters, and round things off to make it easy.

6*10¹¹ tons * 2*10³ pounds/ton * 5*10² grams/pound = 6*10¹⁷ grams = 6*10¹⁷ cm³.

Now, let’s calculate the area of the Earth oceans in cm², using the formula for the surface of a sphere, which is 4πr², and factor in that the oceans account for 70% of the Earth’s surface.

Earth’s radius in cm:  4*10³ miles * 1.4 km/mile * 10⁵ cm/km = 6*10⁸ cm

Plugging into the formula: 4 * 3 * 7*10^-1 3.6*10¹⁷ = 3 * 10¹⁸ cm²

Since the volume of a rectangular solid is its height * the area of its base, or height = volume / area, we get:

Height (in cm) = 6*10¹⁷ cm³ / 3 * 10¹⁸ cm² = 0.2 cm = 2 mm.

Not huge, but not insignificant.

August 21, 2021: It’s Singapore’s Public Utilities Board new 60 megawatt-peak (MWp) floating solar photovoltaic farm. It’s on the Tengeh Reservoir in the Western Water Catchment in the West Region of Singapore.

August 11, 2021: During a pandemic, of course!

August 2, 2021: These are not chemicals you want flowing into your home or seeping into your drinking water, but they are the chemicals found in a superfund site that was flooded during Hurricane Harvey, according to a new UCS report released today, A Toxic Relationship: Extreme Coastal Flooding & Superfund Sites.

June 20, 2020:  The small town of Verkhoyansk, home to 1,000 people in Russia’s Yakutia region, broke the record on Saturday for the highest temperature ever recorded within the Arctic Circle, hitting a maximum of 38 degrees Celsius.  Verkhoyansk already held the record for the place with the greatest temperature range on Earth. Prior to today, temperatures in the small town have ranged between -68 and +37 degrees Celsius – a 105-degree difference. In Fahrenheit, that’s between -90 and +98.

May 27, 2020: About 4000.

February 11, 2020: about 1600, most notably social scientists, soil conservationists, hydrologists and experts in the physical sciences — chemistry, geology, astronomy and physics,” according to a recent Washington Post investigation.

December 28, 2019: 10, according to this article.

December 18, 2019: 15,000 chargers, in 1706 charging locations.

December 16, 2019: Nero.

December 10, 2019: Six million.  Please see this.

October 29, 2019:  Three years, as presented here.

September 30:  Just shy of 18,000 BK outlets.  McDonald’s restaurants are found in 120 countries and territories around the world and serve 68 million customers each day. McDonald’s operates 37,855 restaurants worldwide.

September 29, 2019: Morocco.  Check this out!

September 27, 2019: Ha! Take a cool guess!  Check this out.

September 25, 2019: It’s an underpass for a freeway in Croatia, built every 5 kilometers or so, each one perhaps 300 meters wide, put in place such that populations of wildlife, in this case bears and foxes, are not separated off from one another.

September 15, 2019. $200 million.

September 6, 2019: As detailed here, there are 78 total environmental rollbacks (47 completed, 31 more in progress).

August 28, 2019: Today is the 170th anniversary of the first issue of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States.

August 25, 2019: The photo was taken yesterday.  Hate crime is on the rise.

August 21, 2019:  President Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t think the federal government should have any.

August 18, 2019: They weren’t there of their own free will.  Workers at a new Shell plant in Pennsylvania say were told they had to attend a speech by President Donald Trump in order to get paid, according to a report from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

August 6, 2019: It’s a map of the Tesla superchargers in North America, which has evolved from 6 to 13,344 in 6 years.

June 29, 2019: A rough answer is one in 24.3 million.  The probability of an one such occurrence is 20 in 600, or 1 in 30.  The probability of all five, therefore, could be said to be one in 30 raised to the 5th power.

To be precise, one needs to realize that once one event has taken place, there are only 19 remaining out of 599, once the second event has taken place, there are only 18 remaining out of 598, etc. The exact probability, therefore is one in (600*599*598*597*596)/(20*19*18*17*16), or one in 41,103,125.

June 20, 2019: New York.  Story here.

June 16, 2019: Steffen Olsen, a climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, snapped this  photo of Greenland sea ice that had melted into a large lake of aqua water, pooled atop the icy surface.

June 1, 2019: Have one fewer child, which has a far bigger effect than any other single action one can take.  See article linked here.  Wow.  I’m sure this is true, but I’m guessing it’s an extremely rare person who make this decision based on carbon footprint. Maybe if you already have four?

May 27, 2019: One million bottles per minute, 91% unrecycled.

May 25, 2019: There is a huge disparity, as discussed here. The formerly pristine Cocos Islands are near Australia, and now feature 400 million pieces of plastic. The photo in the post is from the Cocos.

May 13, 2019: 30%, molten salt energy storage.  Malta is building a grid-scale energy storage technology that stores electricity from renewable energy sources as heat inside large tanks of high temperature molten salt and as cold in large tanks of chilled liquid. The system can discharge electricity back to the grid when energy demand is high – effectively “time shifting” energy from when it’s produced to when it’s most needed.

May 11, 2019: $200 million, based on this.  BP has the highest annual expenditure on climate lobbying at $53 million, followed by Shell with $49 million and ExxonMobil with $41 million. Chevron and Total each spend around $29 million every year.

May 9, 2019: Three years.

May 8, 2019: It’s the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

April 22, 2019: 58%, per this video.

March 9, 2019:  No one knows.  Sorry for the bait-and-switch, but there is no way to know the truth.

February 24, 2019: According to the Associated Press, 50 millions of gallons of water per day filled with arsenic, lead, and other toxins are flowing from mining sites in to U.S. streams and ponds without being treated.  The financial onus for cleaning up this mess has been transferred from the poisoner to the poisonee (you and me).  Details here.

February 22, 2019: They’re all either under attack or have already been dismantled by the Trump administration.  Some say that the purpose here is to save money so as to afford the border wall, though this flies in the teeth of the fact that wealthy donors see these as impediments to their business models which include polluting the environment with impunity.

More here, from that liberal rag, “National Geographic.”  Kidding aside, now in it’s 137th year, the magazine’s political slant is discussed here.

February 2, 2019: 400%, per this excellent video on sea-level rise.

January 31, 2019: The all are.  Please see this.

January 29, 2019: East Antarctica.  Now, a study using 40 years of satellite imagery finds that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing a substantial quantity of ice as well as the unstable west side.  See this.

January 20, 2019: Gothenburg, Sweden.  Wonderful video here.

January 9, 2019: Luxembourg.  Please see this.

January 3, 2019: From NPR: When coal is burned it releases mercury into the air, where it can cause health risks to people including neurological disorders, heart and lung problems and compromised immune systems. Babies developing in the womb and young children are especially at risk. The main source of exposure is through eating contaminated fish and seafood.

December 29, 2018: Corona.  Please see this.

December 19, 2018: Chile.  Video here.

December 18, 2018: Pathogen-carrying mosquitoes, allergy-causing plants that pollinate through longer seasons, and  floods that spread disease.  Here’s a cool video on the subject.

December 7, 2018: 150 acres per hour, the size of a championship golf course.

December 5, 2018: The Zephyr platform is a new class of unmanned air vehicle that operates as a high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS) enabling affordable, persistent, local satellite-like services. , the Zephyr aircraft holds world records for endurance as well as altitude, flying at 70,000 feet or higher. This stratospheric platform can fly for months at a time and combines the persistence of a satellite with the flexibility of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The platform is expected to be used in a wide range of emerging applications, including maritime surveillance and services, border patrol missions, communications, forest fire detection and navigation.

Amprius, Inc., a leading manufacturer and developer of high energy and high capacity lithium-ion batteries, announced today that the company is supplying advanced lithium ion cells to the Airbus Defence and Space Zephyr Program.  Using Amprius’ cells, which contain a 100% silicon anode, the Zephyr S flew more than 25 days, setting a new endurance and altitude record for stratospheric flight. Amprius batteries enable the Zephyr to fly uninterrupted in the stratosphere which would not be possible with lower performance batteries.

November 15, 2016: A group of over 15,000 scientists from over 184 countries.

November 12, 2018: 1965

November 8, 2018: Gazpacho.  There are 8,268 listed farmers’ markets in the U.S.

October 18, 2018: The correct answer is c), as documented here.

October 7, 2018: More than 50,000, according to this.

October 6, 2018: 10 billion, 5%, according to this cool video

September 23, 2018: 82.  Most recent: Cleveland.  See this.

September 4, 2018: At least 12 times, per this video.

August 19, 2018:  Of course not!  Check this out.

August 13, 2018: Mercury is emitted from coal-fired power plants, falls into rivers or oceans, sinks, is absorbed by algae, is eaten by little fish and other small aquatic life, is eaten by (and bioaccumulates in) successively bigger fish, then finally by you.  Damages the nervous system; explained beautifully in the video linked above.

August 1, 2018: Zero of the five FERC regulators believe the plan to subsidize coal is necessary.

July 25, 2018: 81,000

July 23, 2018: $2 billion, 10:1, according to this article.

July 17, 2018: The rate of Antarctic ice melt is three times what it was 10 years ago.  See video here.

June 24, 2018: Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  See photo at right.

May 10, 2018:  A concept in sustainable, off-grid living, shown here.

May 6, 2018: 81, as discussed here.

March 6, 2018: Per this article, 49 cities use 100%, and 101 use more than 70%.

February 27, 2018: 100 years.

February 15, 2018: Ireland.  More here.  Faith and begora! (whatever that means)

February 13, 2018:  According to this article in Scientific American, the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

January 31, 2018: 72%, according to this article.

January 29, 2018: The Koch brothers are going to get at least $1 billion a year from the Trump tax bill, 50 times (5000 percent of) their investment according to Americans for Tax Fairness.

January 22, 2018: All of the above.

January 16, 2018: $90 billion total, $52 billion (58%) from Germany, from GreenAutoDigest.

January 11, 2018: According to the CDC, 75% of the contiguous United States has become, due to climate change, suitable breeding habitat for mosquitoes that are capable of transmitting deadly viruses.

December 15, 2017: 83%, five our of six, of people surveyed by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy said they are against the move to get rid of net neutrality.

November 18. 2017: More than 16,000 scientists from 184 countries have published a second warning to humanity.

August 9, 2017: Nicola Tesla, 1926

April 3, 2017:  Wind Energy, just beat out hydro.  Full story here.

March 31, 2017:  I’ll offer two comments that may be of service.

I would rethink featuring the quote of the inventor himself to the effect that this invention is the most important event in diesel history since the catalytic converter.  Imagine my having on my website:

“Craig Shields is positively the best author/consultant in the renewable energy industry.”  – Craig Shields

The name “alchemist” suggests that the invention is snake oil.  You don’t want that, especially because the diesel industry has been sold TONS of snake oil over the years.  They’re very jaded and skeptical as a result, which will make this a tough challenge on a good day.

December 20, 2016: 22%

December 14, 2016: 45,000 per minute.

November 18, 2016: Zero.  He (and thus the American people) is in a class by himself.

November 19, 2016: 36 degrees F.

July 14, 2016: Solar PV ground screws, one of the fastest (thus less expensive) ways to get the job done.  Linked above is the approach used by a company called Krinner.

July 8, 2016: 5.25 trillion, per this article.

June 21, 2016:  California is cleaning out the dead trees caused by its mega-drought and converting that chemical energy into electricity, as explained in the article linked above.

December 8, 2015:  Six years (as of next month); the decision was made in January of 2010.

October 6, 2015:  Renewable Energy Test Center is a third-party certification testing provider for photovoltaic and other renewable energy products.

August 17, 2015:  According to this article, farmers spray as often as every five days during the growing season.  10% of this spray drifts to other areas.

June 20, 2015: Two, according to this article.

May 2, 2015: According to the “new” EnergyFactCheck.Org, environmentalist good guy Tom Steyer’s net worth is $1.4 billion,

April 19, 2015:  The world could have saved $38 trillion if it had been at peace since 2006.

April 11, 2015:  40% of our planet’s coral reefs have died over the last 30 years due to the warming of the oceans; 25% of ocean species live on these reefs.

This destruction happens when the sea temperature reaches roughly a degree warmer than the long-term summer maximum and stays there for four to six weeks. Corals can survive it, but if the event goes on longer, or the temperature climbs higher still, you get mass mortality. Over the last 12 months seas have come very close to that threshold. We’re on the brink of a major, worldwide bleaching event, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch programme.

April 10, 2015:  Yes, it’s three times more destructive, as explained in this video.

March 10, 2015:  There is very little mineralization of carbon dioxide when it is pumped into underground caverns consisting of spaces between sedimentary rock. As shown here, however, porous basalt (an igneous rock found in the seabeds) has the capacity to store more than 50 kilograms of CO2 per cubic meter, and, because it’s rich in calcium, magnesium, and iron oxides, it readily converts CO2 into minerals that stay beneath the surface for extremely long periods of time.

February 18, 2015:  One bequerel means one radioative decay per second.  My colleague Mike Conley writes:  The Fukushima Cs-137 in California coastal water adds about 5 becquerels per cubic meter of seawater. Clean seawater normally contains 1400 Bqs. per cubic meter. Therefore, Fukushima increased the natural radioactivity of CA coastal water by 0.00357%. Cs-137 is actually slightly less energetic than K-40, the naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium in our food, and our seawater.  A 155-lb adult eating a typical American diet has a fairly constant internal Becquerel count of 9,360 Bq from the potassium stored in his fat cells.

February 6, 2015: 4.5 million, by far the greatest outpouring of support for anything in U.S. history.

January 29, 2015: 2200% (22 times), and 80,000 jobs; see this article by my friend and colleague Stephen Lacey of GreenTechMedia.

January 27, 2015: 59%

September 3, 2014:  The California Public Utilities Commission levied penalties of a record $1.4 billion on Pacific Gas and Electric Co, stemming from the deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline rupture and fire near San Francisco. The fines cover 3,798 violations of state and federal laws and regulations that two administrative law judges for the agency found in connection with PG&E’s pipeline network operation, including the 2010 explosion.  Many of those violations had run for years, the panel said.

August 29, 2014: The price of wind energy in the plains states of the U.S., if we are to add storage from Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), is estimated to be approximately four cents/kWh–still less than that the price of energy from burning coal.

February 28, 2014: Domestic dairy production of animal waste exceeds one billion ninety four million (1,094,000,000) lbs a day. This figure parallels hog waste production which is estimated to be over one billion eighty three million (1,083,000,000) lbs a day.

October 22, 2013:  Curitiba is among the greenest cities on Earth.  Their 1.9 million residents purchase 1.45 million round-trip bus fares every day (76%).

August 6, 2013:  Over its twenty-year lifetime, an average sized solar system offsets the same amount of carbon as planting six  acres of trees.

April 30, 2013: 3.6 million electric passenger cars will be sold globally in 2017. 

April 29, 2013: According to this article, the summer melting of the arctic ice hasn’t been this severe in approximately 1000 years ago.

February 12, 2013: In the United States in 2012, 46% of the power that came on to the grid was renewable (mostly solar and wind).

January 1, 2013: By far the largest rainforest in Asia is New Guinea.  Check out this video of the birds of New Guinea.

December 18, 2012:  The average cost to society, over his lifetime, of the typical gang member, including hospitalizations (his own and his victims’), criminal justice / imprisonment, car wrecks, thefts, vandalism, etc. is approximately $2 million.  Apiece.  Multiply that times the large and growing population of gang members, and you have quite a number.

October 15, 2012:  20 tons of mine waste results from the production of one gold ring.

April 11, 2012: PCBs are known as “biologic timebombs.” Of all the PCBs ever produced, 70% of them are still in use, stored in aging electronics, and will require significant amounts of time to work their way through our environment.

July 5, 2012: Approximately 40,000 gallons of water is wasted every year by EACH urinal in men’s bathrooms around the world.

September 26, 2012: In the late 15th century Leonardo Da Vinci conceived of an industrial use of solar power by employing concave mirrors to heat water.

August 3, 2012: Last year represents the first time in the history of the world that the total private investment in research and develop for renewable energy exceeded that for fossil fuels.

August 14, 2012: A 501(c)(4) is a non-profit organization, given its name for its section of the tax code, that doesn’t have to disclose their donors to the public.

April 10, 2012:  There are TONS of cases in human history in which changes made in environmental regulation have made a dramatic and measurable positive difference.  Between 1976 and 1986, the concentration of lead in the bloodstreams of Belgian adults and the level of DDT in the milk of Japanese mothers fell by a factor of two, while the level of the insecticide dieldrin in the adipose tissue of Dutch citizens fell by a factor of three.

April 9, 2012: 65,000 industrial chemicals are in regular commercial use.

January 26, 2012: It is estimated that the Amazon rainforest alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year, or 1.5 acres a second.

December 9, 2011: The cost of generating electricity from coal with no scrubbers is about $0.03 / kWh.

November 21, 2011: The average American generates 4.6 pounds of trash daily. About half that goes into landfills; the other half in recycled or incinerated.

November 18, 2011: Approximately one million trees are ground up each year to make junk mail.

November 17, 2011: some plastic bottles last 1000 years in landfills.  500 billion – 1 trillion plastic bags used year year world-wide.

October 12, 2011:  The city of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, which hosts “Expo Energía.”  The expo has had an unprecedented success with over 100 exhibiting companies and over 700 visitors from 16 countries that have participated in the event. Many Latin American and European companies have held pre-arranged business meetings that are finalized as new business ventures.

February 7, 2011:  It’s free; they’re happy to get rid of it.  This provides a huge cost advantage for Canefields, providing the business with some incredibly attractive operating margins.

February 3, 2011: About 15 terawatts, or 15,000 gigawatts, or 15,000,000 megawatts.  That’s the equivalent of 150 billion 100-watt light bulbs, which equates to 20 100-watt light bulbs for every man, woman and child.  In the US, we use about 8 times the international average, or 160 100-watt light bulbs per person.

January 30, 2011: Babassu is a palm tree that grows in the Amazon region of South America. It produces a clear, light yellow, non-drying oil used in food, cleaners and skin products. This oil has properties similar to coconut oil and is used in much the same context. In addition, the fruit iself has a very attractive energy density, and thus the trees are beginning to be cultivated as a biomass feedstock.

January 20, 2011: Approximately 60% — far more than most people guess.

January 19, 2011: There are approximately 1 billion 2’ X 2’ fluorescent lighting fixtures in the ceilings of US office buildings, and approximately 34 million lamps lighting US streets.

January 13, 2011: 60 Minutes (October 4, 2009). See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf5AFyE6cw0. 130 million tons annually.

January 12, 2011: About 14 million tons of C&D (construction and demolition) waste annually is shipped through a transfer station in Staten Island, almost all of which is taken by rail to land fills in Kentucky and Ohio.

January 11, 2011:  7.6 billion chickens, producing 2 trillion tons of manure annually