Sean Dague
@dague
Software Architect, Climate Volunteer; Software, Climate, Science, Democracy. he/him. Born @ 330pm CO2.
It looks like we're going to get a brief respit in NY as this funnels over DC today. AQI under 100 for the first time in 24 hours.
This is some bullshit.gif Before fossil fuel caused climate change we didn't have wildfire summers in the east. It's time to get off fossil fuels.
Purple air data for our area. It's 170+ at my home, it's 200+ in Poughkeepsie.
The wildfires near where my sister in law lives in northern Minnesota drove AQI > 1000. She had to sleep in an N95 last night. Climate change really sucks. This will get worse until we transition off of fossil fuels.
Her office is a pilgrimage site for so many folks. If you are ever in DC it's worth standing on that hallway in Canon for an hour and just watching young people come and leave a note on the wall and take a photo with her plaque.
We charged at this charger in Tadousac (permanent population 800) a lot. But there were equiv chargers less than 100 km away in multiple directions. Also lots of 50 kW in between.
It is hard to fully capture in photos how truly gigantic the Hydro Quebec transmission towers are that run just East of Quebec city. But much of the electrons the US gets from Hydro Quebec in NY, VT, ME, MA, NH come on those lines.
Our refrigerator and freezer have been running off of our car for 36 hrs now. That used 17% of the battery. It's good for a couple more days before it could use a recharge, should we still be out. EVs are more than mobility. They are also resilience.
In this historic power outage in Poughkeepsie, how our refrigerator and chest freezer are staying cool. EVs really are amazing.
Because we are away on vacation, a friend came and made our fridge and freezer run off our car. The future is kind of cool
Man, Quebec is the king of EV charging. Every town with even a few hundred folks out here on the St Lawrence has a DC fast charger, all with Hydro Quebec logos. I was medium concerned on fast charging on this trip as we're pretty far north, but it's honestly better than in NY.
The central Hudson outage map near our place. This is likely going to be days. It went out at 7:30pm yesterday.
Still completely at awe of these 745kV towers that loom like monsters over the north coast landscape. Really impressive infrastructure.
But they also had this amazing wall mural of cartoons about imagining a human powered world, which provided such a clear argument via satire on the need for abundant affordable energy
It then has a ton of amazing energy projects. My favorite was a design project to come up with new ways to get people in Newfoundland to embrace offshore wind
The energy display starts with bikes where you create power, on a meter to try to run a hot shower
The Biosphere in Montreal is one of the most climate forward museums I've seen. They have special exhibits on climate and emotions, and climate refugees, as well as a standing exhibit on Energy that's amazing
Energy vacation spotting, a barge with wind turbine parts outside of Montreal. At least 5 blades on it, plus vertical sections.
Other trains were cancelled, and something was wrong with the SBahn before leaving Hamburg, so I had to walk to Hbf. But so far so good. The train has "German AC" so it's warmer than I'd like, but takes the edge off.
It's so good to be on a fast electric train with wind turbines along the route. A clean future is possible.
