Emily Grubert
@gruberte
civil engineer / environmental sociologist. energy, water, climate, buildings, justice. fossil phaseout / universal programs. she / her. bunnies.
I didn’t actually realize how much work my solar panels are doing to keep my house cooler
Huge shout out to @jmijin.bsky.social for this important and compelling collaboration -- we hope you like it. We think we're right. Here's a picture of a PRB haul truck as a present.
See if you can detect when I’m taking breaks from using my HEPA vacuum and infrared paint melting device lmao
The funny thing about having a grid-isolated PV system (we can’t export) is that on hot sunny days I’m like CRANK UP THE AC! THE PANELS ARE KEEPING UP!
Incomplete as a mental health indicator of course but I always worry for my undergrads a little when I don’t see any whimsical snow construction in the winter This year they went full whimsy (catholic mode)
🚨job alert🚨 I'm looking to hire at least one PhD student for next year, looking at decarbonization-oriented technology deployment within an ethical frame of resource allocation and justice outcomes. Full ad attached! Pref for CEEES admissions; deadline is 1 January.
I would not have gotten the direction of this chart right (US petrochemical feedstock supply, specifically from petroleum) but as soon as I thought about it, it clicked. Pretty sure this shows the big shift from oil to ngas-derived feedstocks for plastics &c -- but check me?
lolol I WFH today but I did find some old pics so here it is in its rickety glory (yes, I used light-up bricks for the boiler)
My advice about mail surveys and PhDs is the same: don’t do them (unless you have to)
Here's a ~45-60 year old coal plant that, a week before its 4-years-in-the-making planned shutdown, received an emergency order from Trump's DOE to stay open for the summer. You can see the (tiny, probably extremely expensive) little coal pile they've had to rebuild. JH Campbell, 1.4 GW, Michigan.
Bald eagles kind of fuck me up because I’m old enough and young enough that there was a real chance I might never see a wild one. But we Decided To Try (tm) and now there are 2 flying around my house. Anyway we should probably Decide To Try (harder) on a lot of things rn
Here’s how much this glacier has retreated since my best friend convinced me that actually climate change *is* a big deal (for which I’m eternally grateful)
This is my newest problem set question, with the pedagogical goal of: “does that order of magnitude seem plausible?”
I’m a steel-in-the-ground guy as my theory of change so here is my (third) new solar inverter
Possibly more astonishing: here's an image from outside (it was 7F) showing that our replacement windows are nearly thermally invisible -- they're wooden replacements + storms using super thin double panes to keep the historic profile, versus the aluminum ~80s era replacements we took out (2/)
For a little joy, here's #ThermalCameraThursday. To start, here's a thermal image of the new windows in the room where my bunnies live, where the second image has one partially open to the old windows, which we kept as storms. The year before the new windows it ranged from 19-95F in there (1/)
I see I’ve arrived at the “Reddit is promoting an investment vehicle that allows me to be agnostic about whether climate change is real” circle of hell
Lead abatement radicalized me* (*lol it did not, I’ve been radicalized for a while) re: limate adaptation / remediation. My household is unambiguously high risk / priority and yet it comes down to me spending $1000s and 100s of hours in a tyvek suit. Our adaptation strategy is “be rich, good luck.”