Month: December 2015

• Ivy Main has a new blog post about the implications of current policy barriers in Virginia on investments in solar energy. She also has one concerning the order by the State Corporation Commission requiring Dominion Virginia Power to refund $19.7 million to its customers.
• Does climate change bum you out? Tired of hearing about all of the things that are happening? Well perhaps you need to join in singing the “Climate Change Deniers’ Anthem” with January Jones and others at Funny or Die.
• David Waskow and Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute summarize the key provisions and highlights from the Paris Climate Summit.
• Now that the climate negotiators have all gone home from Paris, the big question is just what exactly does the climate agreement mean for the future. Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic and Oscar Reyes of Foreign Policy in Focus provide postmortems on the Paris Climate Summit, with the former a little more optimistic than the latter. John Vidal of The Guardian lists five reasons to be gloomy and five reasons to be glad about the agreement. Chris Mooney of The Washington Post provides a look at what may lie ahead while Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute lays out nine issues for climate (and world) leaders to think about.
• CarbonBrief has an interactive map that helps us visualize various countries’ contributions to greenhouse gas emissions over time.
• On Friday both the House and the Senate passed the new spending bill that has important energy provisions in it. As far as climate change is concerned, the bill has both positive and negative impacts. On a positive note, the subsidies for both wind and solar will be extended for five more years, but on the negative side, the ban on the export of crude oil has been lifted. Steven Mufson and Chris Mooney both of The Washington Post provided analyses written before the final vote (which did not change the provisions in the bill). In addition, the bill does not restrict President Obama from contributing to the Green Climate Fund designed to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.
• Naomi Oreskes, senior author of Merchants of Doubt, has an interesting opinion piece in The Guardian arguing that there is a new kind of denialism loose in the world – that we can’t meet our energy needs by renewable energy alone. On the other hand, Michael Specter, writing in The New Yorker, has pushed back against Oreskes for using such a loaded word as denialist to characterize four prominent climate scientists who happen to think that the world’s energy needs can’t be met by renewable energy alone.
• One thing to watch next year in the renewable energy area is energy storage. For example, AES, a large energy company, has announced that it is gaining access to 1 gigawatt-hour of lithium ion batteries from LG Chem. The batteries will be used to provide large scale grid energy storage to utility companies.
• The latest national survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communications has found that 36% of registered voters are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate that supports strong action on climate change whereas only 16% are more likely not to.
• Here’s surprising news. According to a study from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA nutritional guidelines to eat more fruits, vegetables, dairy, and seafood is more harmful to the environment than eating a less healthy diet. However, before you rush out and stock up on bacon, you might want to consider some of the caveats associated with the study.
• Kiritimati, the largest atoll in the world, is part of Kiribati in the Pacific. It provides a unique site for studying the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs because its reefs vary from pristine to very impacted by human activity. Typically, water temperatures around Kiritimati hover near 81 degrees F. However, this year, because of the strong El Nino water temperatures have reached as high as 88 degrees, leading to extensive coral bleaching and, in some cases, death. Nevertheless, another study has shown that with proper management, reefs can recover.
• A new study has found that fish populations around the globe have experienced a decline in their ability to reproduce and replenish themselves. The pattern of decline is tied closely to a decline in phytoplankton, the food for young fish, that is associated with climate change.
• NOAA released its latest Arctic Report Card at this year’s American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Not surprisingly, the Arctic continues to deteriorate, experiencing record warm temperatures. Carbon Brief’s Roz Pidcock presents a summary of its most important findings.
• A massive new study just reported on in the journal Nature found that Greenland has lost over 9 trillion tons of ice since 1900. More disturbingly, the rate of ice loss in the 2003-2010 period was more than twice that over the 1983-2003 period. Robert McSweeney at CarbonBrief provides a more detailed description of the findings.
• Lakes all over the world are warming due to climate change. This can impact algal blooms and other factors that impact the suitability of the lakes as water supplies.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

• The most important news is that 196 countries approved the Paris Climate Accord Saturday afternoon (EST). Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney have summarized five things you should know about the agreement.
• Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of Merchants of Doubt, argues that in order to stop climate change the U.S. will have to give up on the idea that free markets alone can adequately address the problem and embrace a government-led plan of action. This is a compelling and beautifully written essay that raises many points worth considering; if you don’t have time to read the entire thing, at least read the last paragraph.
• In previous Weekly Roundups I have given links to articles calling into question the adequacy of the 2 degree C target and the use of “negative emissions” to achieve it. This week two articles appeared in scientific journals on those topics, one in Nature Geoscience and one in Nature Climate Change. Because of the expected impacts of a 2 degree C temperature increase on sea level rise, island nations are calling for limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C instead. Chris Mooney examines recent studies on the vulnerability of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to warming. A team of reporters from Carbon Brief interviewed scientists and others about the feasibility of a 1.5 degree C goal. This piece contains an interesting graphic showing how long we have before we use all of the carbon budget for a variety of temperature targets.
• Although most of us don’t often think about international shipping as a major source of CO2 emissions, it is currently responsible for 2-3%, and that number is likely to rise as nations cut back on their emissions. Consequently, there is a call for limitations on shipping emissions at the Paris Climate Summit. Henry Fountain of The New York Times analyzes what can be done to make ships more efficient.
• The buildings we live in make significant contributions to global warming through the energy required for heating/cooling, lighting, appliances, etc. How we build or retrofit them can have big impacts and best practices will be required to meet our climate goals.
• A California natural gas well is leaking methane to the atmosphere and by the time they get it stopped it is likely to have leaked as much greenhouse gas as a half-million cars would contribute in a year. You can see a video of the plume here. Meanwhile, a study of methane emissions from the Barnett Shale gas field in North Texas found that they are almost two times as large as estimated by the EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory and 5.5 times the number from a separate global database.
• Global CO2 emissions during 2015 will decrease by 0.6% according to a study just published in Nature Climate Change. The projected decrease is attributable to a decrease in coal use in China.
• One hundred and fourteen large corporations have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions to a level consistent with keeping global warming below 2 degrees C. Currently, their cumulative emissions equal that of South Africa.
• A new study has found that up to a quarter of the near-surface permafrost in Alaska could thaw by 2100, releasing long-trapped carbon the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming.
• A paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides a better evaluation of the disproportionate impacts of climate change on the poor. One finding is that estimates of the social cost of carbon have been too low. Another is that climate change will make it much harder for the poor to better their economic situation.
• A bipartisan group of leaders met in Norfolk on Wednesday to push for passage of the Virginia Coastal Protection Act in the 2016 General Assembly. This bill would generate about $250 million per year to invest in flood-protection measures, as well as energy efficiency, clean energy, and job training programs.
• NOAA announced Wednesday that this autumn (Sept. – Nov.) was the warmest on record for the contiguous U.S., with every state in the Lower 48 recording above average temperatures.
• A new paper reveals that nighttime temperatures have a major impact on respiration rates of trees in tropical rain forests. At night, plants use their internal sugars and other energy reserves to maintain cell function (respiration). This process acts the opposite of photosynthesis, meaning that CO2 is given off rather than taken up. It turns out that the rate of respiration at night depends strongly on the temperature, suggesting that trees might release more CO2 at night as Earth warms.
• A major storm (Storm Desmond) swept over parts of the U.K. last weekend, causing torrential rains that flooded more than 5000 homes and caused extensive damage. Using computer models scientists have estimated that the storm was made 40% more likely because of global warming.
• Matt Ridley is a self-proclaimed lukewarmer who has had a number of opinion pieces appear recently in such places as The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American. He recently was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 by Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s environment analyst. Carbon Brief sent a transcript of Ridley’s interview to eleven climate scientists and asked them to critique his claims. The annotated interview can be found here.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

• Justin Gillis, writing in The New York Times, provides a very informative list of short answers to 13 hard (and important) questions about climate change.
• Adam Vaughan, writing in The Guardian, has compiled a list of the expected changes associated with various levels of warming.
• If you know that the Paris Climate Summit is going on, but you aren’t quite sure exactly what is likely to happen, then The Guardian has a summary for you, as does Climate Home. Because of the sheer volume of articles coming out about the Summit I’m not going to attempt to cover it, although I will put in a few things that particularly catch my eye.
• On Tuesday, President Obama said that part of the agreement from Paris should be legally binding, the periodic review of emission reduction targets. Sophie Yeo of Carbon Brief explains how this might work. In a sweeping interview in Rolling Stone, John Kerry discusses the implications of legally binding agreements in Paris and a host of other issues associated with climate change.
• The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, made up of more than 25 investors from 10 countries was launched Monday at the Paris Climate Summit. Its goal is to spark an economic revolution based upon clean energy technology. The announcement was made in conjunction with Mission Innovation, an initiative involving 21 governments to spur renewable energy development. Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, took this as a highly encouraging sign.
• One of the most important concepts to come out of climate science in the past decade is that of a carbon budget, which quantifies the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted to the atmosphere while still limiting warming to 2 degrees C. This concept was discussed in a series of articles in Nature in 2009, incorporated into the 2013-2014 IPCC report, and popularized by Bill McKibben in his article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” in Rolling Stone in 2012. Nevertheless, as reported by Justin Gillis in The New York Times, the carbon budget will not be part of the discussions in Paris, in part because it raises issues that are just too difficult to tackle.
• The Washington Post published an interesting series of articles related to climate change. Part 1 dealt with “The Great Thaw“; Part 2 with “The Invisible Threat” posed by insects carrying viruses further north; Part 3 with the oceans and giant moving boulders; and Part 4 with “The Magic Number“, i.e., 2 degrees C. Finally, they summarized the key points of climate change science in a fascinating interactive graphic.
• According to the World Meteorological Organization the period 2011-2015 will be the warmest five year period on record. In addition, because of a strong El Nino coupled with global warming, 2015 is likely to be the warmest year on record.
• One initiative to come out of the Postcard to Paris event at the Ice House on November 29 was to increase local action to make Harrisonburg more energy efficient and resilient. Toward that end, you might find a new report by the Post Carbon Institute to be helpful. It is entitled Six Foundation for Building Community Resilience.
• The UN’s World Food Programme and Britain’s Met office Hadley Centre have unveiled a website that lets the user control future greenhouse gas emissions and climate adaptation strategies to see their impact on global food security on a country by country basis. Roz Pidcock at Carbon Brief walks you through the website.
• One tactic used by people who do not want to act against climate change is to focus on the uncertainty inherent in any system as complex as the climate system, thereby hoping to make people shrug off the risks. However, uncertainty in the climate system actually increases the inherent risks, making early action even more important, as explained by Stephan Lewandowsky and co-authors in The Guardian. Unfortunately, focusing on the uncertainty is far more effective at making people discount climate change than a variety of framing techniques are at causing them to be concerned.
• During the Eocene, fifty million years ago, Earth was a hot house due to high CO2 concentrations. Until now, the CO2 concentration during the Eocene was thought to be 1,125 ppm, far higher than today’s levels. However, recent evidence from the examination of certain mineral crystals suggests that the CO2 concentration was as low as 680 ppm, a level we could reach by the end of the century if we continue with business as usual. The new data suggest that Earth of more sensitive to CO2 concentrations than previously thought.
• Fueled by the effects of El Niño, torrential rains in Tamil Nadu, a state with nearly 70 million people in southern India, are causing massive flooding. The rains are the heaviest in over a century. Ironically, India, along with Saudi Arabia, quashed efforts by the vulnerable nations to introduce a UN study on the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C rather than 2 degrees, a proposal backed by Germany and France. James Hansen agreed that 2 degrees was too much and called for a rising global price on carbon.
• Readers of The Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg are aware that the editor loves to cite past warming of Earth as evidence that we need not be concerned about current warming. However, as Chris Mooney of The Washington Post points out, “This may be one of the weakest arguments against human-caused climate change.”
• Eight industrialized nations, which have pledged $2 billion a year to the Green Climate Fund to help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change, spend a combined $80 billion a year on subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, according to Oil Change International.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.