Month: October 2016

Grist’s Ben Adler interviewed Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta about her commitment to fighting climate change.

Climate

Its official, September was a very hot month.  NASA has it coming in as the hottest September since record keeping began, but only by 0.004°C, which means it is essentially tied with September 2014.  NOAA, on the other hand, has it coming in second, 0.04°C below September 2015.  Both NASA and NOAA project 2016 to be the hottest year on record.  Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang has interesting comments about the records.  In addition, John Abraham has plotted the projected 2016 surface temperature on a graph showing both global temperatures from the four major data sets and projections from modeling.

Typhoon Haima, with sustained winds at 160 mph, became the fifth super typhoon of 2016 on Tuesday morning.  It made landfall in the Philippines on Wednesday, just days after another major storm, Typhoon Sarika, which was category 4.  Haima is the seventh category-5 equivalent of the year, globally.  Meanwhile, a study published in Nature Geoscience has found that over the past 37 years, typhoons that strike East and Southeast Asia have intensified by 12–15%, with the proportion of storms of categories 4 and 5 having doubled or even tripled.

A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that the global farming sector has a big role to play in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to future climate change.  According to Rob Voss, director of FAO’s Agricultural Development Economics division, “If we continue along the present pathways then we will not be able to [deliver] food security around the world and we will not be able to stabilize the climate.”  In addition, the report states that “meeting the goals of eradicating hunger and poverty by 2030, while addressing the threat of climate change, will require a profound transformation of food and agriculture systems worldwide.”

Prior to a global conference on the world’s cities this week in Quito, Ecuador, the UN declared that the fight against climate change “will be won or lost in cities.”  That is because they are disproportionately responsible for the planet’s emissions. While they cover less than 2% of Earth’s surface, they contain more than half of the world’s population, consume 78% of its energy, and produce 60% of its CO₂ emissions.  Furthermore, it is expected that two-thirds of the global population will reside in cities by 2050.

Elizabeth Kolbert visited Greenland and had this to say in an article in The New Yorker: “In recent years, as global temperatures have risen, the ice sheet has awoken from its postglacial slumber.  Melt streams like the Rio Behar have always formed on the ice; they now appear at higher and higher elevations, earlier and earlier in the spring.  This year’s melt season began so freakishly early, in April, that when the data started to come in, many scientists couldn’t believe it. ‘I had to go check my instruments,’ one told me.  In 2012, melt was recorded at the very top of the ice sheet.  The pace of change has surprised even the modelers.  Just in the past four years, more than a trillion tons of ice have been lost.”

America’s top beef buyers have failed to tackle deforestation in South America despite some companies’ pledges to source “deforestation-free” beef, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Unfortunately, slowing deforestation in Brazil is not an easy task, as evidenced by the recent killing of an environmental official working to stop the practice.

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is second only to New Orleans in its susceptibility to impacts from sea level rise.  For example, according to Climate Central, 56% of sunny day flooding in the area can be attributed to sea level rise.  Those impacts are amplified by subsidence of the ground, due in part to pumping from the aquifer underlying the area.  Ted Henifin, general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, wants to counteract that by pumping treated wastewater into the aquifer to recharge it.  Not surprisingly, there are still several hurdles to be cleared before that can be done.  Speaking of the Hampton Roads area, a pilot study of another sort, the Hampton Roads Intergovernmental Pilot Project, was recently the subject of a meeting at the World Resources Institute.  The items discussed there are applicable to other coastal areas around the U.S.

Energy

Ivy Main has a new blog post in which she lays out the fallacies in Dominion Power’s plans to replace coal-fired power plants with natural gas-fired ones, in spite of the likelihood that they and the infrastructure associated with them will have to be shut down long before they have reached the end of their useful lifetimes.  Her concerns are consistent with provisions in the Clean Power Plan that can allow CO₂ emissions to actually increase over time.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab have discovered a method for converting CO₂ into ethanol, according to a paper in the open-access journal Chemistry Select.  Electricity is the energy source driving the reaction and the scientists have suggested that the reaction could be used as a way to store excess electricity from renewable energy sites.  Much work remains before that can be done, however, although it conforms well with the concepts of the Global CO₂ Initiative.

The Tennessee Valley Authority completed the final power ascension tests and performance measures Wednesday morning to officially declare the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant a commercial power plant.  It is the U.S.’s first new nuclear reactor of the 21st century, but it will likely be the last nuclear plant of its type built in the Tennessee Valley.  For example, at Idaho National Lab plans are underway to build a small modular reactor, which many see as the nuclear reactor of the future.  Meanwhile, in New York a lawsuit seeks to reverse a decision by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to subsidize several struggling nuclear power plants.  Looking to the future, the dream of using fusion, rather than fission, to generate electricity just got a boost from a team at MIT that achieved the highest plasma pressure ever recorded on the last day of operation of their Alcator C-Mod tokamak reactor.

Last week I put in an item reporting that BP was not concerned about increasing penetration of electric cars into the automotive market and the subsequent impact on the demand for oil.  However, on Monday Statoil chief executive Eldar Saetre was much more pessimistic, telling an audience of industry executives that he expects oil demand to peak in the 2020s.  Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil, on the other hand, expects global demand for energy to grow 25% over the next 25 years.  In addition, according to Fitch Ratings, batteries have the potential to “tip the oil market from growth to contraction earlier than anticipated.”  Nevertheless, many slimmed down “big oil” companies are poised to make money when crude oil prices increase.

Wind power is having a big impact on the European electricity system, with rapid expansion of both on-shore and off-shore wind farms.  In part, this has been driven by advances in turbine technology, with current off-shore turbines having a capacity of 8 MW, compared to 2 MW just a few years ago.  The main limitation on wind energy is an inadequate grid to transfer the electricity generated to the places where it is needed.  Since the U.S. is far behind Europe in deploying wind farms, perhaps we will be able to learn from the problems they have faced.

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project is attempting to drill down 5 km (3 miles) to tap the energy from supercritical steam that has been formed when intruding sea water contacts magma in an extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  A well that can successfully tap into such steam could have an energy capacity of 50 MW, compared to the 5 MW of a typical geothermal well.

Scotland is moving forward with the world’s first large-scale tidal energy facility, which will be off the northernmost tip of Scotland, in an area called the Pentland Firth.  The project promises to provide carbon-free electricity with much greater predictability than is possible with wind turbines and is being built in phases, with the first four turbines expected to be in place by the end of this year.

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.

It has been said that no problem or movement will ever be recognized by the bulk of the population until the artists get involved.  The musical expression of climate change was expanded by the composition of Concert Climat by jazz pianist and composer Joseph Makholm, which premiered in part during the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) late last year. You can learn more about it here.  And on the subject of art and climate change, tech guru and programming analyst Andy Lee Robinson has produced an animated graphic of Arctic sea ice loss, accompanied by a piano composition of his own.

Climate

Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases were developed as refrigerants to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), refrigerants that were destroying the ozone layer.  While HFCs have little impact on the ozone layer, it turns out that they are very powerful greenhouse gases, being as much as 10,000 times more powerful than CO₂.  Consequently, there is now a need to replace them.  Toward that end, nearly 200 nations have agreed to a legally-binding pact, built on the 1987 Montreal Protocol, to eliminate HFCs in a stepwise manner over the next several years.  Sophie Yeo at Carbon Brief explains why this matters.

There are two types of data sets used to assess whether and how much Earth is warming: instrumental surface measurements and mid-troposphere measurements made by satellite.  Those two types of data sets have not been in close agreement for the past 20 years, with satellite data showing less warming, and this has been capitalized on by those who argue against the existence human-caused climate change.  Now, a new paper in the Journal of Climate has found that after necessary corrections are made to the satellite data sets, the two types of temperature records are in much better agreement.

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, links an increase in forest fire damage in the western U.S. to man-made climate change.  According to the authors, “···human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence.”

A couple of weeks ago I provided a link to climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe’s videos called Global Weirding, which illustrate why she is considered to be such a good communicator with the public about climate change.  Well this week, following her appearance at the White House with President Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio, John Schwartz of The New York Times profiles her.  He provides a few insights into good climate communication that we could all benefit from.  And speaking of good communication, John Abraham gives a shout-out to the new book, Caring for Creation, by Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox, the latter of whom many of you will recognize because of his tireless work as leader of the Evangelical Environmental Network.  Finally, if you have been struggling with what to do, perhaps Bill McKibben’s advice will be helpful.

On Oct. 23 of last year, Hurricane Patricia, south of Mexico, briefly attained a wind speed intensity of 213 miles per hour, making it the strongest hurricane since 1960, when wind speed estimates were not as accurate.  Now a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters examines the factors that likely contributed to the extreme intensity.  Last week I included articles about Hurricane Matthew, but the rains from it have caused extensive flooding in North and South Carolina this week.  That flooding has resulted in additional deaths, as well as extensive property damage and untold human and animal suffering.  Matthew’s devastation of Haiti is an example of what climate experts see as the disproportionate burden that global warming can have on poor, unprepared communities.  Finally, speaking of flooding caused by tropical storms and hurricanes, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science has found that under a moderate emissions scenario, rising sea levels and changing tropical storms mean that Sandy-like floods could occur as often as every 23 years.  Of course, we’re currently on a path of much higher emissions than this scenario.

South Florida is on the front lines of sea level change and is being forced to adapt.  Many people there “get it” and are working on adaptation.  Maybe the things they are doing will lead the way for other coastal communities in their adaptation efforts.

Two recent studies in Geophysical Research Letters examine the linkage between surface melting, which forms supraglacial lakes, and the drainage of those lakes, which forms underwater plumes.  An author of one of the papers had this to say about the linkage: “I think this is a potential feedback.  The more melt we have on the Greenland ice sheet, the more water drains down to the bed, the plumes are more vigorous, and they’re going to draw in more ocean water and transport heat to the ice. This is a direct ocean feedback that’s really going to amplify as there’s more melting on the ice sheet.”

Energy

The total energy consumed by industrialized nations peaked in 2007, and has completely decoupled from their economic growth, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported Monday.  This is due to improvements in energy efficiency, which are now providing $540 billion a year in energy cost savings for IEA-tracked countries.  Also according to the IEA, energy intensity, which measures the amount of fuel consumed per unit of GDP, fell 1.8% last year, triple the average rate over the past decade and more than the 1.5% reduction in 2014.  Meanwhile, the World Energy Council has predicted that global demand for energy per capita will peak in 2030, thanks to new technology and stricter government policies.

Oil company BP is not worried about electric cars decreasing the demand for oil.  The clean-energy research unit of Bloomberg LP estimates that electric cars will displace 13 million barrels of oil a day by 2040.  However, BP projects oil demand will increase by about 20 million barrels a day over the next 20 years, with about a quarter of supply going to passenger cars.  BP thinks electric cars will have a bigger impact from 30 to 50 years into the future.  On the other hand, the number of electric cars on the world’s roads is set to pass the 2 million mark by the end of 2016, with China leading the way, followed by Europe and the U.S.  Finally, every new or refurbished house in Europe will need to be equipped with an electric vehicle recharging point, under a draft EU directive expected to come into effect by 2019.

Carbon capture received a boost this week with the announcement by Anglo-Indian firm Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL) that they have been operating their system at 97% efficiency on a 10 MW power plant in India at a cost of $27 per ton of carbon captured.  Other systems have achieved lower efficiencies at costs 2 to 3 times higher.  The secret lies in a new solvent developed by CCSL.  The World Coal Association said the news was “genuinely very exciting.”  True.  We should all hope that it works out as claimed because scientists are concerned that current carbon capture technologies are insufficient to allow negative emission technologies to be employed to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere after we overshoot the 2°C goal.

Major investors have warned automobile manufacturers that they must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars if they wish to retain the investors’ support.  The demands come in a new report published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.  In a similar vein, the Union of Concerned Scientists has released a methodical review of the world’s major fossil fuel producers that documents their poor performance in taking responsibility for their emissions of greenhouse gases and moving effectively to confront climate change.

Global wind capacity is set to hit 500GW by the end of 2016, accounting for around 5% of global power demand, according to the World Wind Energy Association.  On the other hand, global investment in clean energy fell to the lowest level in more than 3 years, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  Third-quarter spending in 2016 totaled about $42.4 billion, down 43% from the same period last year.

According to a filing on Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to undertake a “proper” analysis of climate change in its final environmental impact statement for the 160-mile Leach Xpress natural gas pipeline

Buildings consume more energy than industry and transportation, even though the public seldom thinks about them as a source of greenhouse gases.  However, lots of folk in Colorado have thought about buildings’ connection to climate change and are acting to lower buildings’ contribution.  This blog post from Rocky Mountain Institute gives several examples of low-energy-use buildings.

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 big news this week is that sufficient countries have signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement to allow it to go into force, which will happen Nov. 4.  CarbonBrief has an explanation of what that implies. President Obama hailed the milestone as “historic”, but House Speaker Ryan said it “would be disastrous for the American economy.”  Presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” the agreement if he is elected.  Writing in Fortune, David Z. Morris presents three options whereby Trump could stop U.S. participation.  Because of the threat that poses, climate scientist Michael Mann has written about “the irreparable harm that would be done by a climate change-denying, anti-science-driven Trump presidency.”

Climate

The Pew Research Center has released the results of a new poll on the views of the American public on climate change.  While some of the findings were not surprising, what really startled me was the low regard and deep distrust with which many view climate scientists.  Nevertheless, one thing the public was united on is support for more wind and solar power.  Solar Pulse, a Denver-based energy company, found that over the past five years Californians in Republican leaning areas were more likely to buy solar panels for their homes than those in Democratic areas.  In a display of bipartisanship, Representatives John Delaney (D-MD) and Chris Gibson (R-NY) have introduced the Delaney-Gibson Climate Solutions Commission Act (H.R. 6240), which would bring together the two political parties to create a 10-member commission to find agreement and create action on climate change.  Finally, if you have been struggling with what you can do help fight climate change, perhaps a letter to a loved one in the future will help clarify your thinking and move you to action.  That is the premise behind DearTomorrow, a nascent project that’s archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family.

As Hurricane Matthew leaves the Caribbean and impacts the southeastern U.S. Joe Romm lays out the evidence that it has been made more severe by climate change.  However, as Chris Mooney of The Washington Post points out: “So in sum — even as people will inevitably invoke climate change to discuss Matthew, any precise attribution remains complex and the science isn’t settled on precisely what is happening with hurricanes in the Atlantic.  Still we’re living in a warming world with more moisture and higher seas, and it’s hard to dispute that that matters.”

A new report released on Thursday documents that three-quarters of 276 U.S. National Parks are experiencing an earlier onset of spring.  Half of the parks studied are experiencing “extreme” early springs.

According to a new study, published in Science Advances, without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the likelihood that the American southwest will have a megadrought (> 35 years duration) this century is 99%.  However, keeping global temperature rise to no more than 2°C would cut this risk by half.  Meanwhile, as the drought continues in California, water conservation is declining.

James Hansen (and a group of 11 coauthors) has again published a manuscript in an open discussion journal, Earth System Dynamics Discussion, where it can be reviewed until November 15, 2016.  As with the previous paper published in this way, some have reacted critically, particularly because the manuscript was developed in support of a lawsuit by Hansen and a group of young people seeking to force more ambitious climate action.  The paper concludes that “Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both···.”

Energy

A new study, published in the journal Nature, has both good news and bad news about methane emissions to the atmosphere.  The bad news is that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are 20-60% greater than had been thought.  The good news is that anthropogenic methane emissions have fallen as a fraction of production, from 8% in the mid-1980s to around 2% in the late 2000s and early 2010s.  In addition, the study found that methane emissions from fossil fuel activities accounted for less than half of the total.

While many have cheered the decline in the use of coal for power generation because of high CO₂ emissions, coal is still very much in demand globally.  In fact, Reuters says that “talk of coal’s demise is proving premature, with prices soaring from 10-year lows this year and further rises on the cards into 2017 as the ‘dirty’ fuel continues to be very much in demand for power generation”. It adds that “following half a decade of steady decline, thermal coal physical and futures prices have all rallied between 50% and 80% this year, taking many in the industry by surprise.”  Nevertheless, Anders Runevad, CEO and Group President of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, thinks that the future belongs to renewables, although some question whether the European wind industry is being driven to unrealistically low prices because of intense competition.

On Monday Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced to the House of Commons that Ottawa will impose a $7.62 per metric ton minimum tax on carbon commencing in 2018, which will rise by $7.62 each year until it reaches $38.11 per metric ton in 2022.  Unsurprisingly, this announcement met with a range of reactions from the various provinces.  Across the border, in Washington State, a ballot initiative to enact a revenue neutral carbon tax is meeting opposition from a surprising quarter.  The story is a precautionary tale for those proposing carbon taxes.

The Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club organized a press conference on Tuesday morning where a diverse group of community leaders voiced concerns about the increase in CO₂ emissions proposed in Dominion Virginia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).  The Sierra Club is participating in the State Corporation Commission’s proceedings on Dominion’s IRP.  Meanwhile, in a letter dated Wednesday (Oct. 5), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects approved construction of Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. LLC’s (Transco) Virginia Southside Expansion Project II, which would serve the needs of Dominion Virginia Power to fuel a new 1,580 MW power plant it plans to build in Greensville County, VA.

International aviation is currently responsible for about 2% of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.  Thus, it is significant that on Thursday governments from more than 190 countries adopted a measure that could force air carriers to take major steps to improve the fuel economy in their routes and fleets.  The accord will take effect in 2021.  It was necessary because international aviation was not covered by the Paris Climate Agreement.  Both critics and supporters of the measure noted that much work remains to be done before the agreement is put into effect.

According to a new report issued by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, “the investment choices we make even over the next two to three years will start to lock in for decades to come either a climate-smart, inclusive growth pathway, or a high-carbon, inefficient and unsustainable pathway.”  It also said that the subsidies paid to support fossil fuels, amounting to $550 billion worldwide in 2014, represent “fundamental price distortions” in the market place and must be phased out by 2025 at the latest.

The Petra Nova carbon capture system, under construction at a coal-fired power plant southwest of Houston, will go online before the end of the year.  It will be the largest post-combustion carbon capture system installed on an existing power plant in the world.  The CO₂ captured will be used for enhanced oil recovery.  In addition, Norway will invest $45m in research for CO₂ capture and storage technology for three industrial plants: a cement factory, an ammonia plant, and a waste incinerator.

According to EPA data released on Tuesday, CO₂ emissions from power plants declined 6.2% last year relative to 2014.  In addition, emissions from large industrial sources dropped 4.9%.

A study published in the journal Energy Policy argues that when the “fuel rebound effect” is properly accounted for, 3 gallons of corn-derived ethanol must be burned to avoid burning one gallon of petroleum-derived gasoline.  The findings led the researchers to conclude that America’s renewable fuel standard “actually leads to a net increase” in greenhouse gas emissions.

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.