Month: March 2017

The House Science Committee, chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) will hold a hearing next week entitled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method.”  The Republican witnesses at the hearing will be Judith Curry, John Christy, and Roger Pielke Jr, whereas the lone Democratic witness will be Michael Mann.  Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s 12th annual International Conference on Climate Change, Smith said: “Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists.” Also at the conference, speakers who had been on President Trump’s transition team emphasized the need to revoke the 2009 finding that CO₂ endangers public health.  On Tuesday, a White House official said that the Trump administration is not considering a carbon tax, such as that proposed by the Climate Leadership Council six weeks ago.  However, the tax’s very proposal set off a fierce debate within the White House and has emboldened Republicans concerned about climate change.  One reason a carbon tax is not popular at the White House is that it doesn’t fit into the administrations “America First Energy Plan,” which aims to take advantage of domestic fossil fuel resources.  This week, Jeremy Proville and Jonathan Camuzeaux of the Environmental Defense Fund examined the claimed value of those resources.  Another aspect of the Trump energy plan is deregulation, yet Reuters reported that the major oil and gas companies have been telling shareholders that regulations have little impact on their business.  On Friday of last week, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney asserted that studying climate change is a “waste of your money.”  This Friday, the State Department signed and issued a presidential permit to construct the Keystone XL pipeline.

Perhaps the one good thing to come out of the anti-environmental stance of the Trump administration is that it has united the environmental movement in a major way.  For example, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said he has never seen so much collaboration and coordination among environmentalists.  A new study by Media Matters revealed that during 2016, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox spent a combined total of 50 minutes on climate change, “[a]nd none of them aired a single segment on the effect a Trump or Clinton presidency would have on the climate — until after the election.”  On the other hand, in response to the Trump administration’s anti-climate stance, both The Washington Post and The New York Times have increased their coverage of climate news.

Climate

The World Meteorological Organization issued its annual statement on the State of the Global Climate on Tuesday, noting that several records were broken, pushing the world into “truly uncharted territory.”  The trend of broken records has continued this year with sea ice experiencing the smallest winter maximum extent in the Arctic and the smallest summer minimum extent in the Antarctic.  On the subject of ice, Yale Climate Connections’ “This Is Not Cool” video for this month is about the impacts of soot and algal growth on the melting of ice in Greenland.

A paper in the journal Nature Geoscience links the drop in the level of groundwater in India to the impacts of climate change on monsoons.  This drop is having significant consequences to people in rural India.  To get an idea of just how severe the problem is for southern India, look at this rainfall map prepared by NOAA that shows the deviation from the long-term average.  India is the region on the left.  To translate, 1 inch = 25.4 mm, or 500 mm = almost 20 inches of rain that some regions have lost in just a six month period.

China’s State Oceanic Administration reported on Wednesday that average coastal sea levels in 2016 were up 1.5 inches compared to the previous year, and saw record-breaking highs in the months of April, September, November, and December.  Historically, since 1980, sea level along China’s coast has risen at an average rate of 1/8 inch per year, so last year’s increase was extraordinary.  Rising sea level is of increasing concern to coastal cities everywhere.  Here in the U.S., cities are taking different approaches, as documented in these articles about Atlantic City, Miami Beach, and New Orleans.

The Gulf of Mexico has been really warm this winter, as have the towns and cities around it.  Given the right conditions, this could cause a larger number of severe thunderstorms in the southern and central parts of the U.S. this spring.  Further south, an extremely warm Pacific Ocean off the western coast of South America is contributing to severe rainfall and flooding in Peru.

In a report released Wednesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council said that U.S. per capita beef consumption fell by 19% from 2005 to 2014, equivalent to removing 39 million cars from U.S. roads.  The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association disputed the findings.

Citing climate change as a factor contributing to the decline of the rusty patch bumblebee, the Department of Interior placed the bee on the Endangered Species List, the first bee so designated.

Energy

Take a break from all the heavy news about climate and energy and read about stained glass artist Sarah Hall who incorporates solar cells into her architectural creations.  Be sure to watch the video in full screen at the end.

Frustrated with the vagueness of the Paris Climate Agreement on how to keep global warming below 2°C, a group of European researchers has prepared a concrete pathway and published it in the journal Science.  Dubbed the “carbon law”, by analogy with “Moore’s law” for transistors, it calls for a halving of CO₂ emissions from energy and industry each decade, and imposes a stiff carbon tax globally.  The lead author of the study told Brad Plumer of Vox, “It’s way more than adding solar or wind.  It’s rapid decarbonization, plus a revolution in food production, plus a sustainability revolution, plus a massive engineering scale-up [for carbon removal].”  The idea was presented to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in New York on Friday.  It is interesting that this week Martin Boucher and Philip Loring argued that climate change is not, fundamentally, a technological problem.  Rather, it requires “solutions that emphasize place-based, social and behavioral innovations.”  On a more practical level, the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency issued a new report that sets out the “essential elements” needed to transition the energy sector in a manner consistent with the Paris Agreement.  However, the two agencies weren’t in total agreement, causing them to issue separate press releases.

The lead article in the business section of the print edition of The Washington Post on Sunday was on U.S. coal in the age of Trump.  The conclusion was that the prospects for jobs are weak.  UK-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit examined coal usage in China and India.  Indeed, coal use is declining worldwide.  According to a report released by Coalswarm, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, from Jan. 2016 to Jan. 2017, the number of announced coal projects dropped from nearly 500,000 to fewer than 250,000 and the number of coal projects on hold jumped from 230,000 to more than 600,000.  Adding to the problems here at home, Moody’s Investor Services, has stated that some 56 GW of Midwest coal-fired generation are at risk because of lower-cost wind energy.

In the U.S., during the past seven years, the price of utility-scale solar has dropped 85%, fueling strong growth in the technology.  Writing on Yale Environment 360, Cheryl Katz provided an update on the status of large-scale solar technology.  An article in the journal Nature Energy revealed that Japanese scientists have developed a solar cell with the highest efficiency ever attained, although it is not yet ready for commercial application.  As further evidence for continued growth of solar in regions of the U.S. where sunlight is limited in winter, GE is developing more than 17MW in projects across six states in the northeastern U.S.

Energy efficiency mandates are under review in at least two states, Ohio and Kentucky.  It appears that regulators are concerned about declining income for energy companies and wonder why they should require them to invest in energy efficiency when energy demand is declining.  Meanwhile, at the federal level, the Trump administration plans to eliminate the Weatherization Assistance Program, a grant program in the Department of Energy that helps states improve the energy efficiency of the homes of low-income families.  The Energy Star program is also slated for elimination, but dozens of companies and organizations have come to its defense.  In spite of a negative attitude about energy efficiency in the new administration, two RMI authors argue that the federal government can significantly reduce its operating costs by focusing on the energy efficiency of its facilities.

A paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, described a collaborative effort among Colorado scientists, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Google’s Street View program to reveal leaks in urban natural gas pipelines, thereby helping utilities decrease methane leaks.

While the children’s lawsuit in the state of Oregon has gotten more press, another children’s lawsuit in Colorado just resulted in a victory for the children in that state’s Court of Appeals.  The ruling elevated protection of public health and the environment to “a condition that must be fulfilled” by the state before oil and gas drilling can be done.

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.

Political news continues unabated.  The President unveiled his budget proposal for 2018.  Luckily, this is more of a philosophical statement than a concrete budget proposal because it is a disaster for science at all levels, as can be seen in this departmental-level summary.  Commentary can be found in the following for EPA, NOAA, NASA, and DOE.  The Washington Post had a summary of all climate-related cuts while Climate Central analyzed the impacts on energy programs and Bloomberg Politics documented all of the independent agencies and programs that would be eliminated.  Finally, Science presented reactions from a number of sources.  As you read about the budget, remember that Congress controls the purse strings.  Last week I linked to an article about former staff of Senator James Inhofe joining Scott Pruitt’s staff at EPA.  This week, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis had more information about that in The Washington Post.  Meanwhile, according to Reuters, the Trump administration has been contacting U.S. energy companies to ask them about their views on the Paris Climate Accord.  In addition, President Trump vowed to reopen the review of the 2025 CAFE standards for autos and light trucks while meeting with auto executives in Detroit.  Earlier in the week, the auto industry filed suit against the EPA to overturn their final determination last year on the standards.  Nevertheless, the leaders of two dozen Fortune 500 companies and roughly 1,000 others signed a letter addressed to Trump and Congress stating that “Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk” and scientists pushed back hard against the statements by Scott Pruitt about climate change.

On Wednesday, 17 House Republicans introduced a resolution that acknowledges the negative impacts of climate change and calls on the House to work on solutions for mitigation and adaptation.  You can read the resolution here.

Climate

An important news article came out during the evening of March 9, but I missed it and didn’t include it last week.  Unfortunately, it is disturbing news; the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is undergoing another significant bleaching episode, which is unprecedented and could lead to widespread death of the coral.  As a consequence, a week-long survey of the entire reef is being done this week to better assess the extent of the current bleaching event.  Robert McSweeney at Carbon Brief has a good retrospective of the previous three bleaching events.  Also, this week the results of a study by an international team of scientists of prior bleaching was published in the journal Nature.  It concludes that the only way to save the reef is to stop global warming.  As if the coral bleaching wasn’t enough, Australia has also suffered from a massive die-off of mangrove forests, making their coastline more susceptible to erosion.

According to a new paper in the journal Science Advances, the extreme air pollution over Chinese cities is not just due to local emissions from their coal-fired power plants.  It is also due to climate change, which is causing Arctic sea ice to melt and snow falls to increase over Siberia, thereby altering winter weather patterns and making periods of stagnant air more common, trapping the air pollution.

Eleven national medical organizations have banded together to form the Medical Society Consortium on Climate Health to help accelerate the transition to a clean energy society.  Because doctors are seeing first-hand the impacts of climate change on people’s health, they thought it was important for them to speak out on the issue.  You can download their report here.  In addition to our physical health, climate change also impacts our mental health, as documented in this piece.

NOAA has announced that for the second year in a row, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have increased at a rate of 3 ppm/year, bringing the level to about 405 ppm.  The rate of increase is the highest ever recorded.  Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency announced that global energy-associated CO₂ emissions were constant for the third year in a row.

One side effect of a more global economy is a greater role for aviation, from rapid transport of critical products to increased tourist travel.  Many passengers have been concerned about the carbon footprint of their air travel, causing them to buy offsets for the emitted CO₂.  A bigger problem, however, lies in the other emissions, which can have an impact on climate change several times greater than that of CO₂.  Jocelyn Timperley has provided an “explainer” about those emissions at Carbon Brief.  Meanwhile, a new paper in the journal Nature reports that during cruise conditions jet aircraft burning a 50:50 blend of traditional jet fuel and biofuel produced 50–70% fewer particles, which are part of the “other emissions” problem.

A new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that between 30 and 50% of the decline in summer sea ice in the Arctic since 1979 may be due to natural processes, with the remainder (50 to 70%) due directly to human-caused global warming.  The natural process of most importance is the air circulation over the Arctic, which helps distribute the heat associated with increased greenhouse gases.

Energy

Another example of innovation in energy storage comes from Germany where the state of North-Rhine Westphalia will turn the Prosper-Haniel coal mine into a 200 MW pumped-storage hydroelectric facility when it closes in 2018.  They will build a water reservoir on the surface above the mine.  When wind turbines and solar farms cannot produce enough electricity to meet demand, water will flow from the reservoir down shafts to a depth of 3,300 ft where it will turn turbines to generate the needed power before flowing into old mine tunnels.  Then when the wind turbines and solar farms are producing more electricity than needed, the excess will be used to pump the water back to the surface.  Would this work in southwestern Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and other Appalachian states?  Speaking of energy storage, will Tesla solve South Australia’s energy crisis with 100 MW of batteries?

The American Wind Energy Association in partnership with Navigant Consulting has issued a report examining the impacts of wind energy on the U.S. economy.  At the end of 2016 the wind industry had an installed capacity of over 82,000 MW and is expected to install another 35,000 MW and drive $85 billion in economic activity over the next four years.  Avangrid Renewables, the Spanish energy conglomerate that was the developer and operator of the Amazon Wind Farm in North Carolina, has won the lease to build an off-shore wind farm 24 to 49 miles off the coast of North Carolina near Kitty Hawk.

The mayors of thirty cities jointly asked automakers for the cost and feasibility of providing 114,000 electric vehicles for a variety of applications from police cruisers to street sweepers.  The intent is to provide electric vehicle manufacturers with reliable demand in the face of Trump administration policies.  Meanwhile, a quiet battle is going on at the state level over incentives for buying an electric vehicle and China is considering decreasing its quotas for electric vehicles required of its domestic car manufacturers.

U.S. rooftop solar installations increased 19% in 2016, which looks good until you consider that the average growth rate year-over-year from 2012 to 2015 was 63%.  Several factors were responsible for the decline, but the national solar association expects to see continued growth in both utility-scale and rooftop solar installations.  One driver of demand for both wind and solar is expected to be power purchase agreements with corporate users, according to Moody’s Investors Service.  On the subject of solar, a new study from the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative, called Consumer Driven Technologies, found that 80% of survey respondents were willing to forgo net metering provided the excess electricity they produced from their residential solar PV system went to their communities to provide clean energy for everyone.  Unfortunately, in India the promise of solar power has not been met as attempts at using distributed electricity in rural villages via solar panels and batteries have fallen prey to theft and equipment failure.

President Trump’s budget proposal includes funds to restart the licensing for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, although Nevada lawmakers pledge fierce opposition to it.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology examined methane leakage from gas-fired power plants and refineries.  It found that methane leakage was 2-120 times higher for power plants and 11-90 times higher for refineries than calculated from data provided by facility operators.

On several occasions, I have provided links to articles about the difficulty developers of electrical transmission lines are having acquiring right-of-way for their projects.  This is essentially stranding renewable energy generated in the west or Midwest, preventing it from getting to markets in the east, where it is needed.  Now a new proposal to rejuvenate and electrify rail lines in the U.S. has as one component the use of the rail corridors as routes for electrical transmission lines.  The entire proposal is called Solutionary Rail.

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.

Each week, while putting the Roundup together, I try to include as much positive news as I can, even though there always seems to be far more negative news.  Please don’t let that get you down.  On Friday evening as I was reading The Book of Joy, which is Douglas Abrams’ account of an extended conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I came across this passage, and I offer it as a kind of antidote to the negative.  The Dalai Lama said “When bad things happen they become news… Then we can feel that there is not much hope for our future… All these things happen, but they are unusual, which is why they become news.”  He then talks about good things that happen and continues “But this is so common that none of it becomes news… When we look at the news, we must keep this more holistic view… We must have a sense of proportion and a wider perspective.  Then we will not feel despair when we see these sad things.”  You are also invited to the monthly meeting of the CAAV-sponsored Apocaloptimists on the last Tuesday of each month at the Harrisonburg Mennonite Church at 7:00 pm.

On Thursday morning, speaking on CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made one of his strongest statements yet rejecting the science of human-caused climate change, a statement that is in direct opposition to information on EPA’s own website.  The Editorial Board of The Washington Post responded to Pruitt’s comments in a strong editorial and his office was deluged with phone calls.  He also questioned whether EPA has the authority to regulate CO₂.  Speaking of Pruitt, last week I mentioned that he had named Ryan Jackson, a former staff member of Senator James Inhofe, as his chief of staff.  He has also named other Inhofe staff members to his staff.  Byron Brown, will serve as Jackson’s deputy.  Andrew Wheeler, is a finalist to be Pruitt’s deputy, but requires Senate confirmation.  You can go here for a list of proposed cuts to the EPA budget and to Inside Climate News for an analysis of their impacts.  Also, The Washington Post had an analysis of the impact of the proposed cuts to NOAA’s budget on coastal communities.  Since the election, activists have been archiving climate and other scientific data from government websites, but this has turned out to be a more difficult task than originally thought.  On the international scene, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reports that the finance ministers of the G20 nations may scale back the funding pledges of their nations made under the Paris Climate Accord.

It has been said that the public only begins to understand a problem after the arts become involved.  Well, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson has been doing his part to move that along.  First it was with his Science in the Capital trilogy, which brings the impacts of climate change to Washington, DC.  Now it is New York 2140, which takes place in New York City after sea level has risen 50 ft.  It will be out March 14.

Climate

The young people’s lawsuit against the federal government about climate change was back in the news this week.  The Trump Administration filed a motion to overturn a ruling by a federal judge in November that cleared the lawsuit for trial and filed a separate motion to delay trial preparation until that appeal is considered.  Meanwhile, in South Africa the government lost its first climate change lawsuit when the country’s highest court ruled against its plans to build a coal-fired power plant.

NOAA announced on Wednesday that February was the second warmest on record in the U.S., trailing only February 1954 by 0.2°F.  The average temperature was 41.5°F, over 7°F above normal.  East of the Rocky Mountains, it was the warmest February ever recorded.  A study by World Weather Attribution found that thanks to climate change, the warm February was at least three times more likely now than it was 120 years ago.  Furthermore, around 1900, this type of persistent heat was a 1-in-160 year event, whereas today it is a 1-in-12 year event.  The New York Times has some very interesting graphics.

An important new study was published in Science Advances on Friday documenting the heat uptake by the oceans using the extensive data from the Argo float program.  The results showed that the world’s oceans have taken up around 13% more heat than had been estimated previously.  They also showed that heat uptake was not uniform, with 59% being stored in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans, even though they make up less than 50% of the ocean area.

For some time now, a favorite meme among those not concerned about climate change is that it will be beneficial to humankind by increasing agricultural productivity.  Well, a 26-year study by the Australian national science organization CSIRO has challenged that claim.  Rather, the researchers found that while wheat growers made significant productivity gains over the study, they were off-set by the negative effects of climate change, so that yields stayed constant.  On a similar note, many have claimed that higher atmospheric CO₂ levels will lead to more carbon storage due to greening of the planet.  That may well be true, if all other nutrients are supplied in excess, but a new study published in Nature Climate Change has found that in phosphorus-limited soils (which are common in the tropics and subtropics) forests will store around 10% less carbon than expected.

A new paper in the journal Nature Communications reports that by 2030, if CO₂ emissions continue unabated, over half of the world’s ocean will be exposed to more than one source of stress, affecting everything from plants to whales.  By 2050, that figure rises to around 86% of the ocean.  This does not bode well for the large percent of Earth’s population that depends on the oceans for its protein.

In a news release on Tuesday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which tracks sea ice trends, warned that further losses of satellite capabilities may cause sea ice observations to be compromised until 2023.  A study in Nature Climate Change has found that a 2°C rise in global mean temperature would lead to a 39% risk that ice will disappear from the Arctic Ocean in summers, although it is almost certain to survive with just 1.5°C of warming.

Energy

This one is very intriguing, but as an environmental engineer who worked with microorganisms in a variety of municipal and industrial applications, I’d like to see a complete energy and carbon balance before I fully buy in.  Nevertheless, the idea of using bacteria, instead of cement with its high carbon footprint, to bind aggregate together into “concrete” bricks is a really interesting one.  Meanwhile, Swiss researchers have shown that ceramic materials can be made without heating by starting with nanoscale calcium carbonate powder and applying pressure.  Let’s hope they both pan out because their potential benefits are great.

In an article on Yale Climate Connections, Bruce Lieberman argues that no matter what President Trump does, the long-term outlook for employment in the coal industry looks bleak.  Market forces are just too strong in other directions.  Coal use in the UK dropped 52% in 2016 due to both market forces and a carbon tax, while CO₂ emissions declined by 6%, according to a report published last Friday by Carbon Brief.

Tesla Inc. has completed a solar project on the island of Kauai in Hawaii that incorporates batteries so that the utility can sell solar power in the evening, as well as during the day.  This will displace 1.6 million gallons of diesel fuel per year that is currently used to power generators to provide power at night.  On the subject of solar, GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association announced that the U.S. solar market is expected to nearly triple in size over the next five years.  In addition, worldwide, 76 GW of solar power was installed in 2016, up from 50 GW in 2015.  Globally there is now 305GW of solar power capacity.

The costs of off-shore wind continue to drop in Europe, making it much more competitive in the energy market place.  According to Bloomberg, the price of building an offshore wind farm has fallen 46% in the last five years, and 22% last year alone.  That, plus the entry of Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil ASA, and other oil and gas giants, with their experience building structures at sea, into the business suggests that even the U.S. will see expanded off-shore wind development.

Alaskan villages are employing on-shore wind turbines connected to microgrids to supply their electricity at lower costs than the diesel generators they used to use.  The lessons learned could be helpful to remote villages everywhere.  Also, surprisingly, Georgetown, TX, in the heart of oil and gas country, is one of the first U.S. cities to be powered entirely by renewable energy.

All but 10% of Royal Dutch Shell’s oil-sands interests will be sold to Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.  Shell will continue to operate the Scotford upgrader, which converts heavy oil to lighter liquids for easier transport, and the Quest carbon capture and storage project.  Shell also announced that progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from its refineries and chemical plants will determine 10% of executives’ bonuses.  Meanwhile, Shell’s CEO has said that the oil and gas industry risks losing public support if progress is not made in the transition to cleaner energy.

In earlier Weekly Roundups I had linked to articles about auto executives asking the Trump Administration to roll back the 2025 fuel efficiency standards.  Now, 12 Senate Democrats have said that it is “critical” that the rules be left in place.  In addition, Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and counselor to Former President Obama on energy and climate change in 2009-10, has provided background about the standards and laid out arguments for their retention.

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.

Ryan Jackson, who worked for the Senator James Inhofe (R, OK) for more than a decade and was staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has been hired as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s chief of staff.  The Trump administration’s 2018 budget blueprint calls for deep cuts in the EPA budget that would reduce the agency’s staff by one-fifth in the first year and eliminate dozens of programs, according to details of a plan reviewed by The Washington Post.  Climate change initiatives are among the programs to be eliminated entirely.  The budget blueprint also calls for a decrease in NOAA’s budget, with steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs.  According to The New York Times, the White House is “fiercely divided” over president Trump’s pledge to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.  Steve Bannon is urging Trump to pull out, but is being opposed by secretary of state Rex Tillerson, the president’s daughter Ivanka and a “slew of foreign policy advisers and career diplomats”.  On Wednesday the Senate confirmed Ryan Zinke’s nomination to lead the Interior Department by a 68 to 31 vote.  On Thursday they voted 62 to 37 to confirm Rick Perry as energy secretary.

Climate

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication has a released a new version of their Climate Opinion Maps.  These maps are really interesting because they allow you to look at opinion data at the county and city level.  They also provide information at the congressional district level, which clarifies why your representative responds as he/she does.

You may recall that a few weeks back I included links about the “social cost of carbon” (SCC), the parameter that would be used to put a price on carbon should we decide to do so.  Well, on Tuesday, the Subcommittee on Environment and Subcommittee on Oversight of the House Science Committee held a hearing to examine the SCC.  Joseph Majkut, Director of Climate Science at the Niskanen Center, a Libertarian think tank that is concerned about climate change, wrote a very interesting analysis on the Center’s climate blog of the issues involved in determining an appropriate value for the SCC.  Dana Nuccitelli of Skeptical Science also had thoughts about estimating the SCC.

The Australian state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, Australia’s largest city, has experienced the hottest summer on record, with temperatures of 118.7°F on February 11-12.  Analysis by a team from World Weather Attribution and the University of New South Wales found the record average heat was 50 times more likely because of climate change.  In addition, such heat would have occurred once every 500 years in the past, but now can be expected to occur once every 50 years.  And speaking of a warmer world, a new paper in Nature Climate Change reports that snow will melt more slowly.  This, in turn, will have serious consequences for water availability in areas that rely heavily on the snowpack as a water source.  Finally, Amanda Paulson at CSM Inhabit presented six questions (and answers) about how climate influences weather.

Although it will be short while before data analysis is complete, it appears almost certain that the minimum summer sea ice extent around Antarctica will reach a record low this year.  Meanwhile, verification and analysis of Antarctic temperatures during 2015 are now complete, revealing that March 24 of that year set a new record high of 63.5°F at an Argentine research base near the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

Climate Central has completed an analysis of meteorological winter 2016-2017 (Dec., Jan., and Feb.), which is now over, and has found that 84% of 1500+ weather stations studied experienced a warmer than average winter, whereas 16% experienced a cooler than average winter.  Furthermore, 8% of the weather stations reported the hottest winter on record, while 0.4% reported the coldest.  Andrew Freedman at Mashable addressed the question of why it has been so warm.  The warm winter has led to an early spring in many parts of the U.S.  The National Phenology Network, is cooperation with USGS, has a set of maps, updated daily, showing how early spring has arrived in each state this year.

Burger King has been buying animal feed produced in soy plantations formed  by burning tropical forests in Brazil and Bolivia, according to a new report by Mighty Earth, which says that evidence gathered from aerial drones, satellite imaging, supply-chain mapping, and field research shows a systematic pattern of forest-burning.  The New York Times had a more detailed report on the deforestation, including on-the-ground accounts by their reporters.  A paper in the journal Nature Plants analyzed the greenhouse gas impacts of bread production, looking at all steps in the supply chain.  The authors found that fertilizer production contributed 43% of global warming potential, the largest of any step.

According to a new paper in the journal Geology by researchers from the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles in northwest Canada, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers.  Similar large-scale landscape changes are evident across the Arctic, including in Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia.

Energy

Let’s start off the Energy section with some optimistic news about batteries that use oxygen from the air in their charge/recharge cycles.  Batteries of this type have the potential for being less expensive with higher energy density than current batteries, making them good candidates for backup power storage for solar and wind installations.  In the meantime, lithium-ion battery arrays are going to be used at two wind farms in Texas.  They are slated to come on-line by the end of 2017.

Another form of renewable energy, which I have included previously but which is not as developed as wind and solar, is ocean energy.  Writing on the website of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Renee Cho provided an overview of the technology, with a description of each of the techniques being considered.  Even though this article was posted on February 14, I have included it because it provides such a complete picture of the technology.

IKEA is installing a 470,000-square-foot solar array on its new Midwestern distribution center, which, once completed, will be the largest solar rooftop in the state of Illinois.  And speaking of solar panels, check out Business Insider’s photo report on Tesla’s alternative to traditional solar panels for residential installations.

Last summer EPA announced new regulations to restrict methane emissions from new or modified oil and gas operations.  At the same time, they sent out an information request to existing facilities asking for them to provide information about their emissions and how they were seeking to control them.  On Thursday, EPA withdrew that request.

Arizona has been a solar battle ground for the past five years, with major fights between electric utilities and rooftop solar advocates over the rates for households and businesses with solar installations.  Now an agreement has been reached between Arizona Public Service Co., the state’s largest public utility, and a group of solar interests, which, if approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission, will allow solar to remain a viable option in the state.  Nevertheless, solar advocates expressed dissatisfaction with the agreement.  On the subject of renewable energy and battles with traditional electric utilities, are you familiar with the “clean energy paradox”?  If not, then you might find “A World Turned Upside Down” in The Economist to be interesting.  It explains the complexities of adding renewable energy to traditional power grids, including why renewables can be “bad news for the vertically integrated giants that grew up in the age of centralized generating by the gigawatt.”

A forecast by China’s National Energy Administration predicts that China’s CO₂ emissions in 2017 will drop 1% from 2016, making it the fourth consecutive year of either zero growth or a decline in the country’s emissions, despite its continued increase in energy consumption.  This decoupling is due to large deployment of renewable energy.  In contrast, Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution jumped 3.4% in 2015-16, compared to 2014-2015, as coal use continued to rise after the scrapping of their carbon price.  Meanwhile, in the U.S., 8.7 GW of electric generating capacity by wind and 7.7 GW of solar capacity were added in 2016, along with 9 GW of natural gas capacity and 1 GW of nuclear, offsetting 12 GW of coal and natural gas retirements, for a net increase of 15 GW, the largest increase since 2011.  Furthermore, off-shore wind energy companies point out that installing large turbines along the Atlantic coast will help create thousands of jobs, boost domestic manufacturing, and restore U.S. energy independence.

It is becoming more common for states to assess a fee for electric vehicles.  A stated reason is that the owners of electric vehicles do not pay road taxes, which are normally levied against gasoline and diesel fuel.  However, a Koch brothers initiative is also working to initiate fees on electric vehicles.  David Roberts argued in Vox that our broken federal gas tax is a major underlying cause of these levies.

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.