Month: May 2017

On Tuesday, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal was released and it includes deep cuts in climate science and clean energy research.  These cuts are consistent with the Administration’s emphasis on “energy dominance”, rather than “energy independence.”  Brad Plumer at The New York Times provided an analysis of how budget cuts at DOE will impact climate change.  On Wednesday, Trump met with Pope Francis, who gave Trump a copy of his 2015 encyclical letter on the environment and climate change, which Trump promised to read.  Meanwhile, back in the U.S., 40 Senate Democrats sent Trump a letter urging him to stay in the Paris Climate Agreement, but 22 Senate Republicans urged him to pull out.  However, law experts said that the Republicans got their legal arguments wrong.  The National Association of Manufacturers filed court documents on Monday saying it no longer wanted to join the federal government in the lawsuit against it by 21 children who claim that they have been harmed by the government’s failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.  On Thursday, both the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers followed suit.  We can expect more lawsuits about climate change in the future since the number of cases is increasing.

Citizen’s Climate Lobby, which advocates for a carbon fee and dividend, received some good press this week.  If you aren’t familiar with their work, you may want to read the article, or watch the segment about them from “Years of Living Dangerously”.  A survey of more than 8,000 people in eight countries – the United States, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Germany – found that 84% of people now consider climate change a “global catastrophic risk”.  So, that raises the question, “Why is it so difficult to act against climate change and other disruptions to Earth’s ecosystem?”.  A new review in Science examined that question and helps us see what to do.

Climate

Following his confirmation hearings, now EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stated in written comments: “over the past two decades satellite data indicates there has been a leveling off of warming.”  A new paper, published in Nature Scientific Reports, tested that statement using three different data sets and found that they did not support the statement.

The Great Barrier Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan, released in 2015, has the goal of improving the natural heritage values of the reef.  However, experts have told the Reef advisory committee that due to the extensive damage associated with back-to-back coral bleaching episodes in 2015 and 2016, that goal was no longer achievable.

A paper in the journal Nature Communications reported that the number of frost-free days in the contiguous U.S. has increased in the past 100 years: 13 days in the north, 10.7 days in the west, 8.6 days in the central region, and 7.7 days in the south.  In addition, a new paper in Nature Climate Change reported that by midcentury, half of the global population (primarily those in the tropics) are likely to experience climatic conditions that are virtually unheard of for the region in the present climate.

New research, published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology, has found that heavy rainfall events in the spring and fall in the northeastern U.S. were 84% more common from 1996 to 2014 than from 1901 to 1995.

Sea ice in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea is melting a month earlier than usual, in part due to the Arctic’s record-warm winter.

A new paper, just out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reexamined sea level records from 1901 to 1990 considering what we now know about global variation in sea level rise and concluded that the average annual rate over that period was 1.1 mm/y, which is in good agreement with a 2015 study, but lower than others.  They then estimated the rate of sea level rise from 1993-2012 using modern techniques and found it to be 3.1 mm/y, indicating a large acceleration.  A second paper related to sea level rise, in Nature Scientific Reports, included authors from USGS.  When they submitted a press release to the Department of Interior (DOI) for approval, DOI deleted a line that discussed the role climate change played in sea level rise.

Energy

A new paper in the journal Energy Economics calls into question a key assumption in the business-as-usual emissions pathway (RCP 8.5) used by the IPCC in projecting possible future climate change.  According to the paper, RCP 8.5 was based on all geologically identified coal, not the fraction it may be possible to dig up.  However, Noah Kaufman, a climate economist at the World Resources Institute said, “This seems like a plausible emissions pathway to consider, and perhaps the heavy use of coal is just a proxy for advances in high-carbon technologies that will enable this pathway,” such as tar sands or frozen methane sheets in the ocean, called hydrates.

On Monday, Tucson Electric Power, an Arizona utility company, announced that it had reached an agreement to buy solar power for 3¢/kWh, a “historically low price” for the U.S.  Meanwhile, the International Trade Commission launched an investigation into whether the U.S. government should impose tariffs on certain imported solar panel technology.

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality admitted Wednesday that it provided inaccurate information nearly seven weeks ago about how it plans to handle the review of potential water quality impacts of the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines.  In other Virginia news, Dominion Virginia Power filed for permission from the State Corporation Commission to offer 100% renewable energy to commercial and industrial customers with peak loads of over 1,000 kilowatts.

Over time, I have provided links to several articles about carbon capture and storage (CCS), many of which have focused on the challenges of applying the technology.  NET Power, a start-up company in Houston, TX, has a unique approach to CCS, by burning natural gas in the presence of pure oxygen, thereby producing an exhaust gas stream of pure CO₂, which they compress to supercritical conditions and use to drive a generating turbine before sending the CO₂ down a well.  An article from Science provided a good explanation of their process, which promises to provide zero-emission power from a fossil fuel.  Unfortunately, the fate of NET Power may have less to do with the efficiency and innovativeness of their technology, than with the electricity generating overcapacity resulting from the glut of natural gas.  Unfortunately, CCS research will likely suffer from the 87% cut proposed in President Trump’s 2018 budget.  Also, supercritical CO₂ research is in danger, even though it offers great promise for a number of generating technologies.

Daimler AG, which makes Mercedes-Benz cars, is planning to build a lithium-ion battery factory in Germany to rival Telsa’s gigafactory.  In addition, battery factories are being planned in Sweden, Hungary, and Poland.  The output from these factories will be used in electric cars and for energy storage.

A report by the Netherlands government’s Environmental Assessment Agency said that off-grid renewable electricity could be the lowest cost option for providing electricity to the more than 600 million Africans who currently live without it.  However, Kenya has signed a $2 billion contract with Chinese company Power Global to finance a new coal-fired power plant adjacent to a UNESCO world heritage site.

Canada plans to phase in tougher regulations on the emission of methane over the next six years.  Rules requiring companies to control methane leaks and the release of methane from compressors are to take effect starting in 2020, whereas regulations on methane venting and its release from pneumatic devices would come into force in 2023.  Meanwhile, in the U.S., the EPA has announced it will delay rules aimed at cutting methane emissions from landfills.

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.

President Donald Trump’s threat to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement united envoys from much of the rest of the world gathered in Bonn, Germany, making them unusually cooperative in reaching a deal.  Meanwhile, Republican governors Philip Scott of Vermont and Charlie Baker of Massachusetts urged U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to ensure the United States does not withdraw from the agreement.  However, at the Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, AK, last minute changes to the intergovernmental declaration requested by the U.S. weakened it, according to a document obtained by Inside Climate News.  President Trump is planning to nominate a non-scientist to the top scientific position at the Department of Agriculture.  The Trump administration is seeking to indefinitely postpone a decision on litigation over the Clean Power Plan (CPP), but a coalition of environmental groups, states supporting the CPP, clean energy groups, and sympathetic utilities filed separate briefs on Monday asking the court to issue a ruling in the lawsuit.  In spite of the positions of the Trump administration, don’t despair; National Geographic has provided six reasons why climate progress will continue.

On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe directed the Department of Environmental Quality to begin assembling regulations to reduce carbon emissions from Virginia power plants.  On Wednesday, Ted Halstead, head of the Climate Leadership Council and champion of the “Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends”, released a video of a TED talk that he taped in April.  The Carbon Tax Center has provided an edited transcript of the talk along with a link to the video.  Perhaps the time is getting ripe for a carbon tax, at least at the state level, as legislators in at least five states have introduced proposals that would place a price on carbon in the form of a tax or fee.

Climate

In a report published Thursday in the journal Earth’s Future, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany stated that a proposal to mitigate climate change by planting fast-growing trees and plants that can be burned for electricity, with the carbon they release being captured and stored, is not “realistic and feasible.”

Justine Gillis of The New York Times accompanied a Columbia University team of scientists on an aerial expedition to Antarctica late last year and has written a three part series about why the expedition went.  The graphics and video are very interesting, but did not work in Chrome for me, although they did in Microsoft Edge.  I did not try other browsers.  Theory predicts that Earth’s poles should warm faster than the global average as CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere increase.  Observations show that this is true for the Arctic, but not for the Antarctic.  There are several possible reasons for this, but new research, published in the journal Earth Systems Dynamics, suggests that an important one is the higher elevation of Antarctica.  Robert McSweeney of Carbon Brief summarized the new research and explained how it fits with other possible explanations.  Finally, a new paper in the journal Current Biology documented an increase in moss growth in Antarctica, demonstrating that the impacts of global warming there are not limited to ice melt.

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports warns that just a small amount of sea level rise can double the risk of coastal flooding from large waves and storm surge.  The most at-risk areas are in the low latitudes, where tidal ranges are smaller, making sea level rise proportionally more significant.

Trees are very good at removing CO₂ from the atmosphere; the problem lies in their death and decay, which sends the CO₂ back to the atmosphere.  But, what if one could harvest the wood (sustainably) and use it in a way that tied up its carbon for a long time?  According to Canada’s Wood Innovation and Design Centre, there is; use it in wooden skyscrapers, substituting wood for carbon-intensive concrete and steel.  Speaking of trees, a study, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, has found that about three-quarters of tree species common to eastern American forests have shifted their population centers west since 1980. More than half of the species studied also moved northward during the same period.  The reasons for the westward movement are unclear.

In the report released on Tuesday, scientists from UC Davis and CalTrout, a conservation group, warned that nearly half of California’s types of native salmon, steelhead, and trout will go extinct within 50 years unless environmental trends, including climate change, are reversed.  Meanwhile, on the other coast, Ted Williams wrote at Yale Environment 360 about Delaware Bay, which provides a case study in how warming oceans, more severe storms, and sea-level rise are impacting estuaries around the world.

Scientists have only recently discovered that coral reefs around the Chagos Archipelago, a collection of around 60 small islands in the Indian Ocean, have undergone significant bleaching and death, similar to what occurred on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia in 2016.  Concerning the latter, a new study published in Nature Climate Change has found that there is an 87% chance that sea surface temperatures as high as those recorded in 2016 could occur around the reef in any given year in a 2°C warmer world.

Two recent studies, one in the journal Economics of Disasters and Climate Change and the other in the journal Environmental Research Letters, have both concluded that climate change will have major negative impacts on the yields of staple grain crops between now and the end of the century.  In a study published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists found that climate change and associated season creep are throwing off the migratory patterns of songbirds and possibly jeopardizing their survival.  Nine species are having a particularly difficult time adapting to the new circumstances.

Both NASA and NOAA have reported that April 2017 was the second hottest April on record.  In addition, NOAA has reported that the year-to-date ranks as the 2nd-warmest January through April period, behind the same time period last year.

Energy

Even though lithium-ion batteries are the current mainstay for applications from cell phones to electric vehicles, they have drawbacks, such as the flammability of the electrolyte and the sourcing of lithium.  Consequently, there is great interest in an alternative.  Now, scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have discovered a way around a major problem associated with zinc-based batteries, which have several advantages over lithium-ion batteries, potentially clearing the way for their commercialization.  On the subject of batteries, Tesla and Vermont utility Green Mountain Power are offering home backup batteries for a very low monthly cost because the utility will receive grid benefits through use of Tesla’s GridLogic software.

India’s cabinet approved plans on Wednesday to build 10 nuclear reactors with a combined electrical generating capacity of 7,000 MW.  This is in addition to an installed nuclear capacity of 6,780 MW and another 6,700 MW under construction for completion by 2021-22.  This is occurring in spite of the apparent decline of nuclear energy in the West.  With a few caveats, utility owner Southern Co. agreed to take the lead from bankrupt Westinghouse Electric Co. on building two nuclear reactors at its Vogtle power plant in Georgia as soon as next month.

According to Energy Department budget documents obtained by Axios, the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which funds research on advanced vehicles and other aspects of clean energy, would face a roughly 70% cut in 2018, while the Fossil Energy Research and Development program, which conducts research on carbon capture and storage, would face a 55% cut.  However, on Thursday six Republican senators, four of whom are appropriators, sent President Trump a letter stating in part: “We urge you to continue to invest in the Department of Energy’s research and development programs in fiscal year 2018.”  In spite of efforts by the Trump administration to reduce initiatives on renewable energy, it will almost certainly fail to bring jobs back to coal country or dramatically boost coal production, according to a report released by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Are they finally coming?  Neal Boudette of The New York Times examined fuel cell cars and the filling stations required to keep them going.  One thing he didn’t mention, however, is the source of the hydrogen, which may not necessarily be green.  Speaking of disruptive technologies, Stanford economist Tony Seba forecast that the entire market for land transport will switch to electrification within eight years.  While this may not happen as early as he predicted in the West, it may come closer to happening in China and India.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency provided seed grant funding for 12 large-scale solar energy farms and all 12 have now leveraged that funding to become fully financed.  In addition, they have received all regulatory and grid connection approvals required for them to move forward with construction.  When completed, the 12 solar farms will provide enough electricity to power 150,000 homes.  On the topic of renewable energy, China and India have surpassed the U.S. to become the two most attractive countries for renewable energy investment.  Furthermore, they are set to beat their pledges to the Paris Climate Agreement, according to an updated analysis of their climate policies.

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.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted down the Congressional Review Act resolution to eliminate the Obama administration rule on methane emissions from public lands.  Three Republicans joined every Democrat to preserve the rule.  However, after the vote Kate MacGregor, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals, said that the rule is one the department “will suspend, revise or rescind.”  On Wednesday evening, at a meeting of Arctic nations in Alaska, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed an agreement recognizing the Paris Climate Agreement, but said President Trump was not rushing to decide whether to leave or weaken U.S. commitments to it.  Rather, he will wait until after the G7 meeting in late May to announce whether the U.S. will pull out of it.  The Chinese have indicated that there will be repercussions if the U.S. pulls out but Joseph Curtin, a member of the Irish Government’s Climate Change Advisory Council, thinks that “It may be better for the US to leave now, and re-join when it is ready to behave like a responsible global citizen.”  President Trump has nominated two people to be commissioners at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.  One is Sen. Mitch McConnell’s energy adviser and the other is a Pennsylvania utility commissioner.  “A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change,” is no longer accessible from the EPA website, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.  In her article about it, Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post, provided a link to it at an archival website.

On several occasions, I have linked to articles mentioning the need for employing “negative emissions” technologies to hold global warming below 1.5°C, and perhaps even 2°C.  Writing at Yale Climate Connections, Daniel Grossman examined the pros and cons associated with proposed technologies.  While adaptation and mitigation have been the focus of past climate change talks, “loss and damage” will be a major focus of this year’s talks in Bonn.  Carbon Brief explained what that term means and how it may be addressed.  Politics intruded on climate science in Australia. The scientists fought back, led by John Church, a leading world expert on sea level rise.  A cautionary tale for the U.S.?

Climate

Although the report was issued in March, it is worth noting again that the Medical Society Consortium has documented the ways in which climate change is already affecting our health, reminding us that it is not just something that will impact future generations.  In another example of the immediate impacts of climate change, at least 17 communities across the U.S. are being forced to relocate.

The West African Sahel is the arid belt of land stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea that separates the Sahara Desert from the African savanna.  According to a new paper in the journal Nature, climate change is upsetting rainfall patterns in the region, making catastrophic storms three times more frequent.

You are probably aware that glaciers are melting all over the world because of human-caused climate change.  What you may not be aware of are the many impacts that melting glaciers can have.  Renee Cho has summarized them for “State of the Planet” at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  One place where glaciers have been melting is in Glacier National Park.  A study of its 37 ‘named’ glaciers and two others on U.S. Forest Service land found that only 26 should be classified as glaciers as the other 13 are now too small to count.  Even though I have linked to several articles about the glaciers in West Antarctica, I found the article about Thwaites Glacier by Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone to be particularly interesting.

In the Alaskan tundra, permafrost is melting, leading to an increase in CO₂ emissions due to microbial decomposition of stored organic matter.  A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science reported that the increase in CO₂ emissions exceeds the uptake of CO₂ associated with the greening of the tundra from warmer temperatures.

A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters has stated that observed declines in ocean oxygen content are “most likely due to the changes in ocean circulation and mixing associated with the heating of the near-surface waters and the melting of polar ice.”  In addition, the paper stated that “The impact of ocean deoxygenation may be profound.”  Another paper in the same journal investigated the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, a cycle that lasts 10-30 years and affects how much heat is absorbed in the Pacific.  They found that it was in its “cool,” or negative, phase from 2000-2014, but started to switch to its positive or “warm” phase in 2014.  This suggests that Earth will experience accelerated warming for the next 10 to 20 years and could hit the 1.5°C threshold as early as 2025, although some scientists questioned the authors’ assumptions.

Climate justice issues are front and center in Atlantic City, NJ, where Climate Central has found that the impacts of coastal flooding are being borne primarily by low income and socially vulnerable populations.

Energy

Dutch officials have opened a 600 MW offshore wind farm, with 150 turbines 53 miles out in the North Sea.

The Maryland Public Service Commission has given the go-ahead for two off-shore wind projects.  U.S. Wind, a subsidiary of Italian energy and construction company Toto Holdings SpA, plans to build 62 turbines at least 14 miles off the coast of Ocean City, while Skipjack Offshore Wind LLC, a subsidiary of Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind Holdings LLC, plans to erect 15 turbines at least 20 miles off the coast.  On the subject of wind turbines, a Swedish study has found that each on-shore wind turbine kills 10-15 bats annually and has proposed a remedy.

India will install an estimated 8.8GW of solar energy in 2017 according to the consulting and market research firm Bridge to India.  Meanwhile, in India’s desert state of Rajasthan, power companies Phelan Energy and Avaada Power each offered to charge 4.2¢/kWh of electricity generated from a solar farm they hope to build at an energy park.  Last year’s previous record lowest bid was 6.9¢/kWh.  India’s largest thermal coal power generator currently charges around 5.1¢/kWh.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order directing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to amend or withdraw the coal leasing program moratorium instituted by the Obama administration.  On Tuesday, the attorneys general of California, New Mexico, New York and Washington filed a lawsuit over implementation of that order, saying it was done without environmental review.  Meanwhile, the coauthor of a Columbia University study on coal’s decline in the U.S. has said “It’s unlikely that those market factors that have reduced coal production over the last five years are going to change in a way that will lead to a recovery in coal production in the years ahead.”

Both China and India have adopted policies that encourage a rapid transition to electric vehicles and this will have a major impact on the long-term demand for gasoline in those countries.

Greenpeace estimates that every hour, China erects a new wind turbine and installs enough solar panels to cover a soccer field.  According to Beth Gardiner at National Geographic, there are three reasons for this: (1) China’s air pollution is terrible, (2) it fears the impacts of climate change, and (3) it wants to dominate the clean energy market.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has released a new report entitled Clean Energy Momentum, Ranking State Progress.  California is a clear winner, followed by Vermont.  Virginia, on the other hand, fell from 17^th to 20^th in installed solar capacity, although Governor Terry McAuliffe signed 11 new renewable energy bills into law.  Meanwhile, a report from GTM Research attempted to make sense of the chaotic residential solar market.  Speaking of energy use, a new study has found that U.S. residential energy use has begun to fall, primarily as a result of energy-efficient lighting.

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.

In case you were unable to attend the People’s Climate March, you might be interested in reading this article about it.  Environmentalist Paul Hawken, has a new book entitled Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reduce Global Warming, in which he offers 100 reasons to hope.  KQED’s Devin Katayama spoke with Hawken about his book.  There was a new development this week in the children’s lawsuit against the federal government.  In March, the Trump administration requested that the federal district court in Oregon allow the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review the trial order before the trial even takes place.  On Monday U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin recommended denial of that request.

The New York Times has a new Op-Ed columnist, Bret Stephens, late of The Wall Street Journal.  Wikipedia describes him as being known for “his contrarian views on climate change.”  His first column, “Climate of Complete Certainty,” created quite a stir, including a reaction from a group of climate scientists, but generated a thoughtful response from Andrew Revkin, whose work Stephens mentioned, as well as from climate scientist Ken Caldeira.  They are worth reading.  Meanwhile, writing at Huffington Post, Kate Sheppard discussed the many conservative groups working against climate change.

On Friday of last week, President Trump won a court ruling making it easier for him to rescind the Clean Power Plan.  On the same day, Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Colette Honorable said she will leave the board when her term expires in June.  Currently, only two of the five board positions are filled.  President Trump is appointing Daniel Simmons to head the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  Like several other new appointees, Simmons has questioned the very things his department is charged with doing.  An “unabashed nerd and unapologetic advocate for science and reason” will seek the nomination to challenge Lamar Smith (R, TX) for his seat in Congress.  Meanwhile, the EPA has taken down its climate change website, saying in a statement: “The process, which involves updating language to reflect the approach of new leadership, is intended to ensure that the public can use the website to understand the agency’s current efforts.”  On Monday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed a secretarial order for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to start formulating a new five-year plan for drilling rights sales in the Arctic Ocean, the mid- and south-Atlantic Coast, and the entire Gulf of Mexico.  On Tuesday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, petitioned the EPA to reconsider the endangerment finding, which is the basis for the agency’s efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions.  The bipartisan budget compromise reached by Congress over the weekend salvaged funding for both the EPA and clean energy research done by the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.  On Wednesday, twelve members of the House Climate Solutions Caucus introduced the Climate Solutions Commission Act.  Finally, a group of carbon tax supporters started running TV ads with the goal of swaying conservatives to the cause.

Climate

So, just what is the consensus within the scientific community on human-caused global warming?  Writing in The Guardian about a commentary in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society by Andy Skuce and coauthors, Dana Nuccitelli (one of the coauthors) argues “It’s most accurate to say that 97% of relevant peer-reviewed studies agree that humans are causing global warming, 99.9% of climate papers don’t reject that theory, and those who deny the overwhelming consensus are peddling misinformation.”

Two papers were published in scientific journals in the past two weeks dealing with trends in the global temperature record.  One, published in Environmental Research Letters, used statistical analysis to answer two questions: (1) whether the high temperatures of the last three years suggest that the rate of warming has increased and (2) whether the preceding years tell us that the rate has slowed.  They concluded that the answer to both questions was no.  Rather, warming has continued at a constant rate since the 1970’s with random, stationary, short-term variability superimposed upon it.  The other, published in Nature, investigated the existence of the so-called hiatus from 1998-2012.  Writing in The Guardian, Graham Readfearn summarized the findings thusly: “So what to make of it all?  The short version is that global warming didn’t stop, scientists knew global temperatures would wobble around and climate scientists aren’t always the best communicators.”

Weekend Edition Sunday had a piece on the Nenana Ice Classic in Alaska, which is a festival celebrating the breakup of the ice on the Tanana River at the town of Nenana.  If you guess the exact date and time of the breakup, you could win big bucks.  Well, this year the breakup occurred at noon on May 1 and you can see a graph of the breakup dates for the 101 years measurements have been made.  Speaking of ice in the north, The New York Times had an article about the impacts of melting sea ice on shipping lanes in the Arctic ocean.

The next decade will be critical in containing global warming to the limits the world has set itself, European researchers warn in the journal Nature Communications.  Furthermore, at least one of the targets stipulated in the Paris Climate Agreement may be unrealistic, according to a second team of European researchers, writing in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The death toll caused by extreme rainfall and floods in the South and Midwest U.S. rose to 20, as the impacts of a major slow-moving storm that ravaged the region over the weekend continued to be felt.  In states from Oklahoma to Indiana, record-setting rainfall, tornadoes, and a late-season blizzard wreaked havoc on crops, roads, buildings, and infrastructure.  In addition, April was the 29^th month in a row that record high temperatures exceeded record low temperatures in the U.S.

We have known for some time that the narrow strip of tidal marshes, seagrass beds, and mangroves along the edge of our oceans are very important.  Now a study published in Frontiers in Ecology in the Environment suggests that with proper management, these zones can be even more effective at storing carbon.  Unfortunately, another study, published in Global Change Biology, has found that coastal marine food webs could be in danger of collapse as a result of rising CO₂ levels, which cause both warming and ocean acidification.

Energy

The Guardian published a three-part series on the Keystone XL pipeline route and the people living along it: Part I, Part II, Part III.

In the past I have linked to articles about problems associated with the new nuclear power plants under construction in Georgia and South Carolina and the associated bankruptcy of Westinghouse.  Reuters has an analysis of what went wrong.  Meanwhile, according to a new study by the Global Nexus Initiative, the U.S. is losing global influence to Russia and China by allowing its nuclear power industry to stagnate.

The U.S. wind industry installed 2,000 MW of capacity in the first quarter of 2017, making it the biggest first quarter since 2009.  In addition, there are 9,025 MW of wind projects under construction and an additional 11,952 MW in advanced development, all trying to take advantage of the federal production tax credit that is being phased down from 2017 through 2019.  On Monday, Block Island Power Company began receiving electricity from the U.S.’s first off-shore wind farm and shut down its diesel generators.  Nevertheless, the big question is whether off-shore wind can also be an important part of the energy mix for the coastal U.S.  On-shore wind, on the other hand is well established, to the point that Iowa’s largest utility is investing $3.6 billion in new wind turbines, with the goal of producing 100% of its electricity from renewable sources.

Ivy Main had a new blog post about Dominion Virginia Power’s updated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), for which the press release promised thousands of MW of new solar power and a dramatically lower carbon footprint.  A close reading of the IRP led her to disagree with that assessment.  Appalachian Power also updated its IRP, calling for the addition of 500 MW of universal solar energy, and 1,350 MW of wind energy by 2031.  It also expects 123 MW of rooftop solar energy to come from customers in the next 15 years.

During FY2016/17, India added 6,990 MW of coal-based power capacity, while also adding 5,413 MW of wind energy capacity and 5,526 MW of solar power capacity.  At the end of FY2016/17, the share of renewable energy in India’s total installed capacity was 17.5%.  Also, China added 7,210 MW of solar PV in the first quarter of the year, roughly 70 MW more than in Q1 2016, according to figures from China’s National Energy Administration.

A report by Canada’s National Energy Board said that the country generated 66% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2015, with hydroelectric power accounting for roughly 60% of electricity supply.  And speaking of hydroelectric power, it is surging on the U.S. west coast because of record precipitation this winter.  This has caused California gas demand to drop 34%, which has driven gas prices down.

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.