Month: January 2018

Policy and Politics

Business leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos urged political leaders and fellow businesses to seize the opportunity to invest in tackling climate change.  (Megan Darby and Karl Mathiesen of Climate Home News presented a contrast between the rhetoric and reality.)  Meanwhile, at home, President Trump imposed a 30% tariff on solar panels imported from China and South Korea.  This prompted a backlash among some conservatives and from South Korea, as well as several prognostications as to what it all means (e.g., Inside Climate News and Politico).  And solar wasn’t the only form of renewable energy facing restrictions.  Maine Gov. Paul LePage imposed a moratorium Wednesday on new wind energy projects in the western and coastal regions of the state.  He also established the Maine Wind Energy Advisory Commission – which will have meetings that are closed to the public and not subject to Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.

Lots of people have wondered how a temperature rise of 2°C was chosen as a “safe” rise in the Paris Climate Agreement.  Katharine Hayhoe answers that question in her latest Global Weirding video.  So, what could we do if the temperature rise exceeds a “safe” value?  One proposed policy choice is solar geoengineering, in which sulfur dioxide is injected into the upper atmosphere to reflect some of the incoming sunlight.  A big question is what would happen if we suddenly stopped doing that, given that the atmosphere would still contain lots of CO₂, which would rapidly push the temperature upward.  That question was addressed in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and Robinson Meyer discussed it in The Atlantic.  And in Wired, Charles C. Mann, author of the book 1491, had an essay excerpted from his new book, The Wizard and the Prophet, in which he summarizes the history of climate change knowledge, right up to current discussions of geoengineering.  Over the last couple of years, I have provided several links to articles extolling the benefits of eating less meat.  Now, grazier Ariel Greenwood argues that a reduction in meat consumption can have unintended ecological consequences.  A number of films at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, California, focused on climate change.  Daisy Simmons reported on them at Yale Climate Connections.

“A striking 68 percent of mayors agree that cities should play a strong role in reducing the effects of climate change, even if it means sacrificing revenues or increasing expenditures,” according to a report released Tuesday by the Boston University Initiative on Cities.  Its bad enough that climate research programs in the U.S. are facing funding cuts, but when our Canadian neighbors stop funding their Climate Change and Atmospheric Research program, which is very important for understanding the Arctic, things are getting pretty bad.  In a critique of international policies on climate change, New York Times columnist Eduardo Porter argued “that the greatest impediment to slowing this relentless warming is an illusion of progress that is allowing every country to sidestep many of the hard choices that still must be made.”  In that light, one may wonder about the motivations behind EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s concern for methane emissions.  To end this section on a positive note, I’m going to include an article that came out a week ago on Grist.  It profiles several conservatives (some of whom were inspired by Bob Inglis at RepublicEn) who constitute part of the “eco-right” and who are working to remove the partisanship surrounding climate change.

Climate

I have frequently provided links to papers on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as a way of achieving negative emissions of CO₂.  In a new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change, the authors argue that deploying BECCS technology on the scale needed to address climate change would use up massive amounts of water, fertilizer, and land.  It would also probably lead to large environmental problems and may even destabilize key planetary systems.

A new study, published in the journal Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, points out the threats to the Cuvette Centrale peatlands of Africa, the world’s largest intact tropical peatland.  At risk is the ability of the peatlands to sequester large amounts of carbon, preventing its release to the atmosphere as CO₂.  World Resources Institute’s Molly Bergen traveled to Central Africa and wrote about the four challenges in the fight to save the rainforests there.

“[I]t is unlikely the United States has ever seen such a sizable area of excessive tropical cyclone rainfall totals as it did from Harvey,” the National Hurricane Center said in a meteorological review of the storm released on Thursday.  Now, Texas is in a drought.

A new study published this week in Nature Climate Change examined 56 mountain glacier drainage basins worldwide and determined that roughly half had reached their “peak water” point, after which the amount of runoff each year will decline.  In 2016 two mountain glaciers collapsed in Tibet within three months.  Now, a paper in Nature Geoscience argues that climate change was the cause of both.

In a paper published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, a team of Chinese scientists reported that in 2017, the world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded.

Scientists and engineers have long known that removing air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and soot from power plant emissions to reduce air pollution could have the perverse consequence of making global warming worse.  Now a new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has quantified the effect, suggesting that the temperature increase could be between 0.5 and 1.0°C.

Energy

Forty-three businesses signed long-term agreements for a record 5.4 GW of clean power, including solar and wind, worldwide last year, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. That’s up from 4.3 GW in 2016 and is enough to displace at least 10 coal-fired power plants.  Budweiser said it has switched all of its U.S. brewing to renewable electricity and is adding a clean energy logo to its labels as part of a global shift to green power by its parent, Anheuser-Busch InBev.  Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market, has become the latest financial firm to announce that it plans to stop investing in coal companies.

There is no single plug system in use by all electric vehicle (EV) companies.  As EV sales increase and money is spent to expand charging networks, there is concern that much of that money will be wasted if EV manufacturers can’t agree on a standard plug soon.  Writing in The Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli argues that as the electric grid becomes greener, switching from gasoline-powered cars to EVs will become an important method for the U.S. to meet its share of carbon pollution cuts.  And on the subject of alternative-fueled vehicle, not only does the start-up Riversimple rely upon a hydrogen fuel cell for power, it has a new business model for an auto company – it will only lease its cars.

China’s emissions of CO₂ associated with the power sector increased last year after three years of declining emissions.  The increase was attributed to larger activity in the manufacturing sector.

A proposed direct-current transmission line, which would have carried 4,000 MW of renewable wind energy from Western Oklahoma to eastern Tennessee, has been shelved by the developer following continued opposition by the Arkansas congressional delegation.  That’s a shame, because one of the things limiting renewable energy expansion is lack of transmission infrastructure.

Puerto Rico’s governor said on Monday he intends to sell off the island’s power utility to the private sector.  As part of the plan, Puerto Rico would receive 30% of its power from renewable sources.

By August, five fully-electric barges capable of carrying 24 20-ft. containers will be operating on the canals of Belgium and The Netherlands.

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.

Policy and Politics

Jack Gerard announced Wednesday he would step down as head of the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying association of oil and natural gas companies.  In a recent interview with Reuters, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said, “The climate is changing. That’s not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?”  Dana Nuccitelli interviewed several climate scientists to answer that question.  Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R, FL), one of the founders of the Climate Solutions Caucus, was interviewed about the Caucus by Katherine Bagley for Yale Environment 360.  A report released Thursday by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that, during the first year of the Trump administration, science advisory panels all across the government have been decreased in size or disbanded.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report showed that President Trump’s arrival in the White House in 2017 coincided with a marked increase in concern about the environment among experts polled by the organization.  On Thursday, EPA Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator Barry Breen told a congressional oversight committee that the government needs to plan for the ongoing threat posed to Superfund sites from climate change.  A bipartisan group of more than 100 members of Congress is urging President Trump to recognize climate change as a national security threat.

In a two-part series on Yale Climate Connection, Michael Svoboda provided a brief description of each of the major books on climate change economics published between 2005 and 2018.  Chicago Review of Books‘ Amy Brady interviewed novelist C. Morgan Babst, author of the “climate fiction” novel The Floating World, on the social inequality of climate change.  Ivy Main finished summarizing the energy-related bills that have been filed with the VA General Assembly: Part 2 and Part 3.  If measures before the state legislatures in Washington and Oregon pass, there will be a price on CO₂ emissions from California to British Columbia.

Climate

An important new paper was published in the journal Nature on Monday.  It examined the value of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which is the amount the global average temperature of Earth would increase following a doubling of the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere.  For a number of reasons, there is still considerable uncertainty associated with ECS.  This study allowed the scientists to narrow the ECS range to between 2.2 and 3.4°C, with a central value of 2.8°C (5.04°F), somewhat lower than the previous central estimate of 3.0°C.  If correct, this means that the worst-case scenario is less likely to happen, but so is the best-case.

Both NASA and NOAA released their analyses of 2017 global average temperature on Thursday.  The agencies agreed that 2017 was the hottest year on record not influenced by El Niño.  When all years were included, NASA ranked 2017 as 2^nd, while NOAA ranked it as 3^rd.  The difference was due to the use of different methodologies by the two agencies.  Time Magazine presented a photo essay of how the ice in Antarctica is responding to the rise in temperature.

A major characteristic of human-caused climate change is the speed at which it is occurring.  This raises the question of whether the various species on Earth can adapt rapidly enough to survive.  In the case of Arctic ringed seals on the western shores of Svalbard, early indications are that they are doing well, except for one worrying thing, the survival of their pups.  On the other hand, musk oxen are not doing well, particularly when faced with increased winter rainfall.  And a study by scientists at Macquarie University in Australia revealed that high temperatures have a negative effect on zebra finch fertility.

Water stress is one of the factors that can lead to instability in a nation.  Also, water stress can be aggravated by climate change.  Consequently, a panel of retired U.S. military officials warned that water stress is likely to increase, with consequences for world stability.

Shifts in weather or ocean circulation can spark deadly marine heat waves, just as atmospheric shifts can bring droughts and heat waves on land.  Now, a new paper in the journal Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has shown that three 2016 marine heat waves that killed whales, birds, corals, and shellfish from Australia to Alaska were many times more likely because of human emissions of greenhouse gases.  Erik Solheim, head of the UN Environment Programme, said that the battle to save the world’s coral reefs is at a “make or break point”.

The oceans contain significant amounts of methane hydrate, which is an ice-like structure on the ocean floor.  One concern has been that as Earth warms, these hydrates will melt, allowing the methane to make its way through the water to the atmosphere.  This would increase warming because methane is a strong greenhouse gas.  Now, a new study in Science Advances has provided data that suggest that methane released from the sea floor will be consumed by bacteria before it reaches the atmosphere.

Energy

Output from UK wind farms topped 10 GW for the first time, setting a new national record.  Saudi Arabia expects to install 4.125 GW of new renewable energy capacity this year, at a cost of $5 billion to $7 billion.  According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, world clean energy investment totaled $333.5 billion last year, up 3% from 2016 and the second highest annual figure ever, taking cumulative investment since 2010 to $2.5 trillion.  Reality is turning out to be very sobering for both India and Germany.  A top government official has told Reuters that India will need at least $125 billion to fund its ambitious plan to increase the share of renewable power in the country’s grid by 2022.  Germany will have to spend more than $1.2 trillion to meet even the lower end of the European Union’s 2050 target to reduce CO₂ emissions.

Dominion Energy plans to put nine of its older, inefficient, and rarely-used generating units across Virginia into dormant status.  They account for less than 1% of the company’s generation capacity.  This fits with a national trend reported by the U.S. Energy Information Agency, which reported that roughly 13 GW of coal-fired generating capacity would be retired this year across the U.S.  Meanwhile, Reuters reported that nearly two-thirds of U.S. coal producing states lost coal mining jobs in 2017, even as overall employment in the sector grew modestly.

The transportation sector was the largest source of CO₂ emissions in the U.S. for the second year in a row, according to an analysis from the Rhodium Group published Wednesday.  In a move that will help alleviate that problem, Ford announced this week that it will spend $11 billion by 2022 to develop electric vehicles and will bring 16 fully electric models to market by then.  It also plans to offer 24 plug-in hybrids.  Looking skyward, all of Norway’s short-distance airliners should be entirely electric by 2040, according to the chief executive of Avinor, the country’s airport operator.  Toward that end, Avinor plans to test a commercial route flown with a small electric plane with 19 seats, starting in 2025.

According to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency, all types of clean energy will fall within the cost range of fossil fuels in the next two years.  Robert Dieterich provided a detailed look at concentrated solar power with molten salt as a promising renewable energy technology that can provide electricity on demand 24 hours a day.

Thermal power plants for electricity generation, whether fossil fuel-fired or nuclear, require water for cooling, which can be a serious problem when water is periodically scarce, such as in India.  One way to alleviate the problem is to use more renewable energy.

A new paper in the journal Science of the Total Environment reported on a study examining the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of nine means of generating electricity, including fossils fuels, renewables and nuclear power.  The team found that when the three criteria were given equal weight, shale gas extraction by fracking ranked seventh, which placed it above coal, but far below wind and solar.

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.

Policy and Politics

New York City is suing BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, seeking compensation for the billions of dollars it spends protecting the city from the effects of climate change.  “As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient”, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.  The city also will divest its pension funds of fossil fuel assets.  Oliver Milman reported on the response of economists to the announcement, and Bill McKibben discussed its implications.

On Monday, the five FERC commissioners voted unanimously to reject a DOE proposal to subsidize coal and nuclear plants to enhance grid reliability.  Murray Energy head, Robert E. Murray, was not happy with the decision, although he should be happy about the many items on his wish list that the Trump administration has fulfilled.  According to a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, the Trump administration has undertaken a “systematic reduction” in presenting information and content about climate change on federal government websites.  On Wednesday, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland committed to joining the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of states committed to meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.  Furthermore, four lawmakers, two Republicans and two Democrats, joined the House Climate Solutions Caucus on Tuesday.

In a broad-ranging interview with Reuters, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt laid out his plans for 2018, which include repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP).  However, 12 Democratic state Attorneys General have said that Pruitt needs to recuse himself from all matters related to the repeal of the CPP because of his efforts to fight it while he was Attorney General of Oklahoma.  After opening up essentially all of the coasts of the lower 48 states to new oil and gas drilling, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made an exception for Florida.  Other coastal states sought similar exemptions, but the American Petroleum Institute objected.  The Trump administration has taken the position that climate policies kill jobs, but California’s experience challenges that position.

Climate

2017 was the most expensive year on record for disasters in the U.S., NOAA reported on Monday.  According to a new study in the journal Science Advances, unless new protections are added, the number of people affected by devastating floods could skyrocket over the next 25 years as a result of increased rainfall intensity.  According to lead author Sven Willner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “More than half of the United States must at least double their protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in river flood risks.”  As if to put an exclamation point on that statement, heavy rains hit California this week, causing deadly mudslides.

Climate Central has determined that 2017 was the third hottest year on record in the U.S. based on an evaluation of NOAA data.  Last week I provided a link to a study showing that it was the second hottest year globally.

One of the direst consequences of climate change will be the collapse of Antarctic glaciers, causing massive sea level rise and the associated displacement of millions of people from Earth’s coasts.  Now, a young glaciologist has a radical proposal for delaying and possible averting such an event.

Peter Sinclair has a new video, this one explaining why the eastern U.S. can be so much colder than Alaska.  However, a study by the World Weather Attribution project concluded that a cold outbreak like the one that just occurred is 15-times less likely to take place today due to global warming.  In addition, the effects of global warming on such cold outbreaks is to make them about 4°F warmer than they otherwise would have been.

About every two years there is a resurgence of the myth that Earth is about to enter a new “mini ice age”.  Dana Nuccitelli examined the data behind the myth and what climate science has to say about it.

The sex of Pacific green sea turtles, like other sea turtles, is determined by the heat of the sand in which the eggs are incubated.  The warmer the temperature, the greater the number of females.  New research, published Monday in Current Biology, found that the ratio of female to male Pacific green sea turtles from the Pacific Ocean’s largest and most important green sea turtle rookery was 116:1.  Sea turtles aren’t the only aquatic life being impacted by climate change.  A study published in Global Change Biology found that the structure of California mussel shells has changed in response to declining ocean pH resulting from more CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Energy

Renewable energy is moving forward in Australia with the announcement that construction will start this year on the world’s largest solar-thermal generation facility (150 MW) in South Australia.  Meanwhile, French utility Neoen announced that it will build a large battery storage system at the Kaban Green Power Hub in Queensland.  Closer to home, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that 25 GW of new electricity was added to the grid last year, with about half coming from renewable energy resources.  Dominion Energy is investing $1 billion in its solar fleet in Virginia and North Carolina, and now ranks among utilities with the largest solar portfolios, either operating or under development.

In other renewables news, an Xcel Energy solicitation set a new solar-plus-storage record after attracting a median price of $36 per megawatt-hour.  On-shore wind plus storage was even lower, with a median price of $21 per megawatt-hour.  After years of delays, the U.S. offshore wind industry is finally gaining momentum, with new projects being planned along the Atlantic coast.

In a new report, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said “As the global transition toward renewables gains pace and as battery storage and electric vehicles technologies pick up momentum, China is setting itself up to dominate these sectors globally over the next several decades of this century.”  For now, if you’re moved to buy an EV or add battery storage to your house for ethical reasons, you might consider where the cobalt in those batteries comes from.  General Motors head Mary Barra has promised investors that the company will make money selling electric cars by 2021, in part by reducing the amount of cobalt in its batteries.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s monthly short-term energy outlook projects that by 2019 natural gas will provide 34% of U.S. electricity generation and coal 28%, primarily because natural gas is cheaper.  On the other hand, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved an order Thursday that will require PG&E Corp., the state’s biggest utility, to use batteries rather than gas to meet peak electrical demand.  The PUC also voted on Thursday to require the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to close in 2025.

A large number of bills dealing with renewable energy and energy efficiency have been filed for the current session of the Virginia General assembly.  Ivy Main posted a summary of the renewable energy bills.  The Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines were also the subject of legislation in Virginia, where two Democratic Delegates and one Democratic Senator introduced a package of legislation aimed at protecting landowners, water sources, and public safety during construction of the pipelines.  Meanwhile, In North Carolina, regulators delayed a decision on the ACP’s clean water certificate until as late as February and postponed several other environmental permits.

Exxon has filed a petition in a Texas District Court in response to a series of civil lawsuits filed by coastal California communities that claim the company is responsible for damages caused by sea level rise.  According to Inside Climate News, “The petition claims that the California lawsuits are an extension of efforts by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general pledged to holding fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change and born out of a meeting of green groups intent on ruining the industry.”

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.

Policy and Politics

In the past, I’ve linked to articles about the House Climate Solutions Caucus, which maintains an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.  In a very thought-provoking article in E&E News, Zack Colman examined the views of the climate community about the Caucus.  There is a debate within the climate advocacy community about the best way to motivate people to act on climate change: make them aware of the dire consequences of inaction or give them hope that the problem can be solved.  Inspired by a recent paper in the journal Nature Climate Change, Guardian columnist Lucia Graves addressed this issue.  In collaboration with Reveal, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and PRX, Tegan Wendland of WBUR investigated the plight of people in coastal Louisiana who are threatened by flooding, by can’t afford to relocate without state aid, for which there is no money.

Last year President Trump disbanded a panel that was to prepare an addendum to the National Climate Assessment on the local impacts of climate change.  Now Columbia University has hired a panel member, who will reconvene much of the panel to prepare the report.  Because they were considered to be “potential burdens” to energy development, the Interior Department recently rescinded an array of policies designed to elevate climate change and conservation in decisions on managing public lands, waters, and wildlife.  On Thursday, the Trump administration unveiled a controversial proposal to permit drilling for oil and gas in most U.S. continental-shelf waters, including in protected areas of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.  Meanwhile, a tax on oil companies that generated around $500 million a year to fund the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was allowed to expire this week.

The Paris Climate Agreement is based on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted by each country.  Numerous analyses have shown that those NDCs are insufficient to keep warming below 2°C.  Now, four researchers have analyzed the NDCs and argue that five major gaps need to be addressed if they are to become the long-term instrument for international cooperation on climate change.  Another aspect of climate science that could impact planning and policy decisions is attribution science, which is growing more robust in its ability to determine whether a particular extreme weather event was influenced by climate change.  Chelsea Harvey of E&E News has reviewed the status of attribution science and its implications for such things as liability.  If you periodically use Google to search for information on climate change you should be aware of how denier groups are using the search engine to spread their disinformation.

Climate

In a fascinating essay in The Guardian, Benjamin Franta, a Ph.D. student in the history of science at Stanford University, revealed that the oil industry was warned by Edward Teller in 1959 about the dangers of CO₂ emissions.

The weather is really cold right now in the eastern U.S., colder than we normally experience.  This raises the question of whether the current weather pattern has been influenced by climate change.  Several articles addressed that question this week, among them one by the Associated Press and another by Henry Fountain at The New York Times.  Likewise, a study in England examined the link between the warming Arctic and changes in British weather.  Andrew Freedman explained the term “bomb cyclone”, used to describe the winter storm.  Finally, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released an infographic addressing the impacts of climate change on extreme weather.

The three factors that determine our perception of temperature are dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed.  A recent paper in Nature Climate Change reported on modeling studies that examined those factors to determine just how comfortable (or uncomfortable) we’ll be as Earth warms.  Another study, by scientists from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, found that if we continue emitting CO₂ at current rates, by the 2070s high wet-bulb temperature readings (which reflect the combined effects of heat and humidity) that now occur maybe once a year could prevail 100-250 days of the year in large parts of the world.

One consequence of global warming is that the atmosphere holds more water vapor, thereby increasing precipitation in some places.  One of those places is Queen Maud Land, in East Antarctica, as documented in a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.  In that case, the precipitation is in the form of snow, which contributes to the buildup of ice sheets, partially counteracting their loss to the sea.  This raises the question of just how much such ice buildup reduces sea level rise from melting Antarctic glaciers.

The Paris Climate Agreement adopted a goal of limiting global average temperature rise due to climate change to 2°C, with an aspirational goal of 1.5°C.  Now a new paper in Nature Climate Change has concluded that there are substantial benefits to meeting the aspirational goal.  The authors found that aridification would emerge over about 20 to 30% of the world’s land surface if the temperature increase was 2°C, but the affected area would be reduced by two-thirds if warming was limited to 1.5°C.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union monitoring center, said on Thursday that 2017 was the second hottest year on record.  It was also the hottest year without an El Niño event.  Last year was also a bad one for hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires, as reviewed by James Temple at MIT Technology Review.  As a result, the insurance industry had to pay out around $135 billion, the most ever, according to reinsurer Munich Re.  They also said that total losses, including those not insured, were $330 billion, the second highest ever.

A major study on coral bleaching was published Thursday in the journal Science.  It was the first to examine bleaching world-wide and found that the global proportion of coral being hit by bleaching per year rose from 8% in the 1980s to 31% in 2016.  Furthermore, it found that while the average reef bleached severely once every 25 or 30 years at the beginning of the 1980s, by 2016 the recurrence time was just 5.9 years.  As if that weren’t bad enough, another paper in the same issue of Science reported that ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold.  Low oxygen levels are caused by a combination of high water temperatures, due to global warming, and fertilizer runoff.

Energy

The Arctic blast that has caused temperatures to plunge in the U.S. has revived arguments about which fuel source is the best for electricity generation under these circumstances.

Virginia-based Dominion Energy is buying SCANA Corp., the South Carolina company whose subsidiary, SCE&G, was building the abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear project.  The acquisition would leave SCANA as a subsidiary of Dominion.  Dominion Energy also completed a 71.4 MW solar energy facility in South Carolina, the state’s largest.  Unfortunately, according to recent reports, Virginia electric utilities, including Dominion, rank very low nationally in their energy efficiency.

The Appalachia Development Group has received approval for the first of two applications for a $1.9 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan to build an underground natural gas liquids storage hub in Appalachia, at a site to be determined.  The American Chemistry Council, a trade group for the chemical industry, estimates the facility could attract up to $36 billion in new chemical and plastics industry investment and create 100,000 new area jobs.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit late in December that will allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to make 383 stream crossings and 142 passes through wetlands in six Virginia counties.  Three days later, the National Park Service issued a right of way for the pipeline to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway near milepost 136, not far from U.S. 221 in Roanoke County.

A Republican representative to the Florida House of Representatives has filed a bill to investigate and value the use of solar-plus-storage systems as a power source during natural disasters.  It will establish a pilot program to “encourage and demonstrate the effectiveness of distributed energy generation and energy storage technologies to provide for the energy needs of critical disaster resilience facilities located in areas of critical state concern during a natural disaster or declared state of emergency.”

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.