Month: February 2018

Policy and Politics

California, Ontario, and Quebec have held their first auction of greenhouse gas emission credits under their joint cross-border cap-and-trade system.  Meanwhile, New Jersey has joined the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 15 other states and Puerto Rico vowing to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement.  In a letter released on Tuesday, 236 mayors from 47 states urged EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt not to repeal the Clean Power Plan, saying they need its emissions rules to fight climate change and protect their cities.  In an interview published Thursday, Pruitt spoke about how his religious beliefs inform his views on the environment and environmental policy.  Physicist Mark Buchanan published an opinion piece about geoengineering at Bloomberg View.  In it he said that we should not “be lulled into thinking that humanity can engineer its way out of global warming, that we can get around it without radically changing the way we live.”

President Trump’s plan to phase out funding for the Energy Star program and fund it through fees charged to the companies that use it is meeting strong opposition by groups that represent manufacturers, retailers, utilities, environmentalists, and others who benefit from the program.  A coalition of business associations, conservative pundits, and Republican lawmakers is working to ensure that the Senate ratifies the Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which calls for the phase out of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) because of their strong greenhouse effect.  Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that would authorize EPA to ratchet down the production of HFCs.  The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration is considering Donald van der Vaart, the former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, to be head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  In an interview, van der Vaart expressed skepticism about the extent to which humans have contributed to climate change.  Regardless of U.S. participation, countries that ratified the Paris Climate Agreement will meet in Poland in December, where they are expected to put the finishing touches on transparency and verification measures that will ensure that industries and economies abide by emission rules.  Unfortunately, countries aren’t doing enough to live up to their Paris pledges.

A shift in public opinion, however gradual, has moved toward acceptance of human-caused global warming.  Livia Albeck-Ripka of The New York Times interviewed dozens of people to understand what is driving the change and presented six of their stories in a recent article.  One prominent person who changed his mind is Jerry Taylor, who is the focus of this month’s “This is Not Cool” video from Yale Climate Communications.  Last week I provided a link to an article about the “valve turners”.  This week Huffington Post has an article about how some consider such actions to be ecoterrorism.  Last fall author Megan Herbert and climate scientist Michael Mann launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish a children’s book they had written about climate change.  If you have children or grandchildren you would like to be aware of climate change and actions against it, then you may want to check out The Tantrum That Saved the World.  Or, you may want to give a copy to your local library.

Climate

A new study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, estimated how climate change could affect the risk of flooding, drought, and heatwaves in 571 European cities by the second half of the century.  The research showed that under a business-as-usual emissions scenario, every city studied will face an increased risk of extreme weather events as the climate warms.

As reported in the journal The Cryosphere, NASA scientists have greatly improved their ability to track and measure ice loss from Antarctic glaciers.  Their results have shown that the vast majority of the increase in ice loss has been from West Antarctica, whereas the ice flow from East Antarctica has been relatively stable.  In another new paper, this one in Nature Communications, scientists examined the effects of delaying present-day reduction of CO₂ emissions on the amount of sea level rise as a result of melting Antarctic glaciers.  They found that each five-year delay in peaking of CO₂ emissions will increase sea-level rise in 2300 by about 8 inches on average.  A research team led by a USGS scientist has found that west coast wetlands are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise because they are constrained by natural barriers and man-made obstacles from migrating inland with the rising tides.

In just eight days in mid-February, nearly a third of the sea ice covering the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast disappeared, so that the area covered by ice is now 60% below its average from 1981-2010.  As the Arctic was flooded with warm air, on Monday and Tuesday the northernmost weather station in the world, Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland, experienced more than 24 hours of temperatures above freezing.  Furthermore, high temperature records were shattered all along the east coast of the U.S. on Tuesday and Wednesday.  And in Siberia, melting permafrost has led to a “megaslump” that provides an opportunity for scientists to access up to 200,000 years of historical climate records.

Ocean acidification due to increased CO₂ levels in the atmosphere is a threat to sediments that form the base for coral reefs, as well as to the reefs themselves, according to a new paper in the journal Science.  The paper said it was “unknown if the whole reef will erode once the sediments become net dissolving” and whether reefs “will experience catastrophic destruction” or merely a slow erosion.

Two authors of a recent paper in Nature Plants explain in Carbon Brief “enhanced weathering” of silicate rock as a technique for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, while also decreasing ocean acidification and stimulating plant growth.

Writing in his column in The Guardian, climate scientist John Abraham explained how pollen data collected from sites across North America and Europe were used to show that Earth’s temperature had been cooling for around 2000 years before humans started burning sufficient fossil fuels to reverse the trend and warm Earth.

Energy

For the first time, BP’s Energy Outlook projects a peak in oil consumption, driven in part by the rise of shared and autonomous electric vehicles (EVs).  The peak is seen as coming in the late 2030s, by which time they project over 300 million EVs will be on the world’s roads.

Fueled by increased efficiency, consumer spending on electricity fell to 1.3% of personal consumption in 2017, the lowest in records dating to 1959, according to a report Thursday from Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy.  The drop in emissions from the energy sector in 2017 was due more to renewable energy and energy conservation than to the nation switching from coal to natural gas for electricity generation.  Nevertheless, according to data from the Sierra Club and the Energy Information Administration, more coal capacity closed in the first 45 days of 2018 than in the first three years of the Obama administration.

On several occasions, I’ve provided links to articles about using hydrogen (H₂) as a fuel for cars.  But what about using H₂ to heat homes, to cook with, and to heat water, in the place of natural gas (methane)?  Well, a UK gas company is planning to use the city of Leeds to test the idea at full-scale.  Ahshat Rathi at Quartz explains the idea, the plans, and some possible problems.  In addition, HyTech Power, a company in Redmond, WA, has some unique and innovative ideas for using H₂ in transportation and energy storage.  David Roberts at Vox described their step-by-step approach.

Having gained experience in East Africa, off-grid, pay-as-you-go solar companies are now moving into West Africa.  They can provide solar panels and a battery that will produce 4 kWhr of electricity for less than the cost of kerosene, which most people without electricity use for lighting.  On the other hand, in Nigeria more minigrids are being put in place, using solar panels, batteries, and backup power.

Tim Profeta, Director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, had an essay at The Conversation arguing that to meet its climate goals, the U.S. needs to address the economic problems facing nuclear power, perhaps by instituting a carbon tax.  The U.S. Department of Energy is conducting research and working with utilities seeking permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow nuclear reactors built in the 1970s to keep operating to 2050 and beyond.

Although Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke appears determined to replace the Obama-era BLM methane rule, on Thursday night a federal judge struck down his latest attempt.  According to a survey by the Energy Institute, most energy executives underestimate how much they can cut methane emissions as they extract and transport natural gas.

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

Under a new policy, the EU will refuse to sign trade deals with countries that do not ratify the Paris Climate Agreement and take steps to combat global warming.  The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday that energy taxes in major advanced economies are not doing enough to reduce energy use, improve energy efficiency, and drive a shift towards low-carbon sources.  In addition, the world’s biggest banks are failing to take climate change seriously in their business plans, according to research published Thursday by Boston Common Asset Management.  Business lobbies in Europe and the U.S. are pushing for a distinct, direct and formalized “business channel” into UN climate negotiations.  The nation’s intelligence agencies are warning, in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, of global instability if climate change continues unabated, according to a report submitted for a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

After the Paris Climate Agreement adopted 1.5°C as an aspirational goal for the maximum amount of global warming, the IPCC was charged with preparing a report on the feasibility of achieving that goal.  Now the draft report by the IPCC has been leaked and it says that the world has only 12 to 16 years’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions left, from the start of 2016, if it wants a better-than-even chance of meeting the goal.  However, since it would be impossible to curb emissions that fast without damaging the global economy, the report notes that it’s virtually unavoidable that the planet will “overshoot” 1.5°C.  Megan Darby has summarized 11 takeaways from the draft report at Climate Home.  Writing in The New York Times Magazine, Michelle Nijhuis presented an interesting profile of the Valve Turners, the five activists who took civil disobedience in the climate change battle to a new level by shutting down several oil pipelines.  As one said, “I’m not courageous or brave.  I’m just more afraid of climate change than I am of prison.”

The budget bill passed last week by Congress contains an extension and expansion of the tax credit for the capture and storage of CO₂ underground.  Even though a president’s budget is just a blueprint that is often ignored by Congress, there are some items in President Trump’s proposed budget that could have important negative impacts on the U.S. capacity to understand, prepare for, and respond to climate change.  Furthermore, the proposed budget for DOE would give a big boost to nuclear energy at the expense of renewables and weatherization.  Meanwhile, on Thursday a federal judge in San Francisco ordered DOE to end a one-year delay on rules developed by the Obama administration to combat climate change by tightening energy-efficiency standards for portable air conditioners, building heaters, and other appliances.

Climate

The relationship between climate change and conflict is a topic that is being hotly debated.  A new paper in Nature Climate Change reports on a meta study that reviewed the literature on the subject.  Unfortunately, it appears to have inflamed the debate more than clarified it.  Writing at The Atlantic, Robinson Meyers looks at both sides of the argument.

A ship has made a winter crossing of the Arctic without an icebreaker for the first time.  This was possible because climate change has caused the region’s ice sheets to melt and thin.  A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that Arctic ringed seals must be protected under the Endangered Species Act because of their reliance on the disappearing sea ice.  Melting land-based ice in Greenland and Antarctica is a major contributor to sea level rise.  A new analysis of sea level data from satellites, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has revealed that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating.  According to a paper published in the journal Plos One, a combination of climate change and industrial-scale fishing is threatening the krill population in Antarctic waters, with a potentially disastrous impact on whales, penguins, and seals.  Yale Climate Connections presented descriptions of 13 books dealing with either the Arctic or the Antarctic.

Over the past year several papers have explored the need for negative emissions of CO₂ to meet desired limitations on global warming.  One technique that has been proposed is “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,” or BECCS.  It can have many impacts on a region, so a team of scientists has begun a study of the Upper Missouri River Basin to learn exactly what those impacts will be.  A paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances stated that even with countries meeting their pledges to the Paris Climate Agreement, we’re likely to see “substantial and widespread increases in the probability of historically unprecedented extreme events.”  Furthermore, the effects of this extreme weather will be seen “across human and natural systems, including both wealthy and poor communities.”

A new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters helps explain why the Southeastern U.S. has been cooling in winter and spring even though CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere have been increasing.  As you might expect, given weather reports in the past few years, it all has to do with the location of the jet stream.  Another example of regional weather changes is the Midwest, which has experienced cooler temperatures and more rainfall in summer than expected from climate models.  Now, a team of scientists at MIT has shown that this is due to the heavy agriculture in the region, which pumps more moisture into the atmosphere than would otherwise be there.

A new paper in the journal Global Change Biology reported that the arrival date of migrating bats at their summer home in Texas is around two weeks earlier than it was in 1992.

Most of the papers about the effects of climate change on corals have dealt with warm-water corals.  However, cold-water corals are also impacted by CO₂ emissions, but in a different way.  Cold-water corals are found in deep, dark parts of the world’s oceans where they can thrive at depths of up to 2 km and water temperatures as low as 4°C.  The main threat to them is from ocean acidification caused by dissolution of CO₂ from the atmosphere.  A paper in Nature reported that as the oceans acidify, more cold-water corals are being exposed to acidified waters, which can cause their hard outer layers to dissolve.

Energy

For the fourth time since 2002, the Edison Electric Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council have issued a joint statement at a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.  The statement supports an accelerating clean energy transition that is defined by energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and empowering states and customers.  Thus it is not surprising that the latest edition of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Sustainable Energy in America Factbook stated that electricity generation from renewables reached its highest level ever in 2017, at 18% of the overall energy mix.

Four east coast states are pursuing off-shore wind farm projects.  Such wind farms use larger turbines than are used on land, but the U.S. does not yet have facilities for manufacturing large turbines.  Each of the various states would like to become the hub for large turbine manufacturing, but their competition could drive up manufacturing costs, putting the economics of the projects in jeopardy.  The world’s first floating wind farm was installed off the coast of Scotland last year.  Now Statoil, one of the project’s developers, has reported that not only has the farm survived winter storms, it has produced more electricity than expected.

Methane leaks from oil and gas sites in Pennsylvania could be five times greater than industry has reported to state regulators, according to a new analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund.  On the subject of methane leaks, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is seeking to wipe out the requirements that oil and gas well operators on BLM land monitor and detect leaks of methane, and capture and sell it instead of flaring it off or venting it to the atmosphere.

FERC voted unanimously on Thursday to remove barriers for batteries and other energy storage systems on the grid.  The new rule, first proposed in November of 2016, will require most grid operators to come up with a plan to amend their rules to fully integrate energy storage and allow it to compete.  Meanwhile, many consumers and businesses in areas that frequently experience severe weather are considering solar plus storage for the resiliency it provides.  Out in the desert southwest, Arizona Public Service was looking for a way to deliver power during peak evening hours in the summer.  First Solar’s bid with solar plus storage beat out conventional renewables, standalone batteries, and natural-gas peaking plants.

A new study in Nature Communications looked at the climate impact of a shift from truck-based to drone-based package delivery. It found that while small drones carrying packages weighing less than 1.1 lb would reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to diesel or electric trucks anywhere in the U.S., the same is not true for larger drones carrying heavier packages.

The debate over the Renewable Fuel Standard has heated up again.  Oil interests have claimed that ethanol mandates hurt profitability and have caused a major refinery to declare bankruptcy.  The ethanol industry has said that the program is working as intended.  In addition, the NHTSA is looking at a range of options to lower future fuel economy standards, including one that would permit an average fleetwide standard of 35.7 mpg by 2026, down from the 46.6 mpg under rules put in place by the Obama administration.

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

A new paper, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that if all coal-fired power plants that are planned or under-construction were built and operated for their design lifetimes, while existing coal-fired power plants continued to operate, it would be impossible to hold global warming below 2°C.  After failing to get FERC approval for a plan to bail out some coal-fired power plants, DOE officials are considering having Rick Perry use his authority as energy secretary to grant emergency compensation for plants run by First Energy Solutions that may be at risk of shutting down.  Ted Nordhaus, Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, had an interesting essay in Foreign Affairs arguing that the 2°C goal is a delusion because climate change is not a problem that can be solved, but rather, must be managed.

In a formal comment submitted Wednesday to the docket for the repeal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), four Democratic senators wrote that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is unfit to oversee the repeal of the CPP because of his history of lawsuits against the plan and the Obama administration when Pruitt was attorney general of Oklahoma.  Hence, he should recuse himself.  On an 11-10 party line vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler’s nomination to be Deputy Administrator of the EPA was sent to the full Senate for a vote.  Over the weekend, the White House withdrew its nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to head the Council on Environmental Quality.  The compromise federal spending bill that Congress passed early Friday includes an array of tax credits for renewable energy, along with a controversial tax break for carbon-capturing technologies that will benefit the fossil fuel industries.

Ivy Main summarized the recent energy happenings in the Virginia General Assembly (GA).  As of Thursday, the electric utility regulation bill pushed by Dominion Energy was advancing through both chambers of the GA.  Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Dominion Energy was having disagreements with the Public Service Commission and the legislature over its proposed takeover of SCANA and how refunds related to the defunct Summer nuclear power plant should be handled.  The University of Edinburgh announced that it is divesting its £1bn endowment fund of all fossil fuel investments.  Climate change art made the news this week.  An article at CityLab featured the work of Hannah Rothstein, who reimagined seven historic National Park posters, originally designed for the WPA, to show what the parks might look like in 2050 after being damaged by climate change.  In addition, a feature article at Thomas Reuters Foundation News introduced several climate change museums around the world, including one in New York City showing pictures and a film of ice cores.

Climate

According to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), there may be more than 874,000 tons of mercury buried in the permafrost of the Northern Hemisphere — roughly “twice as much mercury as the rest of all soils, the atmosphere, and ocean combined.”  The danger is that as the permafrost thaws, the mercury could be released and make its way into the food chain.  Another article in the same journal raised another issue to consider as we act against the root causes of climate change.  A significant part of the warming that has occurred since 1970 has been driven by CO₂ emissions from new coal-fired power plants in China, India, and other developing countries.  Many of those power plants have no scrubbers on them so they are emitting aerosols, thereby causing severe air pollution in many cities.  Because aerosols block incoming sunlight, they act to cool Earth, counteracting some of the warming associated with the CO₂ emissions.  According to the paper in GRL, the removal of the aerosols from the power plant stacks and other sources could induce a global mean surface heating of 0.5–1.1°C, an impact that needs to be considered in planning.

According to an analysis by reporters at The New York Times, 2,500 facilities in the U.S. that handle toxic chemicals are in locations that face a high or moderate risk of flooding.  Those risks are likely to increase as rainfall becomes more intense in a warming world.  A new study published in the journal Climate examined how the risk of flooding will change in Europe due to climate change.  At all levels of warming studied (1.5°C, 2°C, and 3°C), there is a substantial increase in flood risk over most countries in Central and Western Europe, but a smaller increase in Eastern Europe.

A controversy has erupted among marine scientists over the amount of carbon stored as a result of the growth of seagrass meadows (so-called “blue carbon”).  Late last year a team from Fisheries and Oceans Canada published an article in Environmental Research Letters claiming that blue carbon researchers are overestimating how much carbon is being stored in ocean sediments.  Tuesday, a group of Australian scientists published a response in the same journal.  This is an example of how science progresses and ultimately will drive research to the correct assessment.

David Kirtley had an interesting blog post on Skeptical Science about what changed the minds of several climate change skeptics.

Energy

On several occasions I have linked to articles about the debate over whether it is possible to decarbonize the electrical grid by using only renewable energy.  Now David Roberts at Vox has provided a primer on the issues involved in the debate.

Ionic Materials Inc., a battery-material developer, raised $65 million to build a production line and commercialize its technology, which involves a polymer electrolyte material for solid-state alkaline batteries, a concept that will compete with the dominant lithium-ion technology.

On Wednesday, Navigant Research released its latest report, “Offshore Wind Market and Project Assessment 2017”, which analyzed the offshore wind energy market around the globe, and found that 3.3 GW worth of new wind energy capacity was installed in 2017, bringing the global capacity up to almost 17 GW.  The UK accounted for more than half of the installations across Europe.  Vestas Wind Systems will offer combined wind, solar, and storage technologies, allowing the world’s biggest turbine maker to sell hybrid renewable plants that generate electricity around the clock.

On Tuesday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its 2018 Annual Energy Outlook, which projected that the carbon emissions of the U.S. will barely go down for the foreseeable future and will be slightly higher in 2050 than it is now.  If that occurs, the U.S. would almost single-handedly exhaust the whole world’s carbon budget by midcentury.  In a new climate risk report requested by investors, ExxonMobil said that keeping global warming below 2°C might mean cutting the use of oil by 20% between now and the year 2040, although it insists it would still be able to produce all the oil in its existing fields and keep investing in new reserves.

New research from Applied Economics Clinic, commissioned by Consumers Union, concluded that a greater investment in energy efficiency by Dominion Energy in Virginia would reduce new household energy demand by nearly 60% and help significantly cut the need to build additional capacity, which could save customers up to $1.7 billion over the next decade.

The state of South Australia is continuing its development of energy storage systems with the announcement of a 1350 MWh pumped hydro energy storage plant in addition to Tesla’s recently awarded 675 MWh virtual power plant.  In the UK, a Scottish engineering company has received a grant from the government innovation agency to explore the commercial viability of using abandoned mine shafts for energy storage.  Rather than pumping water, as others have proposed, Edinburgh-based Gravitricity would suspend a huge weight in the mine shaft and raise it when there is excess electricity available, then lower it to generate electricity when needed.

From the end of 2016 to the end of 2017, the U.S. solar industry lost 9,800 jobs, marking the first drop ever recorded in the “National Solar Jobs Census” since it started collecting data in 2010.

Last week, the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee unanimously rejected the Northern Pass transmission project, which was to have moved power from Hydro-Quebec dams in Canada to a substation in Deerfield, N.H.  The developers plan to appeal.

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

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology met Tuesday to hear about management and priorities at the Department of Energy (DOE).  According to draft budget documents obtained by The Washington Post, the Trump administration is planning to ask Congress to cut the funding for DOE’s renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by 72% in fiscal year 2019.  A new Pentagon report identifies military facilities vulnerable to climate change, documenting the effect of flooding, drought and extreme temperatures at installations across the U.S.  President Donald Trump didn’t mention climate change or global warming in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, but then neither did Rep. Joe Kennedy (D, MA) in the Democratic rebuttal.  At The New York Times, Brad Plumer had a review of the state of the climate after a year of the Trump administration and at The Guardian, Bill McKibben presented a plan for how to proceed in spite of Washington.  At the EU, French foreign affairs minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said: “No Paris Agreement, no trade agreement. The U.S. knows what to expect.”  Researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities have released their 2018 Environmental Performance Index, which ranks 180 countries on overall environmental performance.  The U.S. ranked 27^th, near the bottom of developed countries.

Lawmakers from nine states announced on Wednesday that they would be forming a coalition to help pass carbon pricing at the local level, citing the importance of state-level policies in the face of federal inaction on climate.  In other actions at the state level, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee rejected a permit to build the nation’s largest oil-by-rail terminal in Vancouver and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order on Monday putting the state back in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and another on Wednesday putting it on track to develop 3.5 GW of offshore wind by 2030.  New York and Massachusetts are targeting 2.4 GW and 1.6 GW of offshore wind, respectively.  California Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order setting a new target of 5 million zero-emission vehicles in California by 2030 and 250,000 vehicle charging stations by 2025.  Last week I included a link to an article about Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s moratorium on new wind energy projects in the state.  Now, the Conservation Law Foundation has filed a lawsuit charging that the Governor’s action is unconstitutional.

If you have ever read one of the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) you are probably aware of the difficulty climate scientists have had communicating their complex subject to the public.  Hopefully, upcoming reports will be easier to read, thanks to a new communications manual commissioned by the IPCC and released on Tuesday.  On the subject of communication, Jason Samenow traced the history of the terms “global warming” and “climate change” for the Capital Weather Gang.  In case you aren’t really certain about what we know about climate change or have a friend who knows little about the topic, Wired published a guide to the subject on Thursday.  Amy Brady had another interview with the author of a cli-fi book at Yale Climate Connection this week.  The subject is Robin MacArthur and her book is Heart Spring Mountain.  And at Ensia Richard Heinberg wrote about the role of the arts as we face more and more difficult decisions in a warming world.

Climate

A new report produced by the European Academies Science Advisory Council has concluded that negative emission technologies have “limited potential” for meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.  Instead, emphasis should be placed on preventing CO₂ from entering the atmosphere in the first place.

The UK’s meteorological agency’s decadal forecast said the global average temperature was “likely” to permanently exceed pre-industrial temperatures by 1°C between 2018-2022.  It also said that there is around a 10% chance that at least one year in the period could exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.  At Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather summarized the various kinds of climate data from 2017 and explained why the year was so remarkable.

At the start of this week, California’s statewide snowpack averaged just 30% of normal for the date, not far from the 25% logged at the same time in 2015, a record-low year.

In Oymyakon, Siberia, the forecast high on Thursday was 14°F, nearly 60°F warmer than its average January high around -44°F, and more than 100°F warmer than it was two weeks ago (-88°F).  This unusual warmth in Siberia could trigger a chain of events resulting in a deep freeze over central and eastern North America.

Research reported in a new paper in the journal Science challenges our perceptions of polar bears, their hunting techniques, and their energy needs.  One important fact uncovered is that polar bears burn energy at a rate that is 1.6 times previous estimates.  The overall results suggest that polar bears will have more difficulty surviving in the face of sea ice decline than previously thought.  Another study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on Tuesday, looked at something somewhat smaller — beetles.  The researchers looked at eight species of beetles that were caught in British Columbia over the past 100 years and compared changes in their size to temperature data over the same time period, finding that the largest beetles got smaller as the temperature warmed.

Energy

China is about to start its carbon emissions trading scheme, so Carbon Brief took an in-depth look at what is known about it, the remaining gaps, and how it will fit in with China’s wider climate policy landscape.

Dominion Energy announced Wednesday that its Cove Point liquefied natural gas export terminal in Lusby, Md., was beginning production, with Shell providing the natural gas for export into the global market.  On the subject of natural gas, Rocky Mountain Institute summarized our knowledge of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry and suggested ways they can be reduced.  In addition, Dana Nuccitelli argued in The Guardian that renewables plus storage will ultimately crowd out natural gas.

Last week I provided a link to an article that said that the developer of a proposed transmission line to carry renewable electricity across Arkansas had given up because of strong opposition.  Now, the developer of a transmission line to carry hydropower from Quebec to Massachusetts is facing pushback on several fronts.

Tesla Inc. is planning a major expansion of its solar division at Home Depot Inc.  It will install Tesla-branded selling spaces that are staffed by Tesla employees who can demonstrate its solar panels and Powerwall battery.  On the subject of Tesla, Reuters has learned that it is collaborating with several of the large companies that have ordered its new semi-truck to build on-site charging terminals at their facilities as part of Tesla’s efforts to roll out the truck next year.

According to a new analysis from two think-tanks, one in the UK and the other in Germany, the EU got more of its electricity from wind, solar, and biomass in 2017 than from coal.  At the end of last week, the U.S. Energy Information Agency released a report on the CO₂ emissions of each state between 2000 and 2015.  CO₂ emissions dropped in 41 states, but increased in nine.

New wind installations in the U.S. reached 7 GW in 2017, down from 8.2 GW the prior year, the American Wind Energy Association said in a report Tuesday.  Nevertheless, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects wind power to surpass hydroelectric power as the country’s leading source of renewable energy in the next two years.  MAKE Consulting’s “Global Wind Turbine Trends 2017” report, published at the end of December, forecast continual growth in wind turbine size and capacity over the next six years.

On Tuesday, Bernard Looney, head of BP’s upstream division, admitted that some crude oil will be left in the ground, saying “Not every barrel of oil in the world will get produced.”  Responding to shareholder concerns, PPL Corp., which owns two utilities in Kentucky, said it would reduce CO₂ emissions by 70% from 2010 levels by 2050.  And on a call with investors on Friday of last week, Jim Robo, CEO of NextEra Energy predicted that by the early 2020s, it will be cheaper to build new renewables than to continue running existing coal and nuclear plants.

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.