Month: November 2018

Politics and Policy

The ranking members of the House committees on Energy and Commerce; Natural Resources; and Science, Space, and Technology said they plan to hold a series of hearings about climate change over two days at the beginning of next year.  While The Hill reported that Democrats were divided over how to confront climate change, David Roberts of Vox speculated that there may be more unity than meets the eye.  Let us hope so, because as Richard Eckersley wrote this week, “It is barely stretching the truth to say that since the 1960s, we have declared each decade as the time for decisive action on the environment, and as each decade passes, we postpone the deadline another ten years … This profound failure is having far-reaching consequences that go beyond the environment, as it undermines trust in our institutions, notably government and democracy.”  Perhaps change will come from the actions of some of the new members of Congress who have a history of environmental activism.

In a repeat of a strategy that brought strong criticism at last year’s UN climate talks, the Trump administration plans to set up a side-event promoting fossil fuels at this year’s talks next month in Poland.  However, the administration also plans to allow State Department officials to take part in key negotiations.  A new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, assessed the relationship between each nation’s ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the temperature rise that would result if all the countries in the world followed their example.  China, Russia, and Canada are among the worst, leading the world to 5.1°C of warming by 2100, whereas the U.S. goal would lead the world to 4°C warming.

A team of scientists has reported in the journal Science Advances that the U.S. could meet a significant portion of its pledge under the Paris Climate Agreement through the application of natural climate solutions such as reforestation, management of grasslands, and the use of cover crops.  Conversely, in anticipation of looser environmental regulations, deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon jumped almost 50% during the three-month electoral season that brought Jair Bolsonaro to power.  Furthermore, Bolsonaro has chosen a new foreign minister who believes climate change is part of a plot by “cultural Marxists” to stifle western economies and promote the growth of China.

Despite greater attention to the risks of sea level rise, housing construction in the most vulnerable areas of the country is growing more quickly than in safer, drier locations, according to a new report by the research organization Climate Central and the real estate website Zillow.

A bipartisan group of 18 governors is proposing that the federal government take a serious look at integrating the three main U.S. power grids, comparing the importance of grid modernization to the creation of the interstate highway system 60 years ago.

Climate

Two papers published Wednesday in Nature addressed the issue of hurricanes.  One examined the rainfall intensity of Hurricanes Katrina, Irma, and Maria and found that it increased by between 4% and 9% because of climate change.  The other found that Houston’s tall buildings promoted Hurricane Harvey’s heavier rainfall by increasing atmospheric drag.  Scientists behind a major study that claimed the Earth’s oceans are warming faster than previously thought, now say their work contained inadvertent errors that made their conclusions seem more certain than they actually are.

Reporter Marguerite Holloway and photographer Josh Haner went to America’s oldest national park to capture how climate change is altering the landscape and ecosystem.  The result is a stunning but sad article about Yellowstone.  Dana Nuccitelli presented the many ways in which climate change has worsened California’s wildfires at Yale Climate Connections.  Scientists have documented how thawing permafrost in the Arctic is causing rapid erosion of the shoreline.  A study published in the journal Marine Fisheries Review has found that valuable species of shellfish — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams, and northern bay scallops — have become harder to find on the East Coast because of degraded habitat caused by a warming environment.  A study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found that heat stress appears to be associated with transgenerational fertility problems in male insects.

The ecosystem in the Andes above 12,500 ft is called the páramo and it is warming faster than anywhere else outside of the Arctic.  Throughout the Andes, the páramos act like a sponge, collecting water from fog, drizzle, and melting mountaintop glaciers, storing it, and then releasing it into the lowlands.  An estimated 40 million people depend on the páramos for drinking water.  Sarah Fecht of Columbia University’s Earth Institute visited the páramos to report on the changes occurring there as Earth warms.  A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month, showed that birds in the Andes are heading uphill to keep pace with warming temperatures and will soon run out of room.  Writing at Yale Environment 360, Richard Conniff used that study as a jumping off place to explore the larger picture of species adaptation to climate change.

Increasing demand for home air conditioning, driven by global warming, population growth, and rising incomes in developing countries, could increase Earth’s temperatures an additional 0.5°C by 2100, according to a new report by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI).  The demand is growing so fast that a “radical change” in home-cooling technology will be necessary to neutralize its impact, writes RMI.

Chinese scientists have warned that the melting glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, known as the world’s Third Pole, will cause a reduced water supply in coming decades.  The plateau is the origin of Asia’s 10 largest rivers, including the Yangtze, Yellow, Indus, Yarlung Zangbo, and Syr Darya rivers, which provide water for three billion people across Asia.

Energy

The good news: Renewable energy is now cheaper than natural gas and coal in parts of the U.S.  The bad news: The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects global energy demand will rise 25% through 2040 if it stays on its current trajectory.  Consequently, CO₂ emissions may continue to rise.  However, new energy saving and renewables targets adopted by the EU on Tuesday put the bloc on course to overshoot its climate goals.  Under the new rules, the EU is targeting energy savings of 32.5% and a renewable energy goal of 32% by 2030.  On the other hand, a new report by Climate Transparency found that 82% of energy in G20 countries is still being provided by coal, oil and gas, which have relied on an increase of about 50% in subsidies over the past 10 years to compete.  Half of the increase in Australia’s annual CO₂ emissions can be linked to the failure to bury greenhouse gases underground at the country’s largest liquefied natural gas development.  Meanwhile, columnist George Monbiot made an impassioned plea in The Guardian for radical action to drastically cut carbon emissions.

Despite years of claims and commitments about clean investment and alleviating climate change, the world’s largest oil companies have contributed just 1% of their spending budgets to green energy in 2018.  The fracking of hard-to-reach oil reserves has helped the U.S. regain its crown as the world’s top crude oil producer, but even the IEA is now worried that the shale boom has been overhyped.

Monday afternoon as a cold front was moving into the area with windy conditions, wind turbine output in Texas reached 17,920 MW, 2% higher than the previous record.  Two Master of Science students at Lancaster University won the James Dyson award for their O-Wind Turbine, which takes advantage of both horizontal and vertical winds without requiring steering.

Volkswagen intends to sell electric cars for less than $23,000 and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla rivals.  VW is also expected to discuss far-reaching alliances with battery cell manufacturer SK Innovation and rival Ford.  Starting in January, all major manufacturers operating in China, from global giants Toyota and GM to domestic players BYD and BAIC Motor, have to meet minimum requirements there for producing new-energy vehicles, or NEVs (plug-in hybrids, pure-battery electrics, and fuel-cell autos).  Electric school buses are slowly making a debut in school districts around the U.S.  Backed by a state grant, Greenlots will partner with Volvo Trucks to install charging infrastructure for electric trucks in warehouses in Southern California, including onsite solar panels and energy storage.

A proposal by Pacific Gas & Electric, one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities, to deploy large-scale energy storage using batteries to replace peaking natural gas plants has been approved by the state’s regulator.  In Australia, Fluence will supply the latest large-scale battery energy storage system.  Meanwhile, India will take a different approach, with Tata Power planning to purchase a gravity-based energy storage system from Energy Vault.  The U.S. military is increasingly turning to renewables, batteries, and other technology to bolster energy resilience at bases, according to a new report from the Association of Defense Communities.

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.

Politics and Policy

The elections provided good news and bad news on the climate front.  The good news is that at least 10 new governors campaigned on aggressively moving their states away from burning fossil fuels and toward relying on renewable forms of energy for electricity.  Also, seven people elected to the House and one to the Senate have science backgrounds.  Finally, the citizens of Nevada voted to require utilities to generate or acquire incrementally larger percentages of electricity from renewable energy so that by 2030 at least 50% is renewable.  The bad news is that a similar measure was defeated in Arizona, while an attempt to enact the nation’s first carbon tax was defeated in Washington State.  Reporters Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman provided their five climate take-aways and Bill McKibben reflected on the election in an opinion piece, both in The New York Times.  Contrary to an article I linked to last week that said Democrats have no long-term climate agenda, Josh Siegle of The Washington Examiner reported that they plan to use their House majority to prepare for major climate change legislation in 2020.  They also plan to resurrect a special committee focused on climate change, giving them a platform to spotlight the issue.

According to three experts who issued a warning to their profession in the journal Science on Thursday, the Trump administration is empowering political staff to meddle with the scientific process by pushing through reforms disguised to look as though they boost transparency and integrity.  EPA.gov pages that previously provided information about climate change have been changed from claiming that they are “updating” to an error message that reads, “We want to help you find what you are looking for,” as revealed by a report released this week by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative.  The change indicates that information related climate change is not being “updated,” but removed entirely.  Newly elected Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an authoritarian nationalist sometimes called the “tropical Trump,” has staked out an environmental agenda that would open the Amazon to widespread development, putting at risk a region that plays a vital role in stabilizing the global climate.

The Children’s Lawsuit is on hold again after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s motion for a temporary stay.  A federal judge blocked the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline on Thursday, saying the Trump administration’s justification for approving it last year was incomplete.  The developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) filed an application with FERC on Tuesday to extend the natural gas pipeline into North Carolina.  On Wednesday afternoon, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a temporary halt to a water-crossing permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) in West Virginia.  As battles over the gas pipelines played out in court, West Virginia state regulators continued to cite the MVP and ACP for environmental problems.  The Virginia State Corporation Commission approved Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project last Friday.

Bonnie Tsui, a writer based in Berkeley, CA, had a photo-essay in The New York Times, reflecting on Yosemite National Park after the Ferguson fire.  Friday’s radio story at Yale Climate Connections featured “tempestries.”  A tempestry is a knitted representation of the year’s temperatures at a specific location.  Each color represents a temperature, and each line, the daily high.  Put together 365 of these lines, and you get a thin, striped tapestry that shows a full year’s changing seasons.  Katharine Hayhoe has posted a new episode of “Global Weirding”.  It’s all about climate models.  Writing at Transition Network.org, Rob Hopkins called for the use of imagination in fighting climate change, stating: “My main take-away from the 2018 IPCC report is that there may still be time, but only if we can bring about a deep reimagining of what the world could be and how it might work.  As Daniel Aldana Cohen put it, ‘we are only doomed if we do nothing’”.  Consequently, if you’re worried about climate change and its impacts at home and around the world, focus on your own actions and habits, say environmental advocates.  Here are six things you can do.

A new study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, highlighted the tendency among all Americans to underestimate how much minority groups (blacks, Latinos, and Asians, in particular) and low-income groups care about the environment and climate change.  And another study, which appears in the journal PLoS One, suggests that people of color, especially Native Americans, face more risk from wildfires than whites. It is another example of how the kinds of disasters exacerbated by climate change often hit minorities and the poor the hardest.

Climate

A new article in the journal Global Change Biology reports on a 30-year study of changes in 106 long‐term inventory plots in Amazonian forests.  The senior author summarized their findings thusly: “The data showed us that the droughts that hit the Amazon basin in the last decades had serious consequences for the make-up of the forest, with higher mortality in tree species most vulnerable to droughts and not enough compensatory growth in species better equipped to survive drier conditions.”

The rate of “daily nest predation“— eggs stolen from the nest by predators such as foxes or rodents — has increased threefold over the past 70 years in the Arctic, according to a study published Friday in Science that looked at more than 38,000 nests from 237 shorebird populations in 149 locations throughout the world.

Scant rainfall, hot temperatures, high winds, and plentiful fuel are to blame for the tinderbox conditions that fanned the flames of the Camp, Hill, and Woolsey fires in California.  And in a rapidly shifting environment characterized by rising temperatures, climate change played a role as well.

Jennifer Collins explored how climate change is altering the Bavarian Alps, reporting on things like disappearing glaciers, less snowfall and increased landslides.  And in another part of the world, Stephanie Leutert examined the relationship between climate change in Honduras and the movements of Honduran migrants northward.  Finally, climate scientist Michael Mann commented on the impacts of climate change on the extreme weather events in the U.S. this summer.

Rapid warming and vanishing sea ice in the Arctic have enabled new species, from humpback whales to white-tailed deer, to spread northward.  Scientists are increasingly concerned that some of these new arrivals may be bringing dangerous pathogens that could disrupt the region’s fragile ecosystems.

Energy

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), ‘Long-Term Energy Storage Outlook,’ is much more bullish on energy storage than last year’s report, saying that they expect battery costs to drop 52% by 2030.  In addition, BNEF claimed that this would “transform the economic case for batteries in both the vehicle and the electricity sector”.  Reuters reported that Germany has earmarked 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to support a consortium looking to produce electric car battery cells and plans to fund a research facility to develop next-generation solid-state batteries.  SolarEdge is targeting a world where the “majority of solar systems will include storage”, according to CEO Guy Sella.  Along those lines, a demonstration project was initiated in Germany in which a hybrid battery system containing both lithium-ion and sodium-sulfur batteries will be used to stabilize a grid containing significant wind energy.

In a new report, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is joining a growing number of environmental organizations to back existing nuclear power plants because of climate reasons, despite continued concerns about the technology’s safety and radioactive waste.  Steve Clemmer, a co-author of the report and director of energy research and analysis at UCS was quoted by Axios as saying: “We’re in a place right now from a climate perspective [where] we have to make some hard choices. We need every low-carbon source of power we can get.”

Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a new molecule for use in a molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage system.  In such systems, a photo-switchable molecule absorbs sunlight and undergoes a chemical isomerization to a metastable high energy species.  The fluid containing that species can then be stored, and when heat is needed, passed over a catalyst that causes heat to be released for use as the molecule returns to its original state.

In the past five years, the amount of renewable energy capacity in the UK has tripled while fossil fuels’ capacity has fallen by one-third.  The result is that between July and September, the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9GW, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of fossil fuel-fired power plants.  And in the U.S., a record number of coal-fired power plants will close this year, with cheap natural gas and renewables expected to replace lost capacity.  A report by the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis shows that a record 15.4GW of coal capacity will close.

A new paper in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution has found that the impacts of wind turbines are more far-reaching than previously thought.  The authors wrote: “By reducing the activity of predatory birds in the area, wind turbines effectively create a predation-free environment that causes a cascade of effects on a lower trophic level.”  In the developing world, an estimated 3,700 dams, large and small, are now in various stages of development.  A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences studied this proliferation of large dams and the importance of incorporating climate change into considerations of whether to build a dam.

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.

Politics and Policy

On Thursday, Emily Holden reported in The Guardian: “Democrats don’t have a plan to address climate change comprehensively – or even to a significant degree – if they regain control of the US government in the near future, despite criticizing Republicans as the party of pollution.”  In spite of that, according to Lisa Friedman of The New York Times, climate change has made its way into high-profile races this fall.  It is literally on the ballot in Washington state in the form of Initiative 1631, which would impose the nation’s first carbon tax.  Consequently, the oil industry has spent a record $30 million fighting the initiative, double what an alliance of green groups and billionaire activists has spent to support it.  On Wednesday, a conservative group released a report concluding that a national carbon tax would raise less revenue and cut emissions less than often claimed.  Among other energy-related issues on the ballot, both Arizona and Nevada are considering requiring power companies to get half of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

One finding in the recent IPCC climate report is that it will most likely be necessary to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere in order to hold the global average temperature increase below 1.5°C.  Consequently, San Francisco-based startup accelerator Y Combinator has announced a new initiative to invest in long-shot research into ways to cheaply do that.  Even as scientists learn more about hurricanes and climate change, FEMA flood-risk mapping does not take into account how global warming is changing the climate, including how sea level is rising.

A study done by the UK-based Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy found that only 58 of the 197 countries signing the Paris Climate Agreement have set economy-wide targets for emissions reductions in their domestic laws or policies and just 16 of these are as ambitious as, or more ambitious than, the pledges contained in their Nationally Determined Contributions.  The State Air Pollution Control Board of Virginia voted Monday to create a new set of regulations to limit CO₂ emissions from power plants that burn fossil fuels as part of a proposed new emissions trading system with nine other states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast (RGGI).

On Friday night, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt a novel lawsuit filed by young Americans that attempts to force the federal government to act on climate change, turning down a request from the Trump administration to stop it before trial.  Mary Heglar, a policy publications editor at a prominent environmental advocacy organization had a very moving and personal essay at Vox that provides insight into how one 20- or 30-something is dealing with the reality of climate change.  Jody Tishmack had a thought-provoking essay at Resilence entitled “Wake up. Stop Dreaming.”  Paul McAuley, a former research biologist who is now a full-time novelist with more than 20 books to his credit, has a new book of climate fiction (cli-fi), Austral.  Amy Brady interviewed him for Yale Climate Connections and Chicago Review of Books.  Amazon Original Stories, an Amazon Publishing imprint, this week launched a cli-fi series called “Warmer” about “possible tomorrows” in a U.S. ravaged by climate change.  The series contains seven books, each taking place in a different state.

Neil Chatterjee, the new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has pledged to keep politics out of the agency’s decisions.  PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest power market operator, released a long-awaited study on Thursday finding that there is no immediate threat to the country’s grid, undermining arguments from the Trump administration that favor bailing out coal and nuclear energy.  The New York Times reported that new data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication – in partnership with Utah State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara – show how Americans across the country view climate and energy policies.

Climate

While violence and poverty have been cited as the reasons for the Central American migrants trudging through Mexico toward the U.S., experts say the big picture is that the changing climate is forcing farmers off their land.

A new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature revealed that the world’s oceans have warmed 60% more than previously thought.  As a consequence, the maximum CO₂ emissions that the world can produce while still avoiding warming of 2°C must be reduced by 25%.  Reuters Investigates released a new series entitled “Ocean Shock” that was produced by a team of journalists, photographers, videographers, and artists to report on the changes that are occurring in the oceans as a result of their warming.  Eliza Barclay and Umair Irfan updated their post about 10 ways to accelerate progress against climate change.

A team at Vox prepared an interesting infographic presentation about how temperature and rainfall are projected to change in 2000 U.S. cities over the next 30 years if the world’s greenhouse gas emissions continue increasing as they are today.  “Unworkable”, a report from Public Citizen and the Farmworker Association of Florida released on Tuesday, spells out the risks of rising temperatures to Florida’s large population of outdoor workers, particularly construction and agricultural workers.  A new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, asserts that greenhouse gases are increasingly disrupting the jet stream, causing more frequent summer droughts, floods, and wildfires in the Northern Hemisphere.  Heatwaves in the UK are lasting twice as long as they did 50 years ago, according to a Met Office report.

On Tuesday, an iceberg about five times the size of Manhattan broke off of the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica.  It is the 6^th largest iceberg to calve from the glacier.  Meanwhile, scientists in Canada have warned that massive glaciers in the Yukon territory are shrinking even faster than would be expected from a warming climate and bringing dramatic changes to the region.  Daniel Grossman interviewed several climate scientists about climate tipping points for Yale Climate Connections.  New research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that while solar geoengineering could slow heating of the land, it may not slow the heating of the oceans and associated sea level rise.

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that some bird species living near the tops of tropical mountains have been driven to extinction by rising temperatures because they can’t move higher to cooler climes.

Energy

The Trump administration’s case for repealing the CAFE standards for cars is riddled with calculation mistakes, indefensible assumptions, and broken computer models, according to economists, environmental groups, and a major automaker.  However, David Roberts at Vox predicted that the rise of electric vehicles will render the debate over those standards moot.  Unfortunately, GM managed to upset environmental groups, politicians, the auto industry and others with its announcement that it supports establishing a national program modeled after California’s zero-emissions vehicle program.  To help Virginia communities switch to electric buses, the state is committing $14 million of the VW settlement to help cover the difference in cost between conventional buses and electric ones.

Japan’s nuclear power plants were idled following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in 2011, but some are now being reopened to provide electricity again.  For decades, uranium mining has been banned by state law in Virginia.  On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case testing whether the state has such authority, or whether it resides instead with the federal government.

Justin Mikulka reported at Desmog that “At current oil prices, most fracking companies are losing money while trying to get every last drop out of the known sweet spots in American shale plays. … These companies can’t hope to pay back their massive debts if the best days of the major shale plays are either in the past or rapidly approaching.”  Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, announced a plan last week to cover and capture methane gas from thousands of its hog manure pits.

At MIT Technology Review James Temple explained why it is so difficult to develop a battery-powered airplane and what researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon are doing to solve the problem.  On a larger scale, vanadium redox flow battery maker VRB Energy has begun commissioning a 3MW/12MWh energy storage system in Hubei, China, which is expected to help serve as a demonstrator for much larger projects to come.  However, because vanadium is scarce and increasing in price, researchers are looking at other chemicals, such as iron and selected organic molecules, for use in flow batteries.

As much as $60 billion of coal-fired power assets may be stranded in the next decade across Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, according to a new study by Carbon Tracker, which cited tighter environmental policies and competition from cheaper renewable energy.  As more solar and wind generation are added in those countries, coal plants will go idle and struggle to generate revenue needed to repay their loans.  The most promising “clean coal” systems burn coal at higher temperatures than conventional plants, capturing 48% rather than 30% of the energy out of each ton of fuel.  Their costs are about 40% higher than a regular plant, and their CO₂ emissions are 25% to 35% lower, according to the World Coal Association.  Still, the economics just don’t add up.  This was reinforced by a new study from the University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute that found wind to be the cheapest energy resource across the Central Plains and down the Appalachian Mountains, natural gas across the Coastal Plain and parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, and solar across the Southwest and sporadically through the Midwest and Northwest.

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.