Month: November 2019

Politics and Policy

I’ve decided to start with two sobering articles from our neighbors to the north, both published in The Tyee.  The first makes the point that we can’t stop the climate crisis just by switching to renewable energy.  The second two-part article starts by addressing the same issue, but then laying out “11 realistic responses to the climate crisis.”  (Part I; Part II).  If these articles get you down, you might consider what Cara Buckley has to say.

At Inside Climate News, Marianne Lavelle addressed the question of why, given his credentials as a climate warrior, climate activists aren’t excited by a run for president by Michael Bloomberg.  Democrats unveiled the “100 Percent Clean Economy Act,” the first significant legislation in their effort to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  Former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren all have different proposals for decarbonizing U.S. transportation.  Republicans are beginning to come forward with proposals for climate legislation, as evidenced by this opinion piece and interview.  However, author and professor Thor Hogan argued that action on climate change will only come with Democratic victories in 2020.

Some regulators are arguing for mandatory disclosure of climate change risks to investors and regulators.  As a consequence, companies that analyze such risk have become attractive for investors.  Yale Environment 360 looked at the complex policy issue of moving people away from rising seas by examining the experiences of people in one New Jersey community on the Delaware Bay.  Last year Virginia Beach, VA, became one of a small but growing number of communities willing to say no to real estate developers who wanted to build houses in an area prone to flooding.  The developers sued; the city won.  Copenhagen’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2025.  Jonathan Watts wrote eloquently about a meeting of diverse people in a remote community in the Amazon basin.  They comprise a nascent alliance of traditional communities, climate activists, and academics who are re-imagining what the world’s greatest forest was, what it can be, and who can best defend it.  That makes it particularly sad to note that development, most of it illegal, destroyed more than 3700 square miles of Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the year ending in July.

Wisconsin became the latest state to enact an ALEC-patterned bill providing severe penalties for those who trespass near oil and gas pipelines in order to protest.  On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court was to consider whether to take up climate scientist Michael Mann’s defamation suit against conservative magazine National Review.  California and 22 other states sued the EPA last Friday, asking a federal court to block the Trump administration from stripping California of its authority to set its own fuel-efficiency standards on cars and trucks.  Starting in 2020, California will only buy from automakers that recognize the state’s legal authority to set emissions standards.  In a comprehensive article in Energy Transition magazine from the Rocky Mountain Institute, Christian Roseland examined the big question of how best to design cities for urban mobility. 

Climate and Climate Science

On Wednesday, the Economist Intelligence Unit released its Climate Change Resilience Index, which measures the preparedness of the world’s 82 largest economies.  They found that based on current trends, the fallout of warming temperatures would shave off 3% of global GDP ($7.9 trillion) by 2050.  The impact varied by region, with the developing world fairing worst.  Of course, when considering studies quantifying future economic impacts, one must bear in mind that it is difficult to project impacts resulting from circumstances that are unprecedented.  That is the conclusion from a new report published by the London School of Economics based on a collaborative study involving three prestigious institutions.  As a result, future impacts are likely to be underestimated.

Fire seasons around the world are growing longer, making it more difficult for countries to share resources, such as the large tanker planes that dump large quantities of water on the flames.  Although multiple factors are involved, one reason for the fire in Australia is thought to be an intensification of the Indian Ocean dipole. 

An article in the journal Science Advances reported that one-third of vascular plant species in Africa are potentially threatened with extinction and another third are likely rare, potentially becoming threatened in the near future.  I’ve put in several articles in the past about coral bleaching and how it has increased as temperatures have increased.  Now Chris Mooney and several photographers and videographers have presented a report in The Washington Post about what scientists are doing to help save coral reefs.  A potentially deadly disease affecting marine mammals, including seals and sea otters, has been passed from the North Atlantic Ocean to the northern Pacific as a result of the melting of the Arctic sea ice.

Diaa Hadid and Abdul Sattar had a very interesting piece about the farmers in the Harchi Valley in Pakistan’s highlands who have a complex relationship with the Ultar glacier, which is melting.  You’ve probably heard about the research ship that was purposely frozen into the Arctic sea ice as part of the year-long project MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate).  Daisy Dunn of Carbon Brief spent the first six weeks with them and here is the first of four planned articles covering the scientist’s research.

According to data released this week by NOAA, 2019 is likely to be Earth’s second- or third-warmest calendar year on record since modern temperature data collection began in 1880.  A study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters suggests that by 2050, on average globally, urban heat island warming will probably be equivalent to about half the warming caused by climate change. 

Energy

On Thursday, Tesla unveiled its all-electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck.  Ford is now taking deposits for its new all-electric Mustang Mach-E.

To accommodate increased population growth and to build stronger economies, African nations are turning to more coal-fired power plants.  In addition to increased greenhouse gas emissions, more power plants mean more conventional air pollutants.  According to a recent study in Environmental Science and Technology, that pollution will cause tens of thousands of premature deaths.  Countries around the world reduced their coal-fired power plant capacity by 8GW in the 18 months to June 2019 because old plants were retired faster than new ones were built.  But over the same period, China increased its capacity by 42.9GW.  Of even greater concern is that within China, coal and electricity industry groups are pushing for an even bigger increase in the country’s overall coal power capacity.  Furthermore, China is also financing around a quarter of all proposed coal-fired power plants outside its borders.

In this year’s “Production Gap” report, the UN Environment Programme warned about a major discrepancy between planned fossil fuel production and efforts aimed at limiting global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C.  Planned production by 2030 is about 50% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 2°C and 120% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. 

Maine is moving forward with Aqua Ventus, a demonstration project with one or two wind turbines that would be the first floating offshore wind installation in the country.  In an effort to facilitate marine traffic through areas with offshore wind turbines, the five New England leaseholders have proposed a uniform turbine layout with 1 nautical mile spacing between turbines.  Balsa wood is a key component of many wind turbine blade cores because it is both strong and lightweight.  Unfortunately, there is currently a shortage of balsa, slowing the production of turbine blades.  The growth of wind energy in Germany has slowed for a variety of reasons.  Are there lessons to be learned for the U.S.?  Global wind speeds are picking up after decades of stalling, creating the potential for wind turbines to increase average output 37% in the next five years, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Heliogen is a start-up energy company that uses a field of mirrors and artificial intelligence to concentrate sunlight and create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, and glass, as well as to drive other industrial processes, such as making hydrogen.

Potpourri

On Monday, The Washington Post unveiled Climate Solutions, a line of coverage that explores the people and organizations focused on tackling climate change.  Just in time for Thanksgiving, Susan Shain compiled a list of places you can go to get the facts about climate change.  A professor at an Arkansas university presented an essay about how he learned to sidestep politics while teaching climate science.  His message is relevant to all of us.  Bill McKibben had an essay in The Guardian entitled “The climate science is clear: it’s now or never to avert catastrophe.”  He and Tamara Toles O’Laughlin wrote in Yes! magazine that big oil should have to compensate poor people and people of color for the suffering they have experienced and will experience as a result of climate change.  Writing in Ensia, Laalitha Surapaneni argued that we shouldn’t waste time trying to change the minds of climate deniers.  Rather, we should invest it in motivating passive allies to act.  An Israeli company claims to have developed an economic way to convert household garbage into a thermoplastic that can be formed into usable products.

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

Working with the Rhodium Group, Columbia University economists completed a study of a fee-and-dividend type carbon tax and found that it would slash American carbon pollution by almost 40% within a decade.  Meanwhile, the political arm of the Climate Leadership Council is launching a digital ad campaign to sell a carbon tax.  Transportation accounts for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, much of that from cities.  Consequently, cities around the world are struggling with how to control vehicles and their impact.

If you are a sustainability investor you might be interested in a new paper in Palgrave Communications by researchers at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment within the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard who studied where to invest in more renewable energy infrastructure.  Studies at the University of Buffalo have found that it is possible to make buildings more resilient to the impacts of climate change while also reducing their contributions to its cause.

On Monday, former coal executive Don Blankenship announced he will make a 2020 White House bid as a Constitution Party candidate.  Although young voters are attracted to Bernie Sanders’ climate plans, others say they are “technically impractical, politically unfeasible, and possibly ineffective.”  In a joint project organized by Inside Climate News, reporters across the Midwest explored how communities are responding to climate change.  A new report from Climate Transparency said that Canada’s plan to meet its greenhouse-gas emissions targets is among the worst in the G20, whereas Australia’s response to climate change is one of the worst.  As if to prove the point, Australia’s government appeared pretty dysfunctional in the face of the brush fires.

According to ProPublica, although California’s cap-and-trade program has helped it meet some initial, easily attained benchmarks, experts are increasingly worried that it is allowing the state’s biggest polluters to conduct business as usual, and even increase their emissions.  An estimated 80% of Britain’s peat bogs have been damaged or destroyed, leading to the release of significant amounts of the CO₂ that had been stored in.  Because bogs are such important carbon sinks, efforts are now underway to learn more about bog ecosystems and how to restore large boggy areas.

Climate and Climate Science

According to a major new study, published in The Lancet, climate change poses an unprecedented health risk to children and is already having “persistent and pervasive” effects that will last throughout their lives.  Australian weather forecasts for the next three months said that there is just a 25% chance that the country’s east coast, where brush fires are raging, will receive average rainfall.  A group of former fire chiefs said the government’s refusal to discuss climate change issues was impeding preparations for large-scale fires.

During an “acqua alta” event on Wednesday, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice was flooded for only the sixth time in 1,200 years.  Four of those floods have occurred within the past 20 years.  The mayor attributed the severe flooding to climate change, but there are many reasons Venice floods.  Yale Climate Connections discussed new efforts by scientists to study the risk potentials associated with multiple climate change events, such as when a drought and heat wave occur together.

At Yale Climate Connections Sara Peach addressed the question: “How is climate change affecting autumn?”.  And on a similar topic, Alejandra Borunda of National Geographic discussed the weird fall weather the U.S. has been experiencing lately.  On longer time scales, numerous areas have seen greater climate volatility recently.  Big, destructive hurricanes are hitting the U.S. three times more frequently than they did a century ago, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

This year, the algal bloom in Lake Erie was among the most severe and toxic since scientists began keeping track in the early 2000s.  Tony Briscoe, an environmental reporter with the Chicago Tribune, wrote about the many factors, including climate change, that have contributed to such blooms.

The intensity of ice generation in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan exceeds that of any single place in the Arctic Ocean or Antarctica, and the sea ice reaches a lower latitude than anywhere else on the planet.  Unfortunately, it is in one of the most rapidly warming places on Earth, which is slowing down ice production.  This, in turn, is causing cascading effects in the North Pacific.  Science presented the most interesting video I have seen yet depicting Arctic sea ice loss.  In addition to extent, it also incorporates age.  A new study published in PNAS has found that loss of snow and ice cover are the main reasons for a reduction in the Arctic’s ability to reflect heat, not soot as had been previously thought.  Switzerland is responsible for just 0.1% of global CO₂ emissions, yet the Alps are warming twice as fast as the global average, causing many problems.  Inside Climate News had a good article by Bob Berwyn using new research to explain the factors driving ice loss from Antarctica.  In addition to the warm waters eating away the bottoms of the ice shelves, “atmospheric rivers” are causing more surface melting.

Energy

On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its World Energy Outlook for 2019.  It contains both good news and bad news.  The good news: more use of fossil fuel-free energy.  The bad news: increasing energy demand.  In addition, the IEA revealed that methane leakage from coal mines could be having an impact on climate equivalent to that of the shipping and aviation industries combined.  Although its Outlook is widely read, the IEA is often criticized by clean energy advocates.  If you want to do something else to help lower your CO₂ emissions you might consider switching the time that you run your dishwasher, clothes dryer, and other high-demand electrical appliances from daytime to nighttime.

A research team, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, has reported that China’s CO₂ emissions from its energy sector are expected to increase this year and next, driven by rising oil and gas consumption instead of by coal.  The African Development Bank will not fund a coal-fired power plant project in Kenya and has no plans to finance such plants in future, senior officials said.  Also, the European Investment Bank said Thursday that it will stop financing fossil fuel energy projects from the end of 2021.

Tesla will “build batteries, powertrains and vehicles” at its European gigafactory, which company CEO Elon Musk has tweeted will be in the Berlin area of Germany.  In an effort to boost the sales of electric vehicles (EVs), manufacturers are shifting their focus to the high-performance, rather than environmental, features of the cars.  On the other hand, a 2018 survey of U.S. consumers found that they would prefer phasing out gas-guzzlers sooner, rather than later.  E&E News has just reported on the “Electric Road Trip,” an 8,000-mile journey in an electric car and an investigation into how electric transportation will change America.  Many cities want to add electric buses to their bus fleets, but the capacity to build them is limited, resulting in hundreds of backlogged orders in the U.S.  One downside of EVs is the deterioration of the batteries over time.  Thus engineers and DIYers are looking for ways to use the residual storage capacity of the batteries once they have reached the end of  their useful automotive life.

Thirteen cities and one county in California have enacted new zoning codes encouraging or requiring all-electric new construction.  Faced with such electrification of buildings, one natural gas utility is proposing to add renewable biogas to its pipelines.  This raises questions, such as, how viable a business model this is and will it help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Japanese officials have announced a new $2.7 billion project that will include 11 solar plants and 10 wind farms to be built on abandoned or contaminated lands in Fukushima prefecture.  Virginia Gazette published an article about the state of solar farms in Virginia.

Potpourri

William E. Rees, professor emeritus of human ecology and ecological economics at the University of British Columbia, said not to call him a pessimist, but rather a realist.  In a two-part series (Part I; Part II) he explained why “the world needs to face some hard facts that suggest we are headed toward catastrophe.”  A survey by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 63% of Georgia voters think the country is not doing enough to address climate change.  When you want to take a break and watch a film you can choose from the “Top 10 sustainability films of all times” compiled by The Hill.  Jeff Peterson, who worked at the EPA, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and White House Council on Environmental Quality, has a new book out: A New Coast: Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas.  He published an article on The Daily Climate about ways coastal communities can prepare for storms and rising seas.  The winners and shortlisted photos in the Climate Visuals 2019 photography awards were presented at The Guardian.  Authors Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope think “The climate silence that had long pervaded so much of the media has been broken.”

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 Monday the Trump administration filed the paperwork with the U.N. to officially withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, which cannot occur until Nov. 4, 2020.  In response 24 state governors pledged to uphold the agreement.  At The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer attributed the withdrawal to Trump’s belief in “carbonism.”  Ahead of President Trump’s action, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce quietly updated its position on the Agreement to support it.  Thomas Fuller and Coral Davenport had an extensive piece in The New York Times (NYT) that examined how the policies of the Trump administration are hampering California’s efforts to fight climate change.  Meanwhile, a new study by the energy research company Vibrant Clean Energy has found that Colorado can decarbonize its entire state economy while still providing reliable, affordable power.  Transportation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the U.S. where people drive much more than in other countries.  Consequently, Michael Hobbes finds it odd that none of the Democratic presidential contenders has put forth meaningful proposals for dealing with the issue.

The Natural Resources Defense Council announced Tuesday that it has hired Gina McCarthy, who headed the EPA under President Barack Obama, as its new president and chief executive.  The Senate’s bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus added six new members on Wednesday.  Like the House’s Caucus, members must join two-by-two, with one member from each party.  On Thursday, President Trump formally nominated Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, a former vice president of Ford Motor Co and Louisiana state energy regulator, to head the Department of Energy (DOE).  Fifteen states and a coalition of seven environmental and consumer groups sued DOE on Monday, challenging a decision to eliminate energy efficiency standards for many types of lighting.

Wall Street is incorporating a new risk metric when evaluating companies: climate resiliency.  The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco held the system’s first-ever climate research conference on Friday.  A report published by the Universal Ecological Fund assessed the initial commitments made by the 184 countries that agreed to the Paris Climate Accord in 2015.  They found that only 36 countries made pledges that could conceivably reach the IPCC’s goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.  With sea level rise increasing, coastal communities are facing greater and greater risk.  At Yale Climate Connections, Jan Ellen Spiegel presented some strategies that could help them prepare.

For Prof. Narashimha Rao of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, climate change, at its most essential, is a justice issue.  His research shows that reducing inequality would improve our ability to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change, and provide for a more stable climate future.  Profs. Ryan Gunderson and Diana Stuart addressed the question of whether corporations should lead climate action and concluded that “Waiting for voluntary corporate actions in a system that still prioritizes profits above all else is simply too slow and may never be effective.”  Umair Irfan of Vox wrote that this week’s legislative elections in Virginia will make it much easier for Governor Ralph Northam to move forward on climate-related initiatives, such as having Virginia join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.  However, to do so, Virginia’s government must break its bonds with corporate giant Dominion Energy.

Climate and Climate Science

Author Eugene Linden published an opinion piece discussing the various ways in which climate scientists have underestimated the speed at which changes in the climate can occur.  Coincidentally, for the first time, a group of scientists has published an analysis calling climate change an “emergency,” stating that “Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to ‘tell it like it is.’”  The analysis, published in the journal BioScience, was spearheaded by five scientists and was signed onto by an additional 11,258 from around the world.  The five page summary analysis may be read here.

October was the warmest such month on record globally, narrowly edging out October 2015 for the top spot, according to a new analysis from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.  The Taku Glacier north of Juneau, Alaska, one of the world’s thickest mountain glaciers, has started to retreat as temperatures rise.

A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience examined the complex question of how higher temperatures and CO₂ concentrations will affect the availability of water.  In addition, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that greenhouse gas emissions until 2030 pledged under the Paris Climate Agreement lock in 1 m of sea-level rise in the year 2300, even without any additional emissions.

A study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, has projected that by 2100 under business‐as‐usual greenhouse gas emissions, the total abundance of emperor penguins will decline by 81% relative to its initial size, regardless of dispersal abilities.  In contrast, if the Paris Agreement objectives are met, viable emperor penguin refuges will exist in Antarctica.  As a result, the global population is projected to decline by 31% under Paris-1.5°C and 44% under Paris-2°C, before rebounding somewhat.  The phocine distemper virus (PDV) has plagued marine mammals for decades in the North Atlantic Ocean, but now it has shown up in the North Pacific Ocean.  Infected seals from Europe traveled through passages along Northern Russia that had been opened up by lower sea ice levels, allowing the virus to be transmitted to the North Pacific.

Energy

Data on the sources of power in the National Electricity Market in Australia showed that at 11:50 am on Wednesday, renewables were providing 50.2% of the power to Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia – the five states served by the market.  Early next year, one of the first power projects that combine solar and wind generation with battery storage is planning to start up in northern Queensland state.  The project aims to provide more information on how to firm-up intermittent renewable power so that the lights stay on when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.  New Zealand has adopted a legally-binding target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  With its economy growing, but with no space for large solar farms, no place to construct hydropower dams, and a dwindling natural gas supply, Bangladesh plans to build 29 coal-fired power plants in the next 20 years, increasing coal’s contribution to its power supply from 2% to 35%.  Both the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the International Energy Agency are predicting major declines for fossil fuels and nuclear power alongside strong growth in renewables by 2022 in the U.S.

In an interview with the Energy News Network, Joe Woomer, vice president of grid and technical solutions for Dominion Energy’s Power Delivery Group, talked about the industry’s transformation.  Apex Clean Energy is seeking an amended permit from the Botetourt County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors to allow them to increase the height of the proposed wind turbines on North Mountain to 700 ft.

A paper in the journal Science Advances describes a passive system capable of cooling things down by 23°F without using any power.  BBC News reviewed the current status of nuclear fusion as a source of energy.  The world depends on chemical production to form the ammonia at the heart of modern agriculture.  The process for making ammonia has been around for over 100 years and produces large quantities of CO₂ — about 1% of all human emissions.  Now a paper in the journal Joule describes a new process that can cut the CO₂ emissions in half.

A new research paper in the journal Nature describes how NASA scientists were able to use airborne spectrophotometry to detect and quantify methane emissions from point sources in California.  A key finding was that just 10% of the emitters were responsible for 60% of the total methane emitted, suggesting that major reductions can be achieved by correcting a relatively small number of emitters.  A new report from Carbon Tracker found that none of the major oil and gas companies are on track to be aligned with Paris by 2040.  Combined, they must cut production by 35% if nations are the meet the collective ambitions of the Paris Agreement and limit global warming to below 2°C.  In spite of that, the NYT reports that a surge of oil production is coming as a result of activities in Brazil, Canada, Norway, and Guyana.

China plans to lead the world in electric vehicle production with an associated infrastructure for vehicle charging.  Toyota has made its hybrid owners unhappy by siding with President Trump on the fuel-economy standards issue.  Lordstown Motors Corp. has bought a massive assembly plant that General Motors shut down earlier this year in Ohio.  The company will use it to build a new electric pickup truck that will be marketed to commercial customers.

The U.S. has become only the second country in the world with 100 GW of operational wind capacity, following China.  More than a quarter of that capacity is in Texas.  A preliminary study suggests that the Block Island Wind Farm has improved fishing in the area by acting as an artificial reef, causing greater fish species diversity.

Potpourri

At The Conversation, Anitra Nelson and Brian Coffee discussed the principles of ecological economics and explained its role in future planning in the face of climate change.  Economist Mark Jaccard has a new book out, entitled A Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success: Overcoming Myths that Hinder Progress.  He was interviewed about it by Nathanael Johnson at Grist.  Amy Brady interviewed Kassandra Montag, author of the new cli-fi book After the Flood.  In an article in Columbia Journalism Review about media coverage of climate change, Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope wrote: “While much work still needs to be done, climate coverage does seem to have turned a corner.  The climate silence that had long pervaded so much of the media has been broken.”

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

Following weeks of violent protests in Chile, President Sebastian Piñera said the country would not host the COP₂₅ climate summit in December.  The next day, Spain offered to host the meeting in Madrid.  A new report from the European Environment Agency said the EU is nearly on track to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.  However, a “Significant increase in efforts [is] needed over the next decade” to reach the 2030 goals.  The U.S. did not participate in the Green Climate Fund meeting last Friday in which 27 countries pledged nearly $10 billion to assist poorer nations in combatting climate change.  They were unable to make up for the shortfall caused by the lack of U.S. participation.

On Monday, more than a dozen automakers filed a legal intervention siding with the White House’s effort to revoke the right of California and other states to enact tougher emissions rules than those set by the federal government.  Rather than freezing CAFE standards for five years at 2020 levels, the U.S. EPA may issue a rule by year’s end requiring automakers to sell new cars that reduce carbon emissions by 1.5% a year through 2025.  Top House Republicans are talking through how to proceed with their own climate change legislation, but it remains to be seen how far they’ll be willing to go.

Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality is about ready to release its how-to tool kit for solar developers to guide them in making their property attractive to pollinators and birds by planting native plants.

A secret agreement has allowed America’s homebuilders to make it much easier to block changes to building codes that would require new houses to better address climate change, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times (NYT).  CBC News addressed the issue of population control as a strategy for fighting climate change.

Climate and Climate Science

California is burning again, driven by Santa Ana and Diablo winds.  Jason Samenow and Andrew Freedman of the Washington Post had a good explanation of those winds and how climate change might influence them.  The fires caused Bill McKibben to ask: “Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in?”  In addition, California resident and NYT columnist Farhad Manjoo ruminated over the future of his state.  Meanwhile, members of the Sunrise Movement used the fires as a focus of protests in the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to express their frustration about the level of congressional inaction on climate change so far.

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by damage to tropical rainforests around the world are being underestimated by a factor of six, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.  Although organic farming has many positive impacts on the environment, yields are lower than conventional farming, meaning that more land is required.  According to a new study in Nature Communications, the greenhouse gas emissions from that additional land more than offset the benefits from organic farming.

Research by Climate Central has shown that rising sea levels could, within 30 years, push chronic flooding higher than land currently occupied by 300 million people, mostly in coastal Asia.  In 2015, nations around the world agreed to pursue a set of sustainable development goals, but worsening climate change may be putting them out of reach, a top UN official said.

As a result of Earth’s warming, the amount of sea ice that blankets the Gulf of St. Lawrence is shrinking at a rate of roughly 12% per decade, increasing the exposure of shore lines of islands like Magdalen to increasing erosion and collapsing cliff faces.  The annual fall bowhead whale migration along the north coast of Alaska and Canada is late, raising concern for native people who depend on them for winter food.  At Inside Climate News, Sabrina Shankman examined the links to climate change.  Arctic seas, along with the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, are acidifying faster than any other marine waters on the planet.

Scientists gathered for a “High Mountain Summit” at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, discussed the fact that mountain-sourced water supplies are becoming less predictable as warmer temperatures melt glaciers, change precipitation patterns, and alter river levels.  A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported the surprise finding that glacial rivers sequester CO₂ by chemical weathering due to the high concentrations of silicate silt particles present.  Current methods of CO₂ accounting don’t consider this sink.

Energy

In a new paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, MIT engineers described an entirely new method for removing CO₂ from a stream of air.  Although the technique could revolutionize the field of carbon capture, there are a number of nontechnical barriers preventing the widespread adoption of carbon capture and storage.  Another research paper, this one in Joule, presented an advance in electric vehicle battery charging that could allow enough charge to travel 200 miles to be applied in just 10 minutes.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has stated that the development of floating offshore wind turbines could enable offshore wind to meet the entire electricity demand of several key electricity markets several times over.  Although little of it is offshore, the U.S. is now home to more than 100 GW of wind energy capacity, second only to China, a new report from the American Wind Energy Association said Thursday.  The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Monday released for public comment its last environmental analysis of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Project in Wyoming.  It will be the largest wind farm in the U.S., with up to 3 GW of capacity from 1,000 turbines.

The U.S. coal company Murray Energy filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday.  Honda has announced that it will sell only hybrid and electric vehicles in Europe by 2022, three years earlier than previously planned.  In its annual Southeast Asia outlook, the IEA warned that the region could become a net importer of fossil fuels in the next few years, increasing carbon emissions in the region.

A new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute has found that by the middle of the 2020s, hybrid ‘portfolios’ of batteries and renewable energy will economically outperform existing gas power plants.  Furthermore, such portfolios are already cost-competitive with building new ones.  A new study from Harvard’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment will help planners in different regions of the U.S. determine which type of renewable energy would bring the most benefit to their region.  The benefits varied by region.  On Thursday, Dominion Energy announced plans to build a 150 MW solar park in Prince George County, Virginia, and send its output to a data center facility.  A group representing some of Virginia’s largest employers, including Walmart, says Dominion Energy has too many carbon-emitting facilities in its renewable energy portfolio plan and that the utility is stifling renewable energy market growth.

Driven in part by Colorado’s stringent methane standard, a growing cadre of scientists and entrepreneurs is working to develop and deploy novel technologies to address the growing issue of methane leaks across the natural gas supply chain.  The UK plans to phase out subsidies to power plants that use wood pellets as fuel.  This has given hope to activists in North Carolina who hope to shut down the wood pellet industry, arguing that electricity generated with wood pellets is not really carbon neutral.

Potpourri

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has turned down the Nordic Council’s 2019 Environmental Award, stating that rather than awards, “What we need is for our politicians and the people in power [to] start to listen to the current, best available science.”  Fareed Zakaria reviewed Rachel Maddow’s new book Blowout, concluding that it “is a brilliant description of many of the problems caused by our reliance on fossil fuels.  But it does not provide a path out of the darkness.”  If you want to get more involved in a national movement to increase action on climate change, SueEllen Campbell has compiled a list of organizations to consider.  Two editors at The Conversation summarized what the “experts” recommend that we do to fight the climate crisis.

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.