Month: December 2019

Politics and Policy

After the widely denounced outcome at COP₂₅, E3G’s Quentin Genard and Jennifer Tollmann wrote: “In the absence of a climate-active US, all eyes are on Europe and whether it can bring the world’s biggest emitter – China – along with it.”  On the other hand, at BloombergNEF, senior contributor Michael Liebreich wrote two optimistic essays entitled “Peak emissions are closer than you think – and here’s why,” and “Climate wars episode IV – a new hope for the 2020s?”.  At The New York Times (NYT), Justin Gillis and Sonia Aggarwal looked at history to assess the U.S. capability for meeting the clean energy challenge.    

During the Democratic debate Thursday night, the candidates described climate change as an existential threat and said tackling it was a cause that could bring the country together.  Andrew Yang had an answer to the question of relocation in the face of climate impacts.  If elected president in 2020, Michael Bloomberg would target an 80% reduction in CO₂ emissions from electricity production by 2028 using only actions that can be taken by a president, acting alone, within a president’s term.  The plan presumes no legislative help.  Inside Climate News analyzed the climate positions of nine Democratic presidential candidates, as well as that of President Trump.  Writing in Buzz Feed News, Elizabeth Warren outlined how she would kick off the Green New Deal (GND) in the first 100 days of her presidency, if elected.  At Scientific American, Professor Marilyn A. Brown and graduate student Majid Mamadi addressed the question of whether a GND would add or kill jobs.  Andrew Yang has been advocating for the use of thorium-fueled nuclear reactors, rather than uranium-fueled ones.  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has investigated the validity of his claims.

The Transportation and Climate Initiative, a collaboration among 12 mid-Atlantic and northeast states, as well as Washington, D.C., released its first draft proposal for lowering vehicle emissions earlier this week.  A federal judge on Tuesday ruled the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was liable for damage caused by its decision to retain floodwaters upstream of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs during Hurricane Harvey, a move that caused severe and widespread flooding to homes and businesses on the far-west outreaches of the Houston region.  The Indianapolis Star had a profile of Carmel, IN, Republican mayor Jim Brainard and what he has done to reduce the carbon footprint of the city.

In the massive federal spending package that Congress passed this week, lawmakers slashed most of the tax credit extenders that analysts saw as this Congress’ best opportunity to accelerate renewable energy and cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on Thursday, issued an order that likely will tilt the market to favor coal and natural gas power plants in the nation’s largest power grid region.  It effectively will force state-subsidized solar and wind electricity providers to raise prices.  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a preliminary site permit this week sought by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for a small modular reactor near Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Climate and Climate Science

It is hard to imagine having a national average high temperature of 107.4°F, but that is what Australia had on Wednesday (Dec. 18), setting a new record for the second day in a row.  Australia and the contiguous 48 states of the U.S. are about the same size, but Australia is around 14° latitude closer to the equator.  In addition, wildfires were raging in southeastern Australia, where two firefighters were killed.  As if that were not enough, The Guardian reported that the Aboriginal people living in the town of Alice Springs in the center of Australia may need to become the nation’s first climate refugees as rising temperatures make life increasingly difficult.  In a report released on Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences found that since 2000 changes in climate have reduced the revenue of Australian cropping farms by a total of $1.1bn a year.

The decade from 2010-2019 was the hottest on record globally, with eight of the ten warmest years since measurements began occurring within it.  Although no El Niño is predicted for 2020, England’s Met Office predicted that it will be one of the hottest years on record globally.  Chris Mooney and colleagues at The Washington Post published a history of the worldwide network of weather stations that are used to determine the global average temperature.

The waters off California are acidifying twice as rapidly as elsewhere on Earth, according to a study published Monday in Nature Geoscience, which suggests that climate change is likely hastening and worsening chemical changes in the ocean.

In an editorial in the journal Science Advances, Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, both Amazon experts, warned that deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife, and release billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.  Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the period from January to November 2019 was 83% larger than in the same period in 2018.  In an essay at Mongabay, Taran Volckhausen argued that the Paris Climate Accord will be impossible to implement if tropical forest loss isn’t stopped.  At Yale Climate Connections, Will McCarthy examined just what constitutes an old-growth forest.

A large-scale analysis of bird migrations in the contiguous U.S. confirmed that birds’ seasonal long-distance flights are happening earlier than they did a quarter of a century ago, probably due to climate change.

Energy

Global demand for coal fell this year for the first time in two years as Europe and the U.S. turned their backs on coal-fired power plants in favor of gas and renewable energy.  Nevertheless, demand is expected to remain stable until 2024 as growth in Asia offsets weaker demand from Europe and the U.S., the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.  On the other hand, India has been aggressively pivoting away from coal-fired power plants and towards electricity generated by solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.  Last weekend, Goldman Sachs updated its rules about when and how it would underwrite fossil-fuel projects.  It will no longer finance oil exploration or drilling in the Arctic, new thermal coal mines, mountaintop-removal mines, or coal-fired power plants.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s primary power grid, is on track to have more than 20% of its power provided by renewables in 2019.  This is raising questions about whether it can continue to provide reliable supplies as the percent of renewables continues to increase.  Since August, TVA has persuaded more than 80% of the power companies that distribute its electricity to agree to 20-year contracts—a much longer timeframe than its past agreements.  Because TVA has only modest plans to decrease its carbon footprint over that time period, the new contracts could hamper its customers in utilizing renewable energy.

IBM said on Wednesday that it has created a battery design that uses materials extracted from seawater and requires no cobalt.  It is partnering with the research wing of Mercedes-Benz, battery electrolyte supplier Central Glass, and battery manufacturer Sidus for the commercial development of the new design.

A paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailed the use of satellite imagery to detect leaks from oil and gas facilities, using a 2018 gas well blowout in Ohio as a case study.  A study published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, compared several different scenarios for curbing methane from electricity generation in order to meet a target for 2030 of a 32% cut in CO₂-equivalent emissions relative to 2005 levels.

China’s solar panel manufacturers, forecast to meet half of global demand by the mid-2020s, are ramping up overseas sales to stave off closure after the elimination of government subsidies pushed domestic installations to a five-year low.  The U.S. residential solar market reached record highs in the third quarter of 2019, with 712 MW of solar installed.  Overall, the U.S. market added 2.6 GW of solar photovoltaics in the third quarter, swelling total U.S. solar capacity to 71.3 GW.  Technology firms are buying more than half the solar-generated electricity produced in Virginia, and a state official expects the industry to drive increasing demand for clean energy resources.

Potpourri

Climate scientist and communicator Katharine Hayhoe is a finalist for Texan of the Year.  Robin McKenna wrote about three ways to market climate science to reach skeptics.  Greta Thunberg has been named one of the 10 most influential people in science in 2019 by the scientific journal Nature and Hulu plans a documentary about her to air in 2020.  At Yale Climate Connections Sara Peach provided resources to help answer the question “Where should I move to be safe from climate change?”.  Adeline Johns-Putra provided brief descriptions of the seven most crucial climate change novels.  Susan Shain provided a list of five climate-related documentaries with brief descriptions at the NYT.  The Yale Program in Climate Change Communication has completed a new survey on Americans’ attitudes about climate change.  Among the findings, 59% understand that global warming is mostly human-caused whereas 30% think it is due mostly to natural causes.  Young activists say they’re seeing more “youth-washing” as the global youth climate movement gains momentum.

I’ll be taking the next two weeks off for the Christmas and New Year holidays.  The next Roundup will cover the week ending January 10, 2020.

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

Greta Thunberg spoke at COP₂₅, saying: “Finding holistic solutions is what the COP should be all about, but instead it seems to have turned [into] some kind of opportunity for countries to negotiate loopholes and to avoid raising their ambition.  Countries are finding clever ways around having to take real action, like double-counting emissions reductions, and moving emissions overseas, and walking back on their promises to increase ambitions, or refusing to pay for solutions or loss and damage.  This has to stop.”  As of Wednesday evening, things were not going well at COP₂₅, with major divisions appearing on Thursday.  So far, the largest countries have been unwilling to declare stronger commitments to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, whereas 73 small and developing countries have signaled their intention to enhance their climate plans.  One sticky point is carbon trading.  At Climate Home News Dennis Clare argued that there are many problems associated with the technique.  In addition, BuzzFeed News has obtained a draft proposal which they say the U.S. is circulating regarding the question of climate liability.  It suggests ways to limit the power of the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” – a way of addressing the loss and damage caused by climate change, particularly in developing nations.  On the other hand, the European Commission introduced the European Green Deal, in which nearly every major aspect of the European economy would be re-evaluated in light of the imperatives of the climate emergency.  Poland, however, will be allowed to work toward carbon neutrality at its own pace.

In a letter to the Lancet Planetary Health journal, a group of scientists has warned that livestock production must reach its peak within the next decade in order to meet climate goals.  Agriculture’s global footprint is decreasing. This, some researchers contend, presents an opportunity for ecological restoration that could help fight climate change and stem the loss of biodiversity.  In a move that will cost consumers $14 billion a year in higher energy costs and add to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, the Trump administration rolled back energy efficiency standards for lightbulbs.  Amid growing concerns about climate change, GM rolled out the next generation of its big truck-based SUVs, which are larger and heavier.  The UK is seeing a similar problem.

New York Supreme Court Judge Barry Ostrager ruled that ExxonMobil did not break state securities laws when describing to shareholders how it analyzed the effect of future greenhouse gas regulations on the company’s bottom line.  Two Virginia lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan effort on Thursday to reinstate the authority of the State Corporation Commission to review electricity base rates and set profit levels for Dominion Energy.  Mountain Valley Pipeline will pay $2.15 million for the environmental damage it has caused so far in building a natural gas pipeline through Southwest Virginia, while facing additional penalties for any new violations that may occur.

Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz argued in The Guardian that “environmental sustainability can be achieved only in tandem with efforts to achieve greater social justice.”  The Sunrise Movement and World War Zero, initiated by John Kerry, represent two very different approaches to mobilization on climate change.  David Roberts at Vox compared the two.  John Kerry paired up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D, CA) to write an opinion piece in The New York Times (NYT) entitled “Don’t Let China Win the Green Race.”  College Republicans across the country are calling on the GOP to back a conservative climate action plan.  Thousands of people rallied in Sydney, Australia, to protest against inaction on the climate crisis, after months of bushfires and hazardous smoke in New South Wales and Queensland.

Climate and Climate Science

NOAA released its “Arctic Report Card” for 2019.  The past six years have been the warmest ever recorded in the Arctic, causing it to undergo a profound shift and start releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost.  According to an article in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, not all of the recent rise in atmospheric methane is from melting permafrost, however.  Rather, some is natural in origin, coming from the Sudd wetlands in South Sudan, which received a large pulse of water from East African lakes.

The latest data from Climate Tracker show that even under the current national pledges to slow global warming, the Earth’s temperature will warm by 2.8° C by 2100, whereas if we continue with current policies it will warm to 3°C.  Climate scientist James Hansen posted a new essay on his website.

Based in part on her experience aboard the MOSAiC Arctic expedition, Daisy Dunne took a detailed look at a key question: when will Arctic sea ice disappear?  Juliet Eilperin profiled an Alaskan village that has benefited financially from the oil production in Alaska, but must now come to grips with the devastation occurring because of climate change.  Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the last IPCC report.  While we hear a lot about what is happening in Alaska and Greenland, we don’t hear so much about Iceland.  WBUR’s “Here and Now” visited there to change that.

According to a national poll by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans broadly accept climate science, but many are fuzzy on the details.  Researchers at the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania have designed a series of maps of the U.S. for an online collection named The 2100 Project: An Atlas for A Green New Deal.  It tries to visualize how climate change will impact the U.S.  Eliminating food waste can have a big, positive impact on the climate.  Amelia Nierenberg discussed strategies for doing that.

According to an international study, a quarter of the world’s population is at risk of water supply problems as mountain glaciers, snow-packs, and alpine lakes are diminished by global warming and rising demand.  On average, the oxygen content of the world’s oceans declined by 2% between 1960 and 2010 as a result of global warming.

Energy

Denmark is pursuing plans to build one or more artificial islands surrounded by offshore wind turbines with a capacity of 10 gigawatts.  The purpose of the islands is to allow conversion of excess wind power into renewable fuels, such as hydrogen.  Connecticut on Thursday selected Vineyard Wind’s 804-megawatt Park City project as the winner in a major offshore wind solicitation, setting up the seaport city of Bridgeport to become a significant hub for the emerging U.S. market.  The world’s first commercial airplane powered entirely by batteries made its inaugural test flight outside of Vancouver on Tuesday morning.

In MIT Technology Review, James Temple examined why greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and what nations must do to reverse the trend.  Maxine Joselow had a thought-provoking piece in Scientific American looking at “The Carbon Cost of Online Shopping.”  According to a new report from Principles for Responsible Investment, policies designed to combat climate change could permanently slash the value of companies around the world by up to $2.3 trillion.

Congestion in the newly expanded Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s electric transmission system threatens to significantly slow wind and solar development in the region.  The number of Virginia schools that have added solar panels has tripled in the last two years, according to a new report.

Greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas use now exceed coal emissions in the U.S. and Europe and gas is now the primary driver of emissions growth worldwide.  Brazil will push to expand oil drilling in its massive oil and gas find off its coast in spite of growing global concerns about climate change.  A glut of cheap natural gas is wreaking havoc on the energy industry.  Two reporters from the NYT used infrared imaging to detect methane leaks from oil and gas facilities in West Texas.  Dominion Energy announced Wednesday that it is partnering with Vanguard Renewables to develop and operate manure-to-methane conversion facilities at dairy farms across the U.S.  A group of 18 states, led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that blocked construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline under the Appalachian Trail.

A report released Wednesday by the National Farmers Union in Canada concluded that some elements of old-fashioned mixed farming can be combined with the latest technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Severe droughts in southern Africa have reduced electricity production from hydroelectric dams.

Potpourri

Greta Thunberg was named Person of the Year by Time “For sounding the alarm about humanity’s predatory relationship with the only home we have, for bringing to a fragmented world a voice that transcends backgrounds and borders, for showing us all what it might look like when a new generation leads.”  Rebecca Solnit had an opinion piece in The Guardian in which she said, in part: “We must expand our imaginations and act on that bigger understanding of our place in the world and our impact on the future.”  In The Washington Post, Sarah Kaplan addressed the question of the greenest way to travel.  If you are thinking of buying carbon offsets to make your travel carbon neutral, then you might want to read this article.  Bud Ward reviewed some of the high and low points for climate change in 2019 while SueEllen Campbell compiled four interesting sign projects about climate change, both at Yale Climate Connections.  Grist came up with 79 climate-friendly gifts for the holiday season.  Michael Svoboda compiled a list of twelve books on climate change and the environment.  Climate change communicator Katharine Hayhoe talked with Texas Observer reporter Megan Kimble about the things that give her hope.  While individual actions to combat climate change are important, they are insufficient and may even hamper efforts to bring about needed systemic change.

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 25^th Conference of the Parties (COP₂₅) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change began meeting in Madrid this week.  In an opinion piece in The Guardian, Alice Bell of the climate change charity, Possible, gave a brief preview of the COP meetings.  A delegation from the U.S. Congress said the U.S. will take action on greenhouse gases and engage with other countries on the climate emergency despite President Trump’s rejection of international cooperation.  A main issue to be resolved at COP₂₅ is how the carbon markets in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement will be handled, since they are highly controversial.  The World Meteorological Organization released its annual state of the global climate report at COP₂₅.  Henry Fountain used that occasion to summarize the impacts of Earth’s warming.  University of Oxford public policy professor Thomas Hale wrote about the tendency for climate politics to become increasingly existential as both climate change and decarbonization advance over the next decades.

Given the predictions of sea level rise this century, one problem coastal governments will face is deciding which properties they can afford to defend and which they can’t.  Facing that dilemma is coming sooner than expected for officials of Monroe County, in the Florida Keys.  Unfortunately, their job is made more difficult by the tendency of people living in flood-prone areas to underestimate the danger they face.  All of this is intertwined with the struggles of the insurance industry to adjust to the increased risk they face and the response of regulators to that adjustment.

A new report published by Greenpeace International said that restoring oceans’ ecosystems would boost their capacity to absorb heat and store carbon, helping to mitigate the impacts of increased atmospheric CO₂ levels.  Compliance with new regulations associated with fighting climate change will cost companies worldwide nearly $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an estimate by German insurer Allianz SE.

On Monday the Senate confirmed Dan Brouillette to lead the Department of Energy.  On Sunday, former Secretary of State John Kerry announced the formation of a new bipartisan climate alliance, called “World War Zero.”  Made up of world leaders, military brass, and Hollywood celebrities, the goal of the group is to push for public action to combat climate change.

Climate and Climate Science

Several sources reported on a study published in Geophysical Research Letters.  It examined how accurately computer models published between 1970 and 2007 projected Earth’s temperature as CO₂ and other greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere.  As the authors stated in their “Plain Language Summary”, “We find that climate models published over the past five decades were generally quite accurate in predicting global warming in the years after publication…”  I’ve provided a link to an article by David Roberts at Vox because the first part gives a good synopsis of the study, while the latter part provides a deeper dive for those who are interested.  A new generation of computer models is now being used in studies for the next IPCC report.  For those who are interested in the modeling efforts, Zeke Hausfather at Carbon Brief has prepared an explainer.

An analysis of 70,716 bird specimens from 52 North American species collected over 40 years shows birds are shrinking as the world warms, according to a paper published in the journal Ecology Letters.  According to the World Meteorological Organization, the average temperatures for the five-year (2015-2019) and 10-year (2010-2019) periods ending this year are almost certain to be the highest on record.  New research, published Wednesday in Science Advances, showed that just ten atmospheric river events caused nearly half the flood damage in the western U.S. over the past forty years, adding up to billions of dollars of damage. 

A new study, also published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, reported that the Arctic has warmed by 0.75°C (1.35°F) in the last decade alone while Earth as a whole has warmed by nearly the same amount, 0.8°C, over the past 137 years.  In addition, another study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that scientists are underestimating the number of melt ponds on the surface of Greenland that partially, and rapidly, drain into the ice sheet each year, thereby lubricating it and causing its more rapid movement toward the sea while the meltwater is flowing under it.  As a consequence, current models likely underestimate future sea level rise.  Another new study published in Geophysical Research Letters has found that thinning in the ring of floating ice around Antarctica is driving the loss of ice from the interior of the continent.

The issue of climate tipping points was back in the news, with a new paper in Nature warning that the risks are now much more likely and much more imminent than they had been thought to be eleven years ago when the same group of researchers evaluated them.  Graham Readfearn wrote about the Nature article in his column in The Guardian.  One possible tipping point involves the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or AMOC, which helps regulate temperatures and weather around the world.  Its flow has dropped 15% over the past decade.

At COP₂₅ in Madrid, the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported that whereas around 10 million people a year are displaced by river flooding today, the number could surge to as many as 50 million a year by the end of the century if governments do not step up action to tackle climate change.  Climate-fueled disasters such as wildfires, cyclones, and floods were the main reason that people were forced to flee their homes in the last decade, according to a new report from Oxfam.  Overall, these events have displaced more than 20 million people around the globe.  Such events are affecting our mental health, even if we aren’t directly impacted by them.  Since the federal government isn’t acting to reduce the causes of climate change, it’s a good thing it is funding programs to teach resiliency.

Energy

According to an estimate from the Global Carbon Project (GCP), total CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry will likely total 36.8 billion tons in 2019, 0.6% higher than in 2018, setting a new record.  Climate Brief provided a detailed analysis of the GCP report.  Umair Irfan of Vox republished a fascinating animation from an earlier Climate Brief post that illustrates how the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from various countries have varied over time from the 19^th century until now.  The China paradox: it burns about half the coal used globally each year, yet it’s also the leading market for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles.  According to a new report, the number of insurers unwilling to ensure coal projects more than doubled this year and for the first time U.S. companies have taken action, leaving Lloyd’s of London and Asian insurers as the “last resort” for fossil fuel projects.

A paper published Tuesday in Environmental Research Letters reported that natural gas use is growing so fast, its CO₂ emissions over the past six years were greater than the decline in emissions from the falling use of coal.  In a “Perspective” piece in The New England Journal of Medicine, three physicians wrote: “…we consider expansion of the natural-gas infrastructure to be a grave hazard to human health.”  Grist and bioGraphic teamed up to produce an extensive article about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, featuring the people and places that will be impacted.  The illustrations in the two sources are slightly different.

Federal nuclear regulators granted controversial 20-year license extensions to two aging reactors at Florida’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant, which means they could operate for a total of 80 years.  Washington State Ferries, which runs the second-largest ferry system in the world, is switching from diesel to batteries, a move that will eliminate current annual consumption of almost 20 million gallons of diesel fuel.  If you like futuristic ideas you might be interested in this article from Wired about the increasingly feasible idea of beaming concentrated solar energy from space to Earth.

General Motors and South Korea’s LG Chem said on Thursday they will invest $2.3 billion to build an electric vehicle battery plant near Lordstown, Ohio, creating one of the world’s largest battery facilities.  Electric vehicle start-up Lucid Motors is beginning construction of its production factory in Casa Grande, Arizona.  Hyundai Motor announced that it plans to invest about $17 billion between 2020 and 2025 on electric and autonomous vehicles.

Yale Climate Connections published an overview of energy storage techniques.  On Monday, the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary announced plans to become carbon neutral by 2030, offsetting the schools’ greenhouse gas emissions with more renewable energy and other steps.

Potpourri

Climate strikers took to the streets of Washington, DC on Friday, targeting the headquarters of the World Bank.  Giving Tuesday occurred this week, so Sigal Samuel of Vox prepared “a list of six of the most high-impact, cost-effective, and evidence-based organizations [you might consider donating to].  (I’m not including bigger-name groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund or the Sierra Club, because most big organizations are already relatively well-funded.)”  Peter Sinclair has a new “This Is Not Cool” video, this one about wind energy replacing coal as baseload power.  In the “Climate Fwd: newsletter” from the New York Times, Kyla Mandel provided helpful information about how to decrease the carbon footprint of your Christmas lights.  The Editorial Board of The Washington Post published a sobering editorial about humanity’s “bleak” future unless we act more quickly on climate change.

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.