Category: Climate News Roundup

In a week of important political news, the big item related to climate was the nomination of Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, as Administrator of the EPA.  He has been a leader of the legal fights against the Clean Power Plan, regulation of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry, and the EPA Waters of the United States rule.  The Washington Post called the nomination “a move signaling an assault on President Obama’s climate change and environmental legacy” and The New York Times said it signals “Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change – and much of the EPA itself.”  On the other hand, organizations such as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity were buoyed by the nomination, even though energy experts say the energy market has already shifted away from coal and is unlikely to move back.  Joe Romm has summarized the partisan divide on this nomination.  A particularly disturbing item in the news this week was a memorandum from the Trump transition team to DOE asking for, among other things, the names of all employees who had worked on clean energy and climate issues.

Climate

Two papers published in the December 7 issue of Nature appear to paint different pictures of the stability of the Greenland ice sheet over the past 2.8 million years.  However, one climate scientist invoked the old story of blind men feeling and describing an elephant to suggest that the findings don’t necessarily contradict each other.  Rather, at times, nearly all of Greenland’s ice could have melted (as seen by one team) while a frozen cap remained in the eastern highlands (as seen by the other team).  Taken together, the papers suggest that Greenland’s ice may be less stable than previously believed, raising concern for its long-term future.  At the other pole, another ice shelf has developed a large rift.  Last week I wrote about the Pine Island ice shelf, but this week it is Larsen C.  NASA released a new photo taken by researchers flying above the ice shelf showing that the rift is getting longer, deeper, and wider. Scientists say it will eventually cause a large section of the shelf to break off, releasing an iceberg the size of Delaware.

Sea ice was also in the news this week, with record low levels being reached in both area and volume in the Arctic.  In addition, the decline in the Antarctic was particularly startling.

On Monday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced a moratorium on all activities that could damage the nation’s peat-filled wetlands.  This could help prevent wildfires and the emission of billions of tons of CO₂ over the next few decades.

On Tuesday, NASA announced its first new earth science mission since the 2016 election: the Geostationary Carbon Cycle Observatory, or GeoCARB. The observatory will monitor vegetation stress in the Americas from about 22,000 miles up. It also will observe how greenhouse gases – CO₂, CO, and CH₄ – are processed in those environments.  Also set to launch is the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), which will use 8 microsatellites to improve hurricane wind speed forecasts and study how certain clouds and storm systems take shape.  Although this is an experimental system with short-lived satellites, if successful it will likely lead to a more permanent system.  Meanwhile, in response to information suggesting that the Trump administration planned to defund NASA’s earth science programs, scientists around the world were tweeting their appreciation to NASA for the many ways those programs had helped them understand Earth.

A new paper by a team of communications experts, published in the Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization, seeks to assist scientists in communicating linkages between extreme events and climate change.

An international team, led by NOAA scientists, has published a paper in the on-line journal Scientific Reports in which they project that by 2050 more than 98% of coral reefs around the world will be afflicted by “bleaching-level thermal stress” each year.  “The likelihood of the reef being able to survive through that is extremely low,” one of the report’s co-authors, Scott Heron of NOAA, told Guardian Australia.

The results of a meta-study published in the journal PLOS Biology on Thursday show that climate-related local extinctions have already occurred in hundreds of species, including 47% of the 976 species surveyed.  The frequency of local extinctions was broadly similar across climatic zones and habitats but was significantly higher in tropical species than in temperate species (55% versus 39%).  In addition, new research published in the journal Biology Letters expects melting ice in the Arctic to cause polar bear numbers to collapse by a third in as little as 35 years.

A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change has found that storms in the U.S. that now occur about once a season could happen five times a season by the end of the century and bring up to 70% more rain.  Such massive amounts of rain occurring more often could put significant strain on infrastructure that already struggles to deal with heavy rainfall.

As will be reported next week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, paleoclimatologist Kim Cobb and her team from Georgia Tech have reconstructed Pacific Ocean temperatures for much of the last 7000 years.  Although many things were going on in the climate over that time, there was no discernable effect on El Niño events until the 20^th century, when they became more extreme and intense, presumably because of global warming.  Speaking of El Niño, the recent event is over and has now been replaced with a weak La Niña, which typically causes temperatures to drop.  Satellite measurements have detected such a drop over land, which resulted in some misleading press and tweets, as explained by Chris Mooney of The Washington Post.  Also, The Weather Channel pushed back against one misleading article because one of their videos was featured prominently in it.  In addition, Bob Henson and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground posted an excellent blog on the subject.  If you only want to read one of these articles, read the one by Henson and Masters.

Energy

If you have been contemplating adding solar panels to your roof as your contribution to fighting climate change, then you may have been concerned about the energy payback period – i.e., the point at which the solar industry has produced more energy than was required to get it up and running.  Well, a new paper in Nature Communications has examined that question and determined that, in general, 2011 was the break-even year.  Consequently, you can relax and be assured that adding solar panels will indeed reduce your carbon footprint.  Chris Goodall had a conversation with the authors and has reported it on his blog, Carbon Commentary.

Anrica Deb, writing for The Guardian, explores the question of just how clean electric vehicles are, once we consider the source of the electricity and the manufacture of the batteries.  Another aspect of electric vehicles to consider is a decrease in driving range as the batteries age.  For example, the owner’s manual for the new Chevy Bolt warns drivers that they can expect to lose 10% to 40% of the battery capacity over the 8 year warranty period for the battery.  Meanwhile, a study from the research firm IHS Markit finds that electric vehicles could make up one third of the world’s car sales by 2040.  On the topic of electric vehicles, John Deere has unveiled a prototype all-electric farm tractor.

The Risky Business Project, founded by co-chairs Michael Bloomberg, Hank Paulson, and Tom Steyer, has shifted its focus from analyzing the risks of climate change to the opportunity that reducing those risks presents to the U.S. economy.  Its new report, From Risk to Return: Investing in a Clean Energy Economy, presents a convincing argument for the business case for a clean energy future.  However, the report states: “The private sector alone cannot solve the climate change problem. We know from our collective business and investment experience that the private sector will take action at the necessary speed and scale only if it is given a clear and consistent policy and regulatory framework. That framework must send a clear, consistent, and long-term market signal on the necessity of climate action, provide incentives for innovation and deployment of clean energy systems, and help society adapt to climate impacts that are inevitable due to past and current emissions.”  The change of administrations will make that difficult to achieve.

A new study by the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin seeks to capture the full cost of new electric power generation – including environmental and public health costs – on a county-by-county basis in the U.S.  When environmental and public health costs are considered, coal is not the least cost option in a single county and wind is the least cost option in the largest number of counties with natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) plants second.  When those external costs are excluded, coal is the least cost option in only 3% of the counties, with NGCC plants providing the least cost option in the most counties, with wind second.  Speaking of wind, the developers of a 119-turbine wind farm in Aroostook County, Maine, that would have been the largest in the state and one of the largest ever planned for New England, have withdrawn their application, citing interconnection problems.

In earlier Roundups I have linked to articles about perovskites and their potential for increasing the efficiency and decreasing the costs of solar cells.  Now Robert Service provides a summary of advances in perovskite development gleaned from a recent meeting of the Materials Research Society.  The bottom line: they are almost ready for the market.

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.

Climate

Two new research papers raise concerns about the stability of the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica.  One paper, published in the journal Nature suggests that the glacier started to melt in the mid-1940s as warm sea water flowed into a cavity under it.  That melting led ultimately to the rift that formed in 2013 and broke through in 2015, releasing a 225 square mile iceberg.  The other paper, published in Geophysical Research Letters, investigated rifts that started in the center of the glacier and propagated outward toward the margins.  Those rifts are also being caused by warm sea water under the glacier and are occurring further inland than previous rifts, raising concern about the vulnerability of the glacier to collapse.  Maria Gallucci, writing at Mashable, has further information about the papers.

Last week, while we were on Thanksgiving break, a paper appeared in the journal The Cryosphere examining the extent of Antarctic sea ice during the period of satellite records (1989-present) and comparing it to records from ships’ logs during the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” (1897–1917).  The study found that the impact of natural variability on the extent of Antarctic sea ice was larger than previously thought, making it difficult to tease out the effects of climate change from the effects of that variability.  Nevertheless, it appears that there has been a decrease in sea ice extent of at most 14% over the past century.  Unfortunately, press coverage of the paper was confusing at best, causing one of the authors to issue a commentary and clarification via Carbon Brief.

Also, on Friday of last week the Arctic Council released its Arctic Resilience Report in which they documented four tipping points that may have already been triggered: growth in vegetation on tundra, which replaces reflective snow and ice with darker vegetation, thus absorbing more heat; higher releases of methane from the tundra as it warms; shifts in snow distribution that warm the ocean, resulting in altered climate patterns as far away as Asia, where the monsoon could be effected; and the collapse of some key Arctic fisheries, with effects on ocean ecosystems around the globe.  Meanwhile, the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is likely to have an average annual temperature above freezing for the first time.  A number of factors associated with climate change, including the loss of sea ice have led to this situation.

Bolivia may serve as a case study of the impacts of drought and climate change on countries dependent of glaciers for part of their water supplies.  The country is in a prolonged drought that is having a major impact on the poorest regions of the country, leading to migration and social unrest.  On the subject of South America, illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased 29% since 2015, bringing the rate to its highest level in eight years.  The finding has raised fears that the country could lose a decade’s worth of progress in forest protection.

A large study published in Nature combines data from 49 field experiments located across North America, Europe, and Asia to examine the impact of warming on the loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere.  The authors conclude that their data provide strong empirical support for the idea that rising temperatures will cause more carbon to be lost than is stored, leading to a positive feedback that will accelerate warming.  Although independent of this study and its dire implications, an editorial in Nature Geoscience calls for increased research in climate remediation, including even studies on managing incoming solar radiation, but particularly studies on enhanced weathering to return atmospheric carbon to the soil.

Tornado outbreaks are sequences of tornadoes that occur in close succession.  A new study in the journal Science has found that the number of tornadoes in the most extreme outbreaks has roughly doubled over the past 50 years, but the increase doesn’t seem to be related to climate change.  Meanwhile, on a separate but related topic, a new paper in the journal Scientific Reports argues that climate change is causing the track of hurricanes to shift northward in the Atlantic Ocean, although hurricane specialist Kevin Trenberth finds the data to be inconclusive.

In a previous Weekly Roundup I included links to the lawsuit against the federal government brought by 21 youths aged 9 to 20 who argue that the government isn’t doing enough to address the problem of climate change and protect the planet’s future.  Now Chelsea Harvey has interviewed several lawyers to assess the chances that the children will prevail.

The bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef that occurred in April as a result of record sea surface temperatures was the worst ever recorded and has resulted in 67% mortality in the north section.  The central and south sections fared better, with 6% and 1% mortality, respectively.  The scientists conducting the study have an article at The Conversation.

Yellow cedar trees, which are actually a form of cypress, are dying across 1,500 square miles between latitude 50 and latitude 60 north has a result of a warming climate.  The warming has been thinning the snow cover, exposing the roots to freezing conditions.

Energy

Using a new report by Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering of the Breakthrough Institute as the basis, Eduardo Porter of The New York Times argues that as long as the new Trump administration keeps our nuclear power plants online, continues tax incentives for wind and solar, and doesn’t interfere with the shale energy revolution, “the U.S might outperform the commitments that the Obama administration made in Paris.”  On the other hand, analysts with Climate Interactive did some thought experiments with the help of computer simulation to see what might be the impact of a few scenarios and found that future warming depends on whether the Trump administration is a trend setter, both domestically and abroad.

Bloomberg Markets reports “Kinder Morgan Inc. and Enbridge Inc. won Canadian government approval for two pipeline projects — a long-awaited boost for the oil industry that could potentially expand exports, open new Asian markets and lift prices for locally produced barrels of crude.”  Prime Minister Trudeau was quoted as saying “The fact is oil sands production is going to increase in the coming years.  Because we are at capacity in terms of existing pipelines, that means more oil is going to be transported by rail in the coming years if we don’t build new pipelines.”  Meanwhile, in the U.S. gas pipelines are being re-engineered to allow bidirectional flow, meaning that by 2017 many older pipelines will be able to carry gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale fields in the northeast to the Gulf Coast for export.

According to The Hill, the Government Accountability Office released a pair of reports Monday on the federal ethanol blending mandate, concluding that advanced biofuels are not likely to reach the market penetration that the renewable fuel standard predicted, suggesting that greenhouse gas emissions are unlikely to fall as much as hoped.  Speaking of cars, on Wednesday EPA proposed ahead of schedule the mid-term review of the goal to require car manufacturers’ fleets to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.  If successful, this would make it more difficult to roll back the new CAFE standards.  Finally, automobile manufacturers are losing a significant amount of money on each electric vehicle they sell in the U.S., but are willing to do so for a while because of mandates in California.

Although China has reiterated its plans to push forward on climate action, it is scrambling to mine and burn more coal, The New York Times reports.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the EU will begin phasing out coal subsidies and cut its energy use by 30% by 2030, under a major clean energy package announced in Brussels on Wednesday. The 1,000-page plan also proposes measures to cut household electricity bills, integrate renewables into power markets, and limit use of unsustainable bioenergy.  The plan, which was widely criticized by environmental groups, must be approved by both the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament before becoming law.

India just unveiled a photovoltaic solar power facility with a capacity of 648 MW, making it the largest PV solar facility in the world.  As a result, India now has a solar capacity over 10 GW and is expected to become the world’s third-biggest solar market from next year onwards, after China and the US.

A new survey of 1,000 people conducted by the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies has found that 75% of Trump voters support “action to accelerate the deployment and use of clean energy” — including solar, wind, energy efficiency, and community renewable projects.  The survey also revealed lots of other interesting opinions concerning energy.

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.

Inside Climate News has a profile of Myron Ebell, who is heading the EPA transition team for the new Trump administration.  They also have an article about Steve Bannon.

Climate

At COP22 in Marrakech the Obama administration released a report outlining its plans for deep decarbonization of the U.S. economy by 2050.  Of course, the incoming Trump administration will determine whether any of the strategies in the plan are implemented.  Consequently, Climate Home entitled one of its articles on COP22 “With appeal to Trump, Kerry (and US) leave climate leadership.”  Meanwhile, Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management, stated at Marrakech “…now is the time to remind the incoming administration that virtually every company in the Fortune 500 and over $100 trillion in investor assets has acknowledged the reality of climate change and the need to address it head on.”  In addition, in an open letter, more than 360 businesses and investors reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change.  Finally, the Marrakech Action Proclamation reaffirmed the commitment of the world’s nations to fight climate change.

In a report released on Wednesday, the U.N. Development Programme said that limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C would avoid economic losses by 2050 of $12 trillion, or around 10% of the world’s GDP, compared to staying on the current track of at least 3°C of warming.  Also, the World Bank issued a report on the impacts of natural disasters such as storms, floods, and droughts on the global economy.  The report finds that such events push 26 million people into poverty each year and cost the global economy more than half a trillion dollars in lost consumption.

A new report from the Global Carbon Project suggests that for the third straight year the global CO₂ emission rate stayed almost constant.  Furthermore, the flattening occurred despite steady global economic growth above 3% per year.

A new paper in the journal Science investigated the impacts of climate change on 94 ecological processes worldwide and found that 84% were impacted, even though global average temperatures have only increased 1°C.

A study published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the disappearance of kelp from waters near Coffs Harbour in Australia coincided with a threefold increase in the number of tropical fish in the region.  The deforestation coincided with an 0.6°C temperature rise, which had no direct impact on the kelp, but did attract the tropical fish.

The Canadian Arctic is extremely warm right now while Siberia is extremely cold.  One impact of the warm weather is to prevent Arctic sea ice from forming as rapidly as it usually does, driving its extent to the lowest value ever recorded for mid-November.

The World Meteorological Organization has joined other scientific organizations in projecting that 2016 will set another global temperature record.  RealClimate has a post discussing this record heat in the context of incoming solar radiation, which is currently quite low.  The Guardian has collected stories from people all over the world who have been impacted by this year’s record heat.

Energy

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its World Energy Outlook for 2016.  In it they joined several organizations in pointing out that the national commitments in the Paris Climate Agreement are insufficient to meet the goal of keeping global warming well below 2°C.  Rather, the IEA projected that global temperatures would rise 2.7°C by 2100 if all commitments were met.  It also decreased in half its projections of future coal use, primarily due to decreases in China, where coal use peaked in 2013.  Nevertheless, the report projected that coal use in 2040 would be twice that needed for a 2°C path.

According to a new report by the Georgetown Climate Center, 19 states have developed strong policies aimed at diversifying their energy sources and cutting carbon emissions.  According to some renewable energy experts, these states have driven much of the progress on renewable energy and are unlikely to stop because of policy changes in a new administration.

Writing at Southeast Energy News Jim Pierobon states: “Large solar systems in Virginia are set to grow significantly through 2017.  But with few buyers other [than] the state’s dominant utility, the push may slow after that due to lack of sustainable demand and the policies to drive it.”  Meanwhile, a subsidiary of one dominant utility, Dominion Energy Inc., is adding 180 MW of solar energy production in five Virginia counties through a partnership with Amazon Web Services, Inc.  Nevertheless, a group of 18 major corporations has sent a letter to state lawmakers and the Virginia State Corporation Commission calling for “an explicit legal framework” to expand access to renewable energy from utilities and third-party sellers.

Virginia citizens and allies launched a Pipeline Pledge of Resistance, asking people dedicated to preserving clean soil and water and a safe climate to commit to acts of peaceful civil disobedience to stop the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines.  On the other hand, a coalition of Virginia businesses, legislators, and labor organizations touted the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s economic benefits on Thursday, saying the natural gas conduit is crucial to the commonwealth’s fiscal future.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that has been a long time coming, but which is necessary if global warming is to be held below 1.5°C, since that limit can only be met by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.  Thus, many are hoping that a Trump presidency will lead to more rapid development of CCS, although if that occurs it will be to help the coal industry.  Speaking of coal, there is a new documentary, Blood on the Mountain, that opens November 18 in New York and Los Angeles.  The Atlantic has a 6 minute excerpt.

The U.S. Geological Survey announced Tuesday that a deposit in West Texas contains 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the largest deposit ever discovered in the U.S.  All of it is “technically recoverable.”  On the same day, the U.S. Interior Department finalized rules aimed at preventing methane leaks from oil and gas production on federal and tribal lands.  The updated regulations could avoid wasting up to 41 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas per year.  Also, on Friday, as part of a new five-year plan for energy development in federal waters, the Obama administration banned offshore drilling in the Arctic.  It also dropped plans to allow companies to drill for oil and natural gas in the Atlantic Ocean off four southeastern states.

On Monday Alaska Airlines flew a commercial flight from Seattle to Washington, D.C., using jet fuel containing 20% alcohol derived from wood scraps by a Colorado-based company.

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.

Given Donald Trump’s statements concerning climate change, it is not surprising that his election as President on Tuesday has generated a lot of buzz in both the domestic and international media.  Here are some articles that are relevant to the question of how he will handle climate and energy.

1. “Donald Trump could put climate change on course for ‘danger zone’”
2. “What Trump can—and can’t—do all by himself on climate”
3. “Trump win signals titanic U-turn on energy, climate policies”
4. “Trump could pull out of global climate accord in a year: lawyers”
5. “The Paris Agreement will survive President Trump”
6. “Climate change: Nations will push ahead with plans despite Trump”
7. “‘Trump effect’ will test global momentum on climate change”
8. “All bets are off: 4 takeaways on what President Trump means for the power sector”
9. “How President Trump could upend Obama’s climate and energy legacy”
10. Ivy Main – “Why Trump won’t stop the clean energy revolution”

Here is episode 4 of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe.  It is important to recognize that many conservatives accept the science of climate change and are working to convince their associates of the need for action.  For example, consider the case of Alex Bozmoski of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University.

Climate

A federal judge in Eugene, OR, ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit filed by young climate activists, who contend the U.S. government is failing to protect them from the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions, can move forward.  U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken denied motions by the federal government and trade groups representing energy companies to dismiss the lawsuit.  The plaintiffs are seeking a court order that requires the government to create a plan to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions released by the burning of fossil fuels.  The press release from Our Children’s Trust can be found here.  Judge Aiken’s Opinion and Order can be found here.

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines the variability in sea level rise around the globe for two warming scenarios.  One surprising finding is that because of variability in sea level rise associated with factors ranging from ocean circulation patterns to mass redistribution, “more than 90% of coastal areas will experience sea level rise exceeding the global estimate.”  One particularly vulnerable region is the U.S. East Coast, which could experience a foot of rise by 2040 under a business-as-usual scenario.  Andrew Freedman has a list of the world’s largest cities that are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise.

Continued CO₂ emissions are causing two major stressors on coral reefs: elevated sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification.  Now research published in the journal PLOS One combines mapping of where people most depend on reefs for their livelihood with mapping of areas where reefs are most under stress.  The results show that countries in Southeast Asia would bear the brunt of the damage, but so would coastal communities in western Mexico and parts of Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia, with potentially severe economic consequences.

Irrespective of Donald Trump’s election, keeping global warming below 2°C (relative to preindustrial times) may have just gotten a whole lot harder.  That is because new research published this week in Science Advances suggests that Earth is more sensitive to greenhouse gases when it is warmer, as it is now.  If this is true, it means that under business-as-usual emissions Earth’s average temperature could rise by 4.8°C to 7.4°C by 2100 rather than by the 2.6°C to 4.8°C range projected by the IPCC.

The World Meteorological Organization has issued a new report examining Earth’s climate and weather over the period 2011-2015.  Not surprisingly, it was the warmest five year period on record.  They also found that many extreme events in the period have had their probabilities substantially increased, by a factor of 10 or more in some cases.  NOAA announced on Tuesday that October was the third warmest on record in the U.S.  In addition, 37 states had one of their five warmest January-October periods.

A new study, published in Nature Communications, explains why the rate of increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere leveled off and became constant this century.  It was because of increased plant growth in response to increased CO₂ concentrations and temperature.  As stated by the authors, “Enhanced carbon uptake by the biosphere to date has slowed the growth rate of atmospheric CO₂ and our results [suggest] uptake has been especially strong recently.  Without effective reduction of global CO₂ emissions, however, future climate change remains a stark reality.”

New research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that a 40% tax on beef and a 20% tax on milk would be required to account for the damage their production causes people via climate change.  Instituting such a tax would discourage people from consuming as much of these foods, reducing both emissions and illness.  The research also found that the taxes needed to compensate for climate damage were 15% on lamb, 8.5% on chicken, 7% on pork and 5% on eggs.

In October 2006 Nicholas Stern issued his important report on the economic impacts of climate change.  Now, in an interview with Robin McKie of The Observer, he reflected on his warning that the cost of inaction would be far greater for future generations than the costs of actions taken today: “With hindsight, I now realize that I underestimated the risks.  I should have been much stronger in what I said in the report about the costs of inaction.  I underplayed the dangers.”

Energy

Voters in the state of Washington voted down a proposal for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, even though it would have reduced other taxes and provided grants to households with low and moderate incomes to help off-set the costs of the new tax.  The vote raises questions as to what exactly “revenue neutral” means and how a carbon tax could be structured so that a broad segment of the electorate favored it.

TransCanada has said it hopes to persuade a new Trump administration to revive the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.  Meanwhile, Energy Transfer Partners, owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has said it is “mobilizing horizontal drilling equipment” in preparation for tunneling under Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri river near the protest camps and Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The corporation said it would be ready to start crossing the water in two weeks and felt that federal approval for the drilling was “imminent”.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on the other hand, once again called on Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work in the area.

A new paper in the journal Current Biology reports on a study into bat mortality by wind farms.  It found that Environmental Impact Analyses do not predict the risks to bats accurately, and even in those cases where high risk was correctly identified, the mitigation deployed did not avert the risk.  Hopefully, ongoing research into the causes and repercussions of bat fatalities at wind farms will help minimize them.

The city of Denver plans to add 200 plug-in electric vehicles to its fleet by 2020.  Toyota announced that it will introduce a fully electric vehicle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  This will be quite a change for them because they have been a major proponent of fuel cell vehicles.  Meanwhile, the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures asked the incoming Trump administration to roll back fuel efficiency standards issued during the Obama administration.

The EU is planning to spend €320 “in a comprehensive, inclusive and ambitious plan for building up ocean energy in Europe” according to environment commissioner, Karmenu Vella.  The money is intended to serve as a buffer for companies that are attempting to cross the “valley of death” between demonstration projects and the energy market.

Some renewable energy developers are exploring the installation of both solar and wind systems at the same site.  They claim that there are several benefits from doing so, such as saving money on grid connections, site development, and regulatory approvals.  In addition, combined systems can yield up to twice the amount of electricity as either system working alone.

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.

Since the election is Tuesday, I thought I should include Chris Mooney’s recent analysis of “What the election outcome will really mean for climate and energy” as well as Adam Wernick’s analysis of Clinton’s climate plan.

Climate

The Paris Climate Agreement goes into force on Friday.  The UN COP22 climate summit will be held in Marrakech, Morocco on November 7-18.  According to Sara Stefanini at Politico the major tasks at Marrakech are “to decide on the details of how to make sure each country is actually reducing its emissions (and not just saying it is); how to compensate poorer countries for the damage done by hurricanes, floods, droughts and other effects of climate change; and how to shore up financial aid from the developed to the developing world.”  She also presents five things you should know about the summit.

In August I provided a link to an article in The New Republic by Bill McKibbon in which he invoked the war metaphor to characterize our struggle against climate change.  Now, writing in The New York Times, social scientist Eric Godoy and philosopher Aaron Jaffe argue that is the wrong metaphor to use.  Rather, they conclude that climate change demands “a revolution to democratize all forms of power,” including economic and political power.  In their essay, Godoy and Jaffe make justice a central issue.  Hence it is interesting that another article this week focused on the disproportionate displacement of the poor in the U.S. following climate-related disasters and a new report concluded that building coal-fired power plants does little to help the poor, and often actually makes them poorer.

Fall “leaf peeping” is a major pleasure for folk in many parts of the world, including the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It is also a major economic activity.  Hence, the impacts of climate change on the timing and intensity of fall color changes are of interest to many people.  Writing in The New York Times, Craig Smith examines the multiple ways in which climate change is shaping fall colors.

According to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the record low snowpack in the western mountains of the U.S. during the winter of 2014-2015 was primarily due to high temperatures caused by both greenhouse gases and, in some areas, an enormous patch of warm water in the northern Pacific Ocean, dubbed “The Blob.”

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) issued its Emissions Gap Report for 2016, which compares the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement to the pledges of its signatories.  The main take-home message is that unless nations ramp up their carbon-reduction pledges before 2020, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming to 2°C.  Chris Mooney of the Washington Post has a good explanation of “emissions gap.”

A paper published in the journal Science this week finds that there is an essentially linear relationship between CO₂ emissions and the loss of Arctic sea ice.  For every metric ton of CO₂ emitted, a square meter of ice is lost.  Since the average person in the U.S. emits around 16 metric tons of CO₂ per year, each of us is responsible for the loss of around 48 square meters (517 square feet) of ice each year from the ice cover left at the end of the summer.  The results also mean that exhaustion of the carbon budget for 2°C warming will be sufficient to make the Arctic Ocean ice free by the end of summer.  In addition, researchers at NASA have noted a new trend in sea ice melt.  Not only is seasonal ice melting, but older ice that has remained frozen for long periods is also showing signs of significant thinning.  Be sure and watch the video associated with this article.  Finally, a new paper in Nature Climate Change finds that a decrease in Arctic sea ice is associated with colder temperatures in eastern North America during March, so what happens in the Arctic may well influence the weather down here.

A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience examines how clouds may have influenced Earth’s warming over the past several decades.  Satellite data have identified an increase in low-level clouds in the tropics over the eastern Pacific Ocean since the 1980s. The authors of the new study say this has likely reduced the pace of recent warming, although the effect is expected to be short-lived.  The findings have implications for the estimation of climate sensitivity.

A new study, published in the journal Science, has found that, unless global warming is limited to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, Mediterranean ecosystems will change more than they have at any time during the past 10,000 years.  If warming were to reach 2°C, deserts would expand substantially in Spain, North Africa and the Near East.  Vegetation would also be affected, with deciduous trees beginning to disappear from the Mediterranean basin and be replaced with other vegetation.

Energy

You may recall that I have linked to articles in the past about pumped storage, which typically pumps water uphill to a reservoir when excess power is available, and then lets it flow down again through generators (the pumps running backwards) when power is needed.  Its limitation is that you need a hill suitable for putting a reservoir on.  Now two different companies have come up with schemes whereby one can have pumped storage without a hill (although an ocean or lake is needed).

The chief executives of ten oil and gas companies, including BP, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, and Total, announced on Friday that the companies are joining forces to create an investment fund to develop technologies to decrease methane leaks, increase fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, and reduce costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.  In an extended feature in The New York Times, Clifford Krauss examined how “Big Oil Slowly Adapts to a Warming World.”

There was both good news and bad news this week concerning energy consumption in the transportation sector.  First the bad news.  U.S. gasoline consumption set a record high of 9.7 million barrels a day in June of this year, surpassing the old record of 9.6 million barrels a day set in July 2007.  The good news is that the average fuel economy of cars in the U.S. in 2015 was 24.8 mpg, 0.5 mpg higher than the 2014 average.  Finally, on the subject of cars, in October total sales of the Nissan Leaf reached 100,000.  The Chevy Volt reached that total in July.

The cost of electricity from offshore wind dropped 28% globally in the second half of 2016 compared to the same period last year, according to a new analysis. The price decline is driven by the use of larger turbines and competitive auctions for new wind projects in Europe.  Meanwhile, renewables may well be the way to an electrified future for Africa, allowing countries there to leapfrog over the fossil-fuel-based energy systems found in much of the rest of the world, just as they have leapfrogged over landline telephones.  Nevertheless, Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, predicted that renewable energy investment probably has reached a peak of $349 billion that won’t be surpassed for at least five years, primarily because the falling price of wind and solar will allow the installation of more capacity at less cost.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) annual Low Carbon Economy Index report for 2016 has found that the global carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) fell by 2.8% in 2015.  This was more than double the average fall of 1.3% between 2000 and 2014, but far below the 6.5% required to stay within the 2°C warming limit set by last year’s Paris agreement.  The biggest driver was a decline in China’s coal consumption, which resulted in a 6.4% drop in its carbon intensity.

Because there is currently no price on CO₂ emissions, coal- or gas-fired power plants are cheaper to build and operate than nuclear power plants, even though the latter provide CO₂-free electricity.  Thus, when the goal is simply to minimize the “cost” of electricity, the decision is to shut down nuclear power plants before the end of their useful life and replace them with coal- or gas-fired plants, thereby increasing CO₂ emissions.  Unfortunately, when nuclear power plants close prematurely, their waste is left stranded at the site.

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.

Grist’s Ben Adler interviewed Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta about her commitment to fighting climate change.

Climate

Its official, September was a very hot month.  NASA has it coming in as the hottest September since record keeping began, but only by 0.004°C, which means it is essentially tied with September 2014.  NOAA, on the other hand, has it coming in second, 0.04°C below September 2015.  Both NASA and NOAA project 2016 to be the hottest year on record.  Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang has interesting comments about the records.  In addition, John Abraham has plotted the projected 2016 surface temperature on a graph showing both global temperatures from the four major data sets and projections from modeling.

Typhoon Haima, with sustained winds at 160 mph, became the fifth super typhoon of 2016 on Tuesday morning.  It made landfall in the Philippines on Wednesday, just days after another major storm, Typhoon Sarika, which was category 4.  Haima is the seventh category-5 equivalent of the year, globally.  Meanwhile, a study published in Nature Geoscience has found that over the past 37 years, typhoons that strike East and Southeast Asia have intensified by 12–15%, with the proportion of storms of categories 4 and 5 having doubled or even tripled.

A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that the global farming sector has a big role to play in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to future climate change.  According to Rob Voss, director of FAO’s Agricultural Development Economics division, “If we continue along the present pathways then we will not be able to [deliver] food security around the world and we will not be able to stabilize the climate.”  In addition, the report states that “meeting the goals of eradicating hunger and poverty by 2030, while addressing the threat of climate change, will require a profound transformation of food and agriculture systems worldwide.”

Prior to a global conference on the world’s cities this week in Quito, Ecuador, the UN declared that the fight against climate change “will be won or lost in cities.”  That is because they are disproportionately responsible for the planet’s emissions. While they cover less than 2% of Earth’s surface, they contain more than half of the world’s population, consume 78% of its energy, and produce 60% of its CO₂ emissions.  Furthermore, it is expected that two-thirds of the global population will reside in cities by 2050.

Elizabeth Kolbert visited Greenland and had this to say in an article in The New Yorker: “In recent years, as global temperatures have risen, the ice sheet has awoken from its postglacial slumber.  Melt streams like the Rio Behar have always formed on the ice; they now appear at higher and higher elevations, earlier and earlier in the spring.  This year’s melt season began so freakishly early, in April, that when the data started to come in, many scientists couldn’t believe it. ‘I had to go check my instruments,’ one told me.  In 2012, melt was recorded at the very top of the ice sheet.  The pace of change has surprised even the modelers.  Just in the past four years, more than a trillion tons of ice have been lost.”

America’s top beef buyers have failed to tackle deforestation in South America despite some companies’ pledges to source “deforestation-free” beef, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.  Unfortunately, slowing deforestation in Brazil is not an easy task, as evidenced by the recent killing of an environmental official working to stop the practice.

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is second only to New Orleans in its susceptibility to impacts from sea level rise.  For example, according to Climate Central, 56% of sunny day flooding in the area can be attributed to sea level rise.  Those impacts are amplified by subsidence of the ground, due in part to pumping from the aquifer underlying the area.  Ted Henifin, general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, wants to counteract that by pumping treated wastewater into the aquifer to recharge it.  Not surprisingly, there are still several hurdles to be cleared before that can be done.  Speaking of the Hampton Roads area, a pilot study of another sort, the Hampton Roads Intergovernmental Pilot Project, was recently the subject of a meeting at the World Resources Institute.  The items discussed there are applicable to other coastal areas around the U.S.

Energy

Ivy Main has a new blog post in which she lays out the fallacies in Dominion Power’s plans to replace coal-fired power plants with natural gas-fired ones, in spite of the likelihood that they and the infrastructure associated with them will have to be shut down long before they have reached the end of their useful lifetimes.  Her concerns are consistent with provisions in the Clean Power Plan that can allow CO₂ emissions to actually increase over time.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab have discovered a method for converting CO₂ into ethanol, according to a paper in the open-access journal Chemistry Select.  Electricity is the energy source driving the reaction and the scientists have suggested that the reaction could be used as a way to store excess electricity from renewable energy sites.  Much work remains before that can be done, however, although it conforms well with the concepts of the Global CO₂ Initiative.

The Tennessee Valley Authority completed the final power ascension tests and performance measures Wednesday morning to officially declare the Unit 2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant a commercial power plant.  It is the U.S.’s first new nuclear reactor of the 21st century, but it will likely be the last nuclear plant of its type built in the Tennessee Valley.  For example, at Idaho National Lab plans are underway to build a small modular reactor, which many see as the nuclear reactor of the future.  Meanwhile, in New York a lawsuit seeks to reverse a decision by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to subsidize several struggling nuclear power plants.  Looking to the future, the dream of using fusion, rather than fission, to generate electricity just got a boost from a team at MIT that achieved the highest plasma pressure ever recorded on the last day of operation of their Alcator C-Mod tokamak reactor.

Last week I put in an item reporting that BP was not concerned about increasing penetration of electric cars into the automotive market and the subsequent impact on the demand for oil.  However, on Monday Statoil chief executive Eldar Saetre was much more pessimistic, telling an audience of industry executives that he expects oil demand to peak in the 2020s.  Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil, on the other hand, expects global demand for energy to grow 25% over the next 25 years.  In addition, according to Fitch Ratings, batteries have the potential to “tip the oil market from growth to contraction earlier than anticipated.”  Nevertheless, many slimmed down “big oil” companies are poised to make money when crude oil prices increase.

Wind power is having a big impact on the European electricity system, with rapid expansion of both on-shore and off-shore wind farms.  In part, this has been driven by advances in turbine technology, with current off-shore turbines having a capacity of 8 MW, compared to 2 MW just a few years ago.  The main limitation on wind energy is an inadequate grid to transfer the electricity generated to the places where it is needed.  Since the U.S. is far behind Europe in deploying wind farms, perhaps we will be able to learn from the problems they have faced.

The Iceland Deep Drilling Project is attempting to drill down 5 km (3 miles) to tap the energy from supercritical steam that has been formed when intruding sea water contacts magma in an extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  A well that can successfully tap into such steam could have an energy capacity of 50 MW, compared to the 5 MW of a typical geothermal well.

Scotland is moving forward with the world’s first large-scale tidal energy facility, which will be off the northernmost tip of Scotland, in an area called the Pentland Firth.  The project promises to provide carbon-free electricity with much greater predictability than is possible with wind turbines and is being built in phases, with the first four turbines expected to be in place by the end of this year.

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.

It has been said that no problem or movement will ever be recognized by the bulk of the population until the artists get involved.  The musical expression of climate change was expanded by the composition of Concert Climat by jazz pianist and composer Joseph Makholm, which premiered in part during the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) late last year. You can learn more about it here.  And on the subject of art and climate change, tech guru and programming analyst Andy Lee Robinson has produced an animated graphic of Arctic sea ice loss, accompanied by a piano composition of his own.

Climate

Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases were developed as refrigerants to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), refrigerants that were destroying the ozone layer.  While HFCs have little impact on the ozone layer, it turns out that they are very powerful greenhouse gases, being as much as 10,000 times more powerful than CO₂.  Consequently, there is now a need to replace them.  Toward that end, nearly 200 nations have agreed to a legally-binding pact, built on the 1987 Montreal Protocol, to eliminate HFCs in a stepwise manner over the next several years.  Sophie Yeo at Carbon Brief explains why this matters.

There are two types of data sets used to assess whether and how much Earth is warming: instrumental surface measurements and mid-troposphere measurements made by satellite.  Those two types of data sets have not been in close agreement for the past 20 years, with satellite data showing less warming, and this has been capitalized on by those who argue against the existence human-caused climate change.  Now, a new paper in the Journal of Climate has found that after necessary corrections are made to the satellite data sets, the two types of temperature records are in much better agreement.

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, links an increase in forest fire damage in the western U.S. to man-made climate change.  According to the authors, “···human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence.”

A couple of weeks ago I provided a link to climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe’s videos called Global Weirding, which illustrate why she is considered to be such a good communicator with the public about climate change.  Well this week, following her appearance at the White House with President Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio, John Schwartz of The New York Times profiles her.  He provides a few insights into good climate communication that we could all benefit from.  And speaking of good communication, John Abraham gives a shout-out to the new book, Caring for Creation, by Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox, the latter of whom many of you will recognize because of his tireless work as leader of the Evangelical Environmental Network.  Finally, if you have been struggling with what to do, perhaps Bill McKibben’s advice will be helpful.

On Oct. 23 of last year, Hurricane Patricia, south of Mexico, briefly attained a wind speed intensity of 213 miles per hour, making it the strongest hurricane since 1960, when wind speed estimates were not as accurate.  Now a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters examines the factors that likely contributed to the extreme intensity.  Last week I included articles about Hurricane Matthew, but the rains from it have caused extensive flooding in North and South Carolina this week.  That flooding has resulted in additional deaths, as well as extensive property damage and untold human and animal suffering.  Matthew’s devastation of Haiti is an example of what climate experts see as the disproportionate burden that global warming can have on poor, unprepared communities.  Finally, speaking of flooding caused by tropical storms and hurricanes, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science has found that under a moderate emissions scenario, rising sea levels and changing tropical storms mean that Sandy-like floods could occur as often as every 23 years.  Of course, we’re currently on a path of much higher emissions than this scenario.

South Florida is on the front lines of sea level change and is being forced to adapt.  Many people there “get it” and are working on adaptation.  Maybe the things they are doing will lead the way for other coastal communities in their adaptation efforts.

Two recent studies in Geophysical Research Letters examine the linkage between surface melting, which forms supraglacial lakes, and the drainage of those lakes, which forms underwater plumes.  An author of one of the papers had this to say about the linkage: “I think this is a potential feedback.  The more melt we have on the Greenland ice sheet, the more water drains down to the bed, the plumes are more vigorous, and they’re going to draw in more ocean water and transport heat to the ice. This is a direct ocean feedback that’s really going to amplify as there’s more melting on the ice sheet.”

Energy

The total energy consumed by industrialized nations peaked in 2007, and has completely decoupled from their economic growth, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported Monday.  This is due to improvements in energy efficiency, which are now providing $540 billion a year in energy cost savings for IEA-tracked countries.  Also according to the IEA, energy intensity, which measures the amount of fuel consumed per unit of GDP, fell 1.8% last year, triple the average rate over the past decade and more than the 1.5% reduction in 2014.  Meanwhile, the World Energy Council has predicted that global demand for energy per capita will peak in 2030, thanks to new technology and stricter government policies.

Oil company BP is not worried about electric cars decreasing the demand for oil.  The clean-energy research unit of Bloomberg LP estimates that electric cars will displace 13 million barrels of oil a day by 2040.  However, BP projects oil demand will increase by about 20 million barrels a day over the next 20 years, with about a quarter of supply going to passenger cars.  BP thinks electric cars will have a bigger impact from 30 to 50 years into the future.  On the other hand, the number of electric cars on the world’s roads is set to pass the 2 million mark by the end of 2016, with China leading the way, followed by Europe and the U.S.  Finally, every new or refurbished house in Europe will need to be equipped with an electric vehicle recharging point, under a draft EU directive expected to come into effect by 2019.

Carbon capture received a boost this week with the announcement by Anglo-Indian firm Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL) that they have been operating their system at 97% efficiency on a 10 MW power plant in India at a cost of $27 per ton of carbon captured.  Other systems have achieved lower efficiencies at costs 2 to 3 times higher.  The secret lies in a new solvent developed by CCSL.  The World Coal Association said the news was “genuinely very exciting.”  True.  We should all hope that it works out as claimed because scientists are concerned that current carbon capture technologies are insufficient to allow negative emission technologies to be employed to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere after we overshoot the 2°C goal.

Major investors have warned automobile manufacturers that they must put climate change specialists on their boards, engage better with policy-makers, and invest more heavily in low-emission cars if they wish to retain the investors’ support.  The demands come in a new report published this week by the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.  In a similar vein, the Union of Concerned Scientists has released a methodical review of the world’s major fossil fuel producers that documents their poor performance in taking responsibility for their emissions of greenhouse gases and moving effectively to confront climate change.

Global wind capacity is set to hit 500GW by the end of 2016, accounting for around 5% of global power demand, according to the World Wind Energy Association.  On the other hand, global investment in clean energy fell to the lowest level in more than 3 years, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  Third-quarter spending in 2016 totaled about $42.4 billion, down 43% from the same period last year.

According to a filing on Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to undertake a “proper” analysis of climate change in its final environmental impact statement for the 160-mile Leach Xpress natural gas pipeline

Buildings consume more energy than industry and transportation, even though the public seldom thinks about them as a source of greenhouse gases.  However, lots of folk in Colorado have thought about buildings’ connection to climate change and are acting to lower buildings’ contribution.  This blog post from Rocky Mountain Institute gives several examples of low-energy-use buildings.

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.

The big news this week is that sufficient countries have signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement to allow it to go into force, which will happen Nov. 4.  CarbonBrief has an explanation of what that implies. President Obama hailed the milestone as “historic”, but House Speaker Ryan said it “would be disastrous for the American economy.”  Presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to “cancel” the agreement if he is elected.  Writing in Fortune, David Z. Morris presents three options whereby Trump could stop U.S. participation.  Because of the threat that poses, climate scientist Michael Mann has written about “the irreparable harm that would be done by a climate change-denying, anti-science-driven Trump presidency.”

Climate

The Pew Research Center has released the results of a new poll on the views of the American public on climate change.  While some of the findings were not surprising, what really startled me was the low regard and deep distrust with which many view climate scientists.  Nevertheless, one thing the public was united on is support for more wind and solar power.  Solar Pulse, a Denver-based energy company, found that over the past five years Californians in Republican leaning areas were more likely to buy solar panels for their homes than those in Democratic areas.  In a display of bipartisanship, Representatives John Delaney (D-MD) and Chris Gibson (R-NY) have introduced the Delaney-Gibson Climate Solutions Commission Act (H.R. 6240), which would bring together the two political parties to create a 10-member commission to find agreement and create action on climate change.  Finally, if you have been struggling with what you can do help fight climate change, perhaps a letter to a loved one in the future will help clarify your thinking and move you to action.  That is the premise behind DearTomorrow, a nascent project that’s archiving letters about climate change written by people to their future children, selves, or family.

As Hurricane Matthew leaves the Caribbean and impacts the southeastern U.S. Joe Romm lays out the evidence that it has been made more severe by climate change.  However, as Chris Mooney of The Washington Post points out: “So in sum — even as people will inevitably invoke climate change to discuss Matthew, any precise attribution remains complex and the science isn’t settled on precisely what is happening with hurricanes in the Atlantic.  Still we’re living in a warming world with more moisture and higher seas, and it’s hard to dispute that that matters.”

A new report released on Thursday documents that three-quarters of 276 U.S. National Parks are experiencing an earlier onset of spring.  Half of the parks studied are experiencing “extreme” early springs.

According to a new study, published in Science Advances, without significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the likelihood that the American southwest will have a megadrought (> 35 years duration) this century is 99%.  However, keeping global temperature rise to no more than 2°C would cut this risk by half.  Meanwhile, as the drought continues in California, water conservation is declining.

James Hansen (and a group of 11 coauthors) has again published a manuscript in an open discussion journal, Earth System Dynamics Discussion, where it can be reviewed until November 15, 2016.  As with the previous paper published in this way, some have reacted critically, particularly because the manuscript was developed in support of a lawsuit by Hansen and a group of young people seeking to force more ambitious climate action.  The paper concludes that “Continued high fossil fuel emissions unarguably sentences young people to either a massive, possibly implausible cleanup or growing deleterious climate impacts or both···.”

Energy

A new study, published in the journal Nature, has both good news and bad news about methane emissions to the atmosphere.  The bad news is that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are 20-60% greater than had been thought.  The good news is that anthropogenic methane emissions have fallen as a fraction of production, from 8% in the mid-1980s to around 2% in the late 2000s and early 2010s.  In addition, the study found that methane emissions from fossil fuel activities accounted for less than half of the total.

While many have cheered the decline in the use of coal for power generation because of high CO₂ emissions, coal is still very much in demand globally.  In fact, Reuters says that “talk of coal’s demise is proving premature, with prices soaring from 10-year lows this year and further rises on the cards into 2017 as the ‘dirty’ fuel continues to be very much in demand for power generation”. It adds that “following half a decade of steady decline, thermal coal physical and futures prices have all rallied between 50% and 80% this year, taking many in the industry by surprise.”  Nevertheless, Anders Runevad, CEO and Group President of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, thinks that the future belongs to renewables, although some question whether the European wind industry is being driven to unrealistically low prices because of intense competition.

On Monday Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced to the House of Commons that Ottawa will impose a $7.62 per metric ton minimum tax on carbon commencing in 2018, which will rise by $7.62 each year until it reaches $38.11 per metric ton in 2022.  Unsurprisingly, this announcement met with a range of reactions from the various provinces.  Across the border, in Washington State, a ballot initiative to enact a revenue neutral carbon tax is meeting opposition from a surprising quarter.  The story is a precautionary tale for those proposing carbon taxes.

The Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club organized a press conference on Tuesday morning where a diverse group of community leaders voiced concerns about the increase in CO₂ emissions proposed in Dominion Virginia Power’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).  The Sierra Club is participating in the State Corporation Commission’s proceedings on Dominion’s IRP.  Meanwhile, in a letter dated Wednesday (Oct. 5), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects approved construction of Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. LLC’s (Transco) Virginia Southside Expansion Project II, which would serve the needs of Dominion Virginia Power to fuel a new 1,580 MW power plant it plans to build in Greensville County, VA.

International aviation is currently responsible for about 2% of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.  Thus, it is significant that on Thursday governments from more than 190 countries adopted a measure that could force air carriers to take major steps to improve the fuel economy in their routes and fleets.  The accord will take effect in 2021.  It was necessary because international aviation was not covered by the Paris Climate Agreement.  Both critics and supporters of the measure noted that much work remains to be done before the agreement is put into effect.

According to a new report issued by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, “the investment choices we make even over the next two to three years will start to lock in for decades to come either a climate-smart, inclusive growth pathway, or a high-carbon, inefficient and unsustainable pathway.”  It also said that the subsidies paid to support fossil fuels, amounting to $550 billion worldwide in 2014, represent “fundamental price distortions” in the market place and must be phased out by 2025 at the latest.

The Petra Nova carbon capture system, under construction at a coal-fired power plant southwest of Houston, will go online before the end of the year.  It will be the largest post-combustion carbon capture system installed on an existing power plant in the world.  The CO₂ captured will be used for enhanced oil recovery.  In addition, Norway will invest $45m in research for CO₂ capture and storage technology for three industrial plants: a cement factory, an ammonia plant, and a waste incinerator.

According to EPA data released on Tuesday, CO₂ emissions from power plants declined 6.2% last year relative to 2014.  In addition, emissions from large industrial sources dropped 4.9%.

A study published in the journal Energy Policy argues that when the “fuel rebound effect” is properly accounted for, 3 gallons of corn-derived ethanol must be burned to avoid burning one gallon of petroleum-derived gasoline.  The findings led the researchers to conclude that America’s renewable fuel standard “actually leads to a net increase” in greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

 

“On September 20, 2016, 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter to draw attention to the serious risks of climate change. The letter warns that the consequences of opting out of the Paris agreement would be severe and long-lasting for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility of the United States.”

Oral arguments on the legality of the Clean Power Plan will be heard on Tuesday, September 27 before the Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit.  Judge Nina Pillard, who was appointed by President Obama, has been added to the list of judges hearing the case, bringing the number of judges appointed by Democrats to six.  Four justices have been appointed by Republicans.  Bloomberg has a summary of what you need to know about the case.  The Environmental Defense Fund’s Martha Roberts summarizes the health implications of the plan.

Climate

I mentioned last week that NASA had declared August to be tied with July as the hottest month since record-keeping began in 1880.  Now NOAA has declared that not only was August a record breaker, it extended the streak of record-breaking hottest months to 16.  In addition, the summer period (June through August) was also the warmest on record, 0.07°C warmer than the summer of 2015, the previous record holder.  Of course, a major question is what will happen in the future.  NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt had an interesting post entitled “Why We Don’t Know If It Will Be Sunny Next Month but We Know It’ll Be Hot All Year.”

Thirty-one additional countries joined the Paris climate agreement on Wednesday, bringing the total to 60, thereby exceeding one of the thresholds for the agreement to go into effect.  The other threshold is that the countries joining have cumulative CO₂ emissions exceeding 55% of the global total.  The 60 countries that have joined so far have cumulative emissions just below 48%, but U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry expressed confidence that the 55% threshold would be passed before the end of the year.  On Thursday, EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said that the EU is on course to join the agreement during October, thereby bringing cumulative emissions above the required 55%.

A new study, published in Science Advances, has found that ice melt on Greenland has been underestimated by around 8%.  It turns out that Greenland has been rebounding faster than had been thought in response to glacial melting.  Consequently, past estimates of the impacts of post-glacial rebound led to inaccurate estimates of the amount of ice loss.  The study also suggests that the rapid ice loss recorded by satellite measurements over the last 20 years is not likely to be an anomaly, but part of a long-term trend influenced by climate change.

A new modeling study in the journal Nature Communications suggests that during the mid-Pliocene warm period, when the CO₂ content of the atmosphere was around 400 ppm (like today) and the temperature was 1-2°C warmer than today, the entire West Antarctic ice sheet had melted, driving some 10 ft of sea level rise.  In addition, the multi-kilometer thick ice that currently fills the extremely deep Aurora and Wilkes basins of the eastern ice sheet had retreated inland for hundreds of miles, driving sea level even higher.  This raises the question of whether we are in for similar events.

Complex Earth system models are used to make projections of future climate as CO₂ continues to be discharged to the atmosphere.  In those models, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are determined by the balance between the sources and sinks of the gas.  One sink is the soil.  A new study published in the journal Science suggests that scientists have overestimated the rate at which Earth’s soils take up CO₂.  As a consequence, soil’s carbon sequestration potential this century may be only half of what we thought it was, suggesting that reducing the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere will be harder than we had thought.

President Obama signed a directive on Wednesday telling 20 federal offices to develop a “federal climate and national security working group” to “identify the U.S. national security priorities related to climate change and national security, and develop methods to share climate science and intelligence information to inform national security policies and plans.”  Also on Wednesday, the National Intelligence Council released a report that states “Over 20 years, the net effects of climate change on the patterns of global human movement and statelessness could be dramatic, perhaps unprecedented.  If unanticipated, they could overwhelm government infrastructure and resources, and threaten the social fabric of communities.”

The Montreal Protocol of 1987 outlawed chlorofluorocarbons because of their negative impact on the ozone layer.  The major replacements for them as refrigerants were hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which subsequently were found to have global warming potentials of up to almost 15,000 CO₂ equivalents.  Now a loose coalition of more than 100 countries is working toward an early phase-out of HFCs.

Last week I included a study on the effects of increased temperature on wheat production.  This week a new study on the effects of both temperature and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations on the types of plants that grow in California grasslands was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  It found that CO₂ levels above 400 ppm (the concentration today) had no effect, while higher temperatures had a negative effect.  In other words, CO₂ fertilization did not offset the negative effects of higher temperatures.  In addition, a study published in Nature Communications, used a new approach combining standard climate change models with maximum land productivity data to predict how the potential productivity of cropland is likely to change over the next 50-100 years as a result of climate change.

Energy

A new study by think tank Oil Change International (OCI) shows that burning the known fossil fuels in all coal mines or oil and gas fields currently existing or under construction would release sufficient CO₂ to push global average temperatures above the 2°C limit agreed upon in Paris.  Bill McKibben’s thoughts on this new study are in the New Republic.  On Thursday presidential candidate Donald Trump gave the keynote address at Shale Insights, an annual conference sponsored by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a Pennsylvania-based pro-drilling group.  In his speech Trump reiterated his policy proposals that would open up vast regions of the United States to fossil fuel production.

Chevrolet this week confirmed the price of the all-electric Bolt at $37,495 and Brian Fung of The Washington Post had a chance to drive it.  His impressions are here.  Speaking of cars, the Rocky Mountain Institute issued a “truly sweeping report” on their future this week that forecasts that “peak car ownership in the United States will occur around 2020 and will drop quickly after that.”  This forecast depends on how rapidly autonomous vehicles are developed and electrification occurs, things that are likely to occur faster in urban areas than in the rest of the country.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC has signed Spring Ridge Constructors as lead construction contractor for the proposed 600-mile project to transport natural gas from West Virginia to eastern North Carolina.  Meanwhile, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the 2004 survey law by Hazel F. Palmer, whose property in Augusta County lies in the path of the proposed pipeline, where it would tunnel beneath the Appalachian Trail into Nelson County.  On Thursday, Governor Terry McAuliffe was met by protestors unhappy about his support for the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines as he arrived in Roanoke for a Clean Energy Business Roundtable.  Finally, a poll of 732 registered Virginia voters found that 55% disagreed with Governor McAuliffe’s support for the pipelines.

How low can it go?  According to the Abu Dhabi Electricity and Water Authority, six development teams competing for a 350-megawatt solar PV project offered preliminary bids below 4 cents per kilowatt-hour.  One coalition – Jinko Solar and Marubeni – offered a bid of 2.4 cents.  This is a new record low.

On Tuesday, Sustainable Development Technology Canada announced a project to link three widely dispersed microgrids in Toronto, Nova Scotia, and upstate Maine into a “transactive energy” framework.  Transactive energy is “the use of technical and economic signals to manage the exchange of electricity” and is one example of how systems with a large amount of distributed energy can be managed.  Perhaps if China had such a system it would be able to get more of its electricity from the many wind turbines it has installed.

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.

If you’re a fan of Tom Toles, the political cartoonist for The Washington Post, you may be interested to know that he and climate scientist Michael Mann have written a book entitled The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy.  The book is liberally illustrated with Toles’ great cartoons about climate change.  They also have a piece in the Post about “The Deniers Club.”

Writing on Think Progress, Natasha Geiling reports on the likely impacts of Donald Trump’s economic plan, released on Thursday, on the climate.  A consortium of scientific organizations compiled a list of 20 questions about science, engineering, technology, health and environmental issues for the four presidential candidates.  Scientific American has compiled and published their answers.  Section 3 deals with climate change.

Climate

August has tied July for the distinction of being the hottest month since record-keeping began in 1880, NASA said in a news release on Monday.

Polar bears use sea ice as their main hunting grounds, waiting near the edge and grabbing seals as they surface for air.  A new study in the journal The Cryosphere helps explain why the bears have been having a difficult time.  It turns out that there has been a decline in the number of ice-covered days in every region of the Arctic where the bears live.  In fact, 2016 turned out to be tied with 2007 for second place in minimum ice extent.  On a related note, scientists at a Russian weather station on Troynoy Island, north of Siberia, have driven away 10 adult polar bears and a number of cubs that had besieged them for two weeks.

I put in articles last week on the impacts of climate change on the Louisiana rains and subsequent flooding.  Establishing the connection was possible because of advances in attribution studies.  Graham Readfearn discusses attribution studies and summarizes some recent results.

A coalition of 25 military and national security experts has warned that climate change poses a “significant risk to US national security and international security” that requires more attention from the US federal government.

Wheat is the single most important grain crop in terms of human consumption.  Thus, it is a concern that a new study, published in Nature Climate Change, finds that projections using three different techniques all agree that rising temperatures are going to be bad for wheat production.  An important caveat is that there may be offsetting factors, such as increasing CO₂ levels, that reduce some of the impacts of temperature.

Barrow, Alaska is the northern-most town in the U.S., but it and the villages surrounding it face dire consequences as a result of rising seas, melting permafrost, beach erosion, and other changes associated with rising temperatures.  It is becoming apparent that it is only a matter of time before the town and villages must be moved.  Who will pay?

Energy

Ivy Main has posted her 2016 guide to Virginia wind and solar policy.  Too bad there is not more good news in it.

The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation recommends that Mountain Valley reroute its 42-inch-diameter natural gas transmission pipeline in Montgomery County to avoid the Slussers Chapel Conservation Site and tributaries to a sinking creek that enters the Slussers Chapel Cave and Mill Creek.  Meanwhile, the company building the pipeline has been acquiring easements in Giles, Montgomery, Franklin and Pittsylvania counties.  Finally, a report from Synapse Energy Economics finds that the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines are not needed to meet future energy demands.  Rather, they find that with a few modifications and upgrades, the existing system of natural gas pipelines is sufficient to meet the region’s peak demands through 2030.

The first sentence to a new post on Bloomberg Markets reads: “Rooftop solar, which has surged more than 1,000 percent since 2010, will barely grow at all next year.”  Residential installations are expected to only grow by 0.3% as utilities push back against mandates to buy the electricity and shifting tax policies curb demand.  Nevertheless, “America Has Seen 11 Consecutive Quarters with More Than 1 Gigawatt of Solar PV Installed,” although only about a third of that was residential.

The British government has approved construction of the Hinckley C nuclear power plant, which will supply 3.2 GW of electricity.  The proposal to build the plant has been highly controversial, from technical, economic, and national security perspectives because of the heavy involvement of China and France in the project.  In a piece posted July 28, Simon Evans of Carbon Brief provided extensive background information about Hinckley C in a Q & A format.  I have included this material because of the relevance of the economic and technical issues to new nuclear power plants in the U.S.  In addition, Debbie Carlson reviews the status of nuclear power in the U.S. for Guardian Sustainable Business.

A new report on world energy investments by the International Energy Agency looks at the global transition to a low-carbon energy system and finds a mixture of good news and bad news.  The good news is that “Wind, solar PV and electric-vehicle investments are broadly on a trajectory consistent with limiting the increase in global temperature to 2°C.”  Beyond that, things don’t look so good, particularly for investments in nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and alternative means of fueling transportation.  As Chris Mooney sums it up: “It all leads to a picture in which we are beginning to realize that while wind and solar and electric cars are great, they may also be the easy part.  We still have a great deal more to grapple with before we can get climate change under control.”

Because methane is a potent greenhouse gas, any climate benefits from shifting electric power generation from coal to natural gas (of which methane is the main component) depend on our ability to minimize fugitive methane emissions from natural gas drilling, collection, distribution, and storage operations.  Currently, the extent and trajectory of methane fugitive emissions are uncertain and a new study adds to that uncertainty.  Unlike some recent studies, it finds that methane leakage from fossil fuel activities was largely flat from 1984 until about 2000, and then increased sharply from that point on.

Wind energy is expected to contribute more to electricity generation as the country expands its renewable energy portfolio.  Thus, it is encouraging that a new study published in Nature Energy has found that costs are expected to decline, primarily as a result of larger turbines.  By 2030, the research finds, the average onshore wind turbine is expected to stand 115 meters tall (from the ground to the “hub,” where the rotor attaches) and to have a rotor diameter of 135 meters, generating 3.25 MW of electricity. Offshore turbines are expected to be even larger, at 125 meters tall with an average rotor diameter of 190 meters, generating 11 MW.  Relatedly, the Departments of Energy and the Interior released on Friday of last week a strategic plan to develop a national offshore wind industry.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.