Climate News Roundup 1/29/16

• First the bad news: A new report entitled Keep It in the Ground, released Monday by Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and 350.org, states that we are rapidly approaching Earth’s carbon budget required to keep warming below 2 degrees C and that if the world’s proven fossil fuel reserves are developed, we will miss the budget three times over. (Although outside of the time frame of this week’s roundup, last week Bill McKibben had an essay about fossil fuel infrastructure and the fight against it.) However, there is good news: In a study published Monday on-line in Nature Climate Change, NOAA and University of Colorado scientists report that the U.S. could slash its greenhouse gas emissions from electric power generation by 78% below 1990 levels within 15 years, all with renewable energy and still produce electricity for 10 cents/kWh, compared to a national average of 9.4 cents/kWh in 2012. An article in Science focused on the part of the study dealing with the power grid while an article in Scientific American emphasized the placement of the renewable energy facilities.
• Joe Romm of Climate Progress discussed projections by the International Energy Agency that renewables will be the world’s major source of electricity by 2030.
• On Monday the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an important clean energy resource, demand response. Utilities using demand response act to limit demand during peak power periods rather than ramping up supply, typically with fossil fuels.
• In a rather unorthodox move, a group of U.S. states led by coal producer West Virginia and oil producer Texas on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put a hold on President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan while its legality is considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit This action was taken after the Appeals Court refused to issue a stay.
• The first major energy bill in eight years cleared committee in a bipartisan 18-4 vote and moved on to the full Senate for debate. The White House said it has “concerns” with some provisions of the bill but did not threaten a veto. As of Thursday morning, 89 amendments to the bill had been offered and by the end of the day, four had been passed.
• The extension in December of the tax credits for renewable energy was an important step that will have big impacts on the deployment of renewables. Consequently, the U.S. wind industry is expecting 2016 to be even better for wind turbine installations than 2015, which saw 5,001 MW installed capacity in the 4th quarter.
• As part of the weird weather the world has been experiencing for the past few years, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere with its loopy jet stream, east Asia had a brutal cold snap last week, with more than 65 deaths.
• And of course, we had the big snow storm last weekend, which was probably influenced by global warming for a variety of reasons.
• On the other hand, Great Britain has been so warm that a New Year’s Day plant survey found that 612 species of plants were in bloom. Typically, 20 to 30 species bloom at that time of year. In addition, an article published Friday in the journal Environmental Research Letters reports that summer temperatures in Europe since 1986 are warmer than they have been in 2000 years.
• For much of the past three years the temperature of the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska and west of Canada has been anomalously warm. Nicknamed “The Blob”, this region has had major impacts on ocean productivity, as well as on several other phenomena, such as precipitation patterns over land. Now it appears to be breaking up, but no one knows when it might return.
• In a commentary about the impact of climate change on record-setting temperatures, Dana Nuccitelli quotes climate scientist Michael Mann: “The next time you hear someone call into question the threat of human-caused climate change, you might explain to them that the likelihood we would be witnessing the recent record warmth in the absence of human-caused climate change is somewhere between one-in-a-thousand and one-in-a-million. You might ask them: Would you really gamble away the future of our planet with those sorts of odds?”
• Chelsea Harvey also reported on the odds that the recent string of record-setting temperatures would have occurred in the absence of climate change. Furthermore, the current El Nino event is estimated to have contributed only about 10% of the warming observed last year.
• Ted Cruz keeps insisting that Earth hasn’t warmed since 1998. Chris Mooney at the Washington Post examines that claim while John Cook reports at The Conversation that as climate science gets stronger, denial of it does too. Scott Johnson provides a detailed explanation of how the various temperature records are compiled.
• A recent paper by German researchers in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that the contribution of thermal expansion of sea water to sea level rise has been underestimated by a significant amount. As a consequence, the authors estimate sea level to be rising at a global average rate of 2.74 mm/year, or about 1.08 in/decade.
• Barely a month after the historic Paris climate accord was signed, the resolve of the signatory nations is being put to the test by the declining price of oil. Impacts are being felt everywhere, but in the U.S. the main one is the increased purchase of light trucks and SUVs. Meanwhile, the World Bank projects that crude oil prices will remain below $40 a barrel throughout 2016.
• The World Resources Institute has a very informative piece about what will be required for the Paris Agreement to take effect. It’s not yet a done deal.
• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Tuesday that the Canadian government would consider greenhouse gas emissions associated with all pipelines and liquefied natural gas export terminals as proposed facilities are undergoing environmental review.
• The health of soils and their ability to provide important services depend on the diversity of their bacterial and fungal communities. Unfortunately, two recently published scientific papers report that the types of environmental changes associated with global warming, such as increased aridity, will negatively impact those microbial communities and reduce soil productivity, threatening the livelihood of millions of people.

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.