Category: Climate News Roundup

During the Christmas break Jeff Goodell had an interview in Rolling Stone with climate scientist James Hansen, but I missed it.  Even though it didn’t come out this week, I thought you might find it of interest.

Last week I provided a link to an article about the eco-right and how they are working to combat climate change.  On Tuesday Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) had an opinion piece in The Washington Post entitled “Republicans want to fight climate change, but fossil-fuel bullies won’t let them.”  Of course, as indicated by last week’s link, not all businesses are opposed to action to combat climate change.  For example, more than 530 companies and 100 investors are calling on the Trump administration and the new Congress to support policies to accelerate a low-carbon future.  Furthermore, on Monday, President Obama had an article published in Science in which he asserted that the clean-energy revolution is irreversible and highlighted the economic benefits of cutting carbon emissions and investing in renewable energy.

On Tuesday the National Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled “Valuing Climate Damages: Updating Estimation of the Social Cost of Carbon Dioxide.”  The social cost of carbon dioxide is an important metric used in doing cost/benefit analyses required when promulgating federal regulations.  It also will be central to any discussion of a carbon tax.  Andrew Revkin examines this important parameter and its possible future during the Trump administration.  Chelsea Harvey also has an excellent discussion of the metric.

Climate

In a report released Thursday, the World Economic Forum summarized the opinions of 750 experts on what the most likely and most impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017.  Extreme weather ranked as the most likely and the second-most impactful risk.  Several other factors also influenced by climate change ranked high on the risk matrix.

Late in the day last Friday (Jan. 6), climate reporter Eric Holthaus took to Twitter to share his despair about climate change and how he is dealing with it.  Then on Wednesday of this week, Andrew Freedman, a climate reporter to whom I frequently link, devoted his column on Mashable to the emotional toll of covering climate change.  Members of the Education and Events committee of CAAV are currently developing plans for providing a space where people in the Harrisonburg area can have open discussions about climate change, including how it is making them feel.  Look for an announcement soon about the first meeting.

The extent of sea ice globally took major hits during 2016, according to an analysis released January 6 by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.  At both poles, “new record lows were set for both daily and monthly extent,” according to the analysis.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a plan to save the threatened polar bear.  Unfortunately, it identified the rapid decline of sea ice as “the primary threat to polar bears” and said “the single most important achievement for polar bear conservation is decisive action to address Arctic warming,” something it has no control over.

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reported that short-lived greenhouse gases (such as methane) contribute to sea level rise due to thermal expansion of the ocean over much longer time scales than their atmospheric lifetimes.  In addition, the paper reported that the longer the world waits to reduce methane emissions, the longer seas will stay elevated.

A report from the Japanese environment ministry said that around 90% of the coral in Okinawa Prefecture’s Sekisei lagoon had suffered bleaching because of high water temperatures and that 70% had died.  The lagoon covers an area of approximately 150 square miles and had been a popular dive destination.

A week of powerful storms has significantly eased California’s water shortage, pulling nearly all of Northern California out of drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.  However, much of Central and Southern California, are still locked in what officials classify as “extreme drought” — or worse.

A new report updating the plan for climate-related research at 13 federal agencies until 2021 was submitted to Congress this week by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.  For the first time it calls for research into geoengineering, specifically CO₂ removal from the atmosphere and reflection of infrared energy from the sun.

Energy

Ivy Main has a new blog post in which she summarizes the energy-related bills before the Virginia General Assembly this session.

The Department of the Interior released a report on Wednesday calling for major changes to the federal program by which the U.S. manages the leasing of publicly-owned land to companies for exploration and production of coal.  The report proposes a series of changes to the current program, including charging a higher royalty rate, factoring in the climate impact of the coal by imposing an additional charge, and setting an overall carbon budget for the nation’s coal leasing program.  Speaking of coal, NRG Energy Inc said on Tuesday it had begun operations at a $1.04 billion carbon capture facility at a Texas coal-fired power plant.  This is the largest carbon capture project of its kind in the world.

New investment in clean energy worldwide fell to $287.5 billion in 2016, down 18% from a record high of $348.5 billion in 2015, according to new research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.  The primary cause of the investment drop was a slowdown in China and Japan.  In spite of that, clean energy investment in China is outpacing investment in the U.S., causing Joel Jaeger and coauthors at the World Resources Institute to state: “China is poised to leap ahead of the United States on clean energy to become the most important player in the global market.”  Still, questions remain about China’s CO₂ emissions.  In a “Memo from China” to The New York Times, Edward Wong examines the factors influencing China’s ability to accurately measure and report those emissions.

A new study by Abt Associates finds that the nine member states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) (the six New England states plus New York, Delaware, and Maryland) have cut emissions two and a half times more than non-RGGI states while reaping $5.7 billion in benefits due to savings in health care costs and restored productivity.  On a related note, a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory examined states’ renewable energy goals and found that, while renewables add costs, they more than make up for it in the health and environmental benefits they provide.

Automakers, both here and abroad, are working to bring to market a new generation of fuel-saving vehicles.  Those efforts are summarized by Jason Mathers of the Environmental Defense Fund.  Despite that, most of automakers’ advertising is for cars with traditional internal combustion engines.  Ariel Wittenberg looks at this practice on E&E News.  Finally, the EPA has rejected a request from the auto industry to weaken fuel efficiency standards for model years 2022 through 2025.

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.

As we near the start of the Trump administration, Kate Aronoff of The Atlantic provides a rundown of the “eco-right” and how it might combat climate change.  Then for a reality check, you might want to read the article by Jennifer Dlouhy in Bloomberg Politics about the Institute for Energy Research and the associated American Energy Alliance, which appear to have Trump’s ear on energy matters, at least during the transition.

Climate

In a new paper, climate economist William Nordhaus has added his voice to the chorus pointing out the difficulty of holding global warming below 2°C.  After incorporating the newest information into his economic model, known as DICE, he concluded: “The international target for climate change with a limit of 2°C appears to be infeasible with reasonably accessible technologies – and this is the case even with very stringent and unrealistically ambitious abatement strategies.”

You may recall that in the summer of 2015 NOAA scientists became the target of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Science, when they published a paper updating global temperature data by reconciling old and new techniques for estimating sea surface temperature.  The apparent problem was that the new record wiped out the “hiatus” in global warming and Smith thought the findings were politically motivated.  Now a new (and totally independent) study has shown that the NOAA scientists were correct.  John Abraham at The Guardian reports on the study while Robert McSweeney at Carbon Brief takes a deeper dive into the data analysis.  Also in The Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli explores the presumed “hiatus” and warns against its resurrection with 2016 as the starting point.  Finally, in his column, Abraham mentions Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech who has been a vocal critic of “climate alarmists.”  She has just announced her retirement because of the “craziness” in the field.  Scott Waldman at E&E News reports on an interview of her.

On Sunday, there was a fascinating article by Chris Mooney on the front page of The Washington Post about the efforts of two scientists to retrieve data from their instruments on the Petermann Ice Shelf on Greenland.  The electronic version contains an equally fascinating video.  A wonderful combination of human interest, science, and beautiful scenery; a must-see.  Scientists at World Weather Attribution have turned their attention to the Arctic warming that has occurred this fall and have concluded that it is both unprecedented and likely caused by climate change.  Although the study has not been peer-reviewed, other scientists contacted by Chris Mooney at The Washington Post agreed with its conclusions.  At the other pole, scientists watching the growing rift across the Larsen C ice shelf warn that at some point soon the ice shelf will shed an iceberg the size of Delaware.  This will have no impact on sea level, however, because the ice shelf is already floating, but it could well speed up the flow of the glacier toward the sea.

A new study published in the journal Nature suggests that when climatic conditions in the tropical Atlantic are conducive to the formation of hurricanes, they also create a buffer zone that weakens the storms as they approach the U.S. coast.  Conversely, during periods of low hurricane activity, those storms that do form are likely to become stronger as they approach the U.S. coast.

The ocean current known as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) transfers a lot of heat from the south to the north Atlantic Ocean, thereby modulating temperatures in Europe.  Because there is concern about how accurately the AMOC is handled in climate models, a group of scientists has compared models with greater and lesser sensitivity to the AMOC to determine how important the AMOC is to future warming.  The results, published in the journal Science Advances suggests that climate models need to better represent the AMOC if they are to accurately predict changes hundreds of years from now.  A second study published in Geophysical Research Letters sought to determine the impact of meltwater from Greenland and determined that AMOC collapse could be avoided by CO₂ mitigation.

In addition to likely being the hottest year on record globally (the final tally hasn’t yet been released), 2016 was also a record year in the U.S. for several categories.  For example, 98% of weather stations had a warmer than normal year, the largest percentage in 95 years of record keeping, and 85% of extreme temperature records were of the hot variety.  In addition, 19 separate floods occurred, the largest number since records began in 1980.  Furthermore, according to a new paper in Geophysical Research Letters, this trend is likely to continue, at least in the northeastern U.S.

One impact of warming global temperatures is on bird migration.  A new study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, which looked at hundreds of species across five continents, found that birds are reaching their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperature.  That may not seem like much, but arriving early can cause birds to miss out on valuable food sources, with dire effects.  In fact, this is thought to be one of the problems facing red knots, one of the Arctic breeding shore birds that are in decline.

Energy

Two reports projecting future energy use were released this week.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration released its Annual Energy Outlook on Thursday in which it projected that the amount of energy Americans use and the pollution from it are not likely to change radically over the next 30 years.  The most surprising finding was that the fate of the Clean Power Plan will have little impact on energy-related CO₂ emissions through 2040.  The other report was the annual Outlook for Energy from ExxonMobil, which also looked out to 2040.  The company believes global energy demand will increase by 25%, but CO₂ emissions will rise by only 10%, peaking in the 2030s and then declining, because of improvements in the efficiency of buildings, transport, industry, and power generation.

China’s National Energy Administration has announced its plan for the period 2016-2020.  During that period, they expect to invest $360 billion in new renewable power generation.

John Schwartz has an interesting article in The New York Times about two new carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities in Texas and the potential fate of the technology during the Trump presidency.  Instead of CCS, Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals in India is practicing carbon capture and utilization (CCU).  Using a process developed by Carbon Clean Solutions they capture CO₂ from a coal-fired boiler and convert it to baking soda, which can be sold.  While the market for baking soda is too small to have a significant impact on global CO₂ emissions, the application is still important because it serves as an example of the use of the new technology from Carbon Clean Solutions, which I reported on in the Weekly Roundup of October 14, 2016.  The article is here.

On Wednesday, Tesla and its partner, Panasonic, announced the start of mass production of lithium-ion battery cells at Tesla’s giant Nevada battery factory.

The question of whether wood pellets are a carbon-neutral fuel for power plants is still unanswered, although the answer has strong implications for the future of forests in the southeastern U.S.  In its cover article, the journal Science explores the status of the question and what may lie ahead.  In addition, while many European countries have embraced waste-to-energy technology, in which trash is burned to generate electricity, the U.S. has not.  Writing in Salon, Diane Stopyra explores this controversial technology.

As the new year opened, 104 wind turbines scattered across 22,000 acres of farmland near Elizabeth City, North Carolina began producing electricity for Amazon Web Services.  This is the first large wind farm in the southeastern U.S.  The big question is, will others follow?

According to Bloomberg, solar power is cheaper than coal in some parts of the world, and in less than a decade, it’s likely to be the lowest-cost option almost everywhere.  However, others disagree, pointing out that the need for back-up systems during prolonged cloudy periods alters the economics.

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 CAAV Steering Committee and I wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  The next Roundup will come out on January 7, 2017, covering the climate and energy news for the week ending January 6.

At the end of a year it is typical for news organizations to have retrospectives, and the same is true for those focusing on science and climate.  Brady Dennis provides an “exit interview” with outgoing EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in The Washington Post.  Carbon Brief looks back at 2016 through 16 numbers.  While some are specific to the EU or the UK, I think you’ll find it interesting.

Inside Climate News, which has devoted considerable effort in the past few years to investigating ExxonMobil’s position on climate change, examines Rex Tillerson’s record on climate change and climate science.  At Climate Unplugged, the blog of the conservative Niskanen Center, Dennis McConaghy argues that now is the time for the oil and gas industry to come forward with specific proposals for a carbon tax.  And, Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center examines just what might result from adoption of a carbon tax of the size proposed by ExxonMobil.

Climate

Last week there were several news items about the Arctic in response to the extreme warming it is experiencing and the Arctic Report Card from NOAA.  This week the World Weather Attribution project released a report about the extreme temperatures in the Arctic, and it triggered articles in Carbon Brief and The New York Times, as well as in others.  The report attributed the extreme warmth to human activities and stated that what had once been a 1 in 1000-year event, is now a 1 in 50-year event.  The temperature at a buoy 80 miles south of the North Pole climbed to 32°F on Thursday, putting it about 40°F above normal for this time of year.  In addition, some indicators suggest that unseasonable warmth at the pole is becoming more frequent due to global warming and melting sea ice.  The impacts of this warmth on weather in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is still a matter of debate among climate scientists.

Studies from the Earth Institute at Columbia University published recently in the journal Nature suggest that Greenland was essentially ice free at least once in the past 1.4 million years.  This requires some of the basic assumptions about Greenland to be reevaluated and calls into question the assertion that Greenland’s glaciers are very stable.  Rather, it suggests that they may be subject to collapse.  Speaking of Greenland, Patrick Barkham had an interesting article in The Guardian about the changes being brought there by climate change and how Greenlanders are adapting to them.

The DC Court of Appeals has ruled that climate scientist Michael Mann can proceed with defamation claims against two writers who accused him of fraud and academic misconduct.  Mann brought the case against Rand Simberg, writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Mark Steyn, writing for the National Review.  Climate scientist/astronaut Piers Sellers died this week at age 61.  Harrison Smith paid tribute to him in The Washington Post.

Climate change can cause a wide variety of damages to society, including natural disasters, harm to human health, reduced agricultural output, and lower economic productivity.  The combined cost of such damages associated with the emission of one ton of CO₂ is called the “social cost of carbon” and it is central to an assessment of the benefits associated with regulation of fossil fuel use.  The value assigned to the social cost of carbon is likely to be reviewed by the incoming Trump administration.

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that U.S. attitudes towards climate change are influenced by local weather, with Americans living in places with recent record high temperatures more likely to believe in climate change and people living in areas with record low temperatures more likely to express skepticism.  The authors suggest that the public’s mistaken equating of weather with climate, as well as the idea that “global warming” simply means warmer temperatures, may be responsible for the results.  No matter what the general public thinks, Damian Carrington of The Guardian interviewed several climate scientists and learned that they think that the dramatic melting of Arctic ice is already driving extreme weather that affects hundreds of millions of people across North America, Europe and Asia.

Like their counterparts in Oregon, children in the state of Washington have been granted the right to have their day in court concerning the alleged failure of the state to adequately protect them from climate change.  King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill on Monday allowed the young petitioners to move ahead in their case against the state.

Two papers looked at events associated with El Niño episodes.  One, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the combination of climate change and a strong El Niño event created conditions for the recent outbreak of the Zika virus in South America.  Another finding from the paper was that the summer climates of the southeastern U.S., southern China, and some of Mediterranean Europe are warm enough for the Zika virus.  The other paper, in Nature Climate Change, found that small Pacific island nations could be hit by more tropical cyclones during El Niño events as a result of climate change.

Energy

On Tuesday President Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to withdraw hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.  The action was coordinated with similar steps by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to protect large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling.  However, there is strong disappointment in the Carolinas and Georgia that the U.S. ban did not extend south of Norfolk, VA.

Rocky Mountain Institute has released the first of four posts examining how the future might unfold through the widespread adoption of renewable energy technologies.  Their thesis is optimistic in nature and is based on the premise that renewable energy systems are disruptive technologies that are in the accelerating phases of their adoption curves.  Their advantages almost ensure their wide-spread adoption.  RMI’s essays should make interesting reading.  In case you have been considering sustainable investing you might be interested in this post at the World Resources Institute website that debunks four myths about the subject.

A draft 10-year energy blueprint published this week by the Indian government predicts that 57% of the country’s total electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027.  India’s Paris climate accord target was 40% by 2030.  The plan also indicates that no new coal-fired power plants are likely to be required to meet India’s energy needs until at least 2027.  This analysis is consistent with an article in Bloomberg Markets explaining why Indian electricity demand has undershot government forecasts.

A new paper in Nature Climate Change examined the climate policies of the signatories to the Paris Climate Accord in an effort to determine whether their programs to cut carbon emissions are equitable.  Because there is no single definition of “equitable”, the paper looked at different ways to define equity and how countries are measuring up to each of those definitions.  Although the paper is controversial, it concluded that the U.S. is working harder to reduce its emissions than China, while India is making more effort than both.

Arizona has been a battleground over net metering for the past couple of years.  That came to an end on Tuesday when the Arizona Corporation Commission voted to end net metering, whereby homeowners with solar panels get retail credits for power they send to the grid, and instead reduce the amount utilities pay homeowners for rooftop solar power.  Next door, in December 2015 the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) phased out retail-rate net metering, almost shutting down the rooftop solar industry overnight.  Now PUCN has voted to restore favorable rates for residential solar customers in NV Energy’s Sierra Pacific Power Company’s service territory.

Low carbon power accounted for 50% of electricity generation in the UK in the third quarter, up from 45.3% last year.  The rise was largely due to new windfarms and solar farms being connected to the grid, as well as to several major coal-fired power plants closing.  Low carbon power also accounted for two-thirds of the new capacity added to the U.S. grid in 2016.

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.

With the selection of Rick Perry as Energy Secretary and Ryan Zinke as Interior Secretary, President-elect Donald Trump continues to nominate individuals for his cabinet who are skeptical of the role of fossil fuel combustion in driving climate change.  However, the nomination of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State is more complicated, given the company’s endorsement of the Paris Climate Agreement and its support for a carbon tax.  Nevertheless, the next four years will be difficult for the fight against climate change, given the large role of the fossil fuel industry in the new administration.  Consequently, concern about the potential policies of the Trump administration is causing climate scientists to copy important data files from government agencies to private servers to ensure their availability during Trump’s term.  Still, climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern was more sanguine, although he did say “There’s no point wringing hands and weeping into whatever it is we weep into; at the same time, be alert, be very alert. These are difficult times.”

Officials from 24 Republican-led states want President-elect Trump to act on his first day in office against the Clean Power Plan (CPP).  The officials wrote to Trump on Thursday with a four-part plan to undo the CPP and ensure that a future president could not implement a similar policy.  Perhaps the governors of those states should listen to the voters.  According to a new survey from Yale and George Mason Universities, “70% of registered voters support setting strict carbon dioxide emission limits on existing coal-fired power plants to reduce global warming and improve public health, even if the cost of electricity to consumers and companies increased.”  In spite of actions by those seeking to dismantle the CPP, local leaders have vowed to continue their fight against climate change and its effects.  For example, the city council of Portland, OR, voted unanimously on Wednesday to adopt zoning code changes that ban the construction of new major fossil fuel terminals and the expansion of any existing ones.

Climate

A task force composed of executives from major companies, banks, and insurance companies (formed by the Financial Stability Board, an arm of the G-20 industrialized nations) has released its recommendations for improving the ways in which markets can respond to the uncertainties associated with climate change.  Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg had an opinion piece in The Guardian on Wednesday about the report.

At the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU’s) Fall Meeting in San Francisco this week, scientists reported on last winter’s Norwegian research expedition to study the sea ice near the north pole.  Mats Granskog, chief scientist on the expedition, said “This thinner and younger ice in the Arctic today works very differently than the ice we knew.  It moves much faster.  It breaks up more easily.  It’s way more vulnerable to storms and winds.”  Also, at the AGU meeting, NOAA released its Arctic Report Card for 2016, noting that the Arctic is warming at an “astonishing” rate.

A new paper in Nature Geoscience reports on the retreat of mountain glaciers around the world.  The study’s purpose was to determine whether the retreat has accelerated and whether it can be attributed to climate change.  For 36 of the 37 glaciers studied there is a more than 90% chance that the retreat accelerated because of climate change and for 21 there is a greater than 99% chance.  Meanwhile, warming temperatures in the Arctic are expected to cause polar bear and reindeer populations to decline, according to papers at the AGU meeting.

Two studies have provided a better understanding of the melting of Antarctic glaciers.  In West Antarctica, five glaciers terminate in the Amundsen Sea and contribute more than 10% of current sea level rise.  A team of scientists from the UK’s Centre for Polar Observation and Monitoring has combined almost 25 years of altimetry observations from five different satellites operated by the European and American space agencies to determine how the thickness of the glaciers has changed.  Their results show that all the glaciers are thinning, but each in a unique way.  In East Antarctica, the Totten glacier is the largest and carries more ice toward the sea than any other glacier in that ice sheet.  The second study confirmed that, just like in West Antarctica, the Totten glacier is melting from below because of the flow of “warm” ocean water under its ice shelf.  In addition, a new paper in Nature Climate Change concludes that a large lake on the Roi Baudouin ice shelf in East Antarctica was formed because strong winds blew away reflective snow, exposing the dark ice to the sun’s rays.  There were also buried lakes, calling the stability of the ice shelf into question.  Better understanding of Antarctic glaciers has caused two prominent glaciologists to state that research priorities should be coupled to policy needs to allow appropriate policy decisions for coping with sea level rise likely to exceed 6 ft this century.  (The link is to the abstract.  A subscription to Science or access through a library is required to view the full article.)

Each year members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) assess extreme weather events worldwide to ascertain whether their occurrence was influenced by human-caused climate change and the results of the assessment are released as a special edition of the Bulletin of the AMS.  The report for 2015, which was just released, found that global warming influenced 24 of the 30 events studied.  The Conversation has an infographic that summarizes the report’s findings.

Energy

According to a new report from Arabella Advisors, the value of investment funds committed to divesting from fossil fuels has doubled in just over a year.  The report states: “···the value of assets represented by institutions and individuals committing to some sort of divestment from fossil fuel companies has reached $5 trillion.  To date, 688 institutions and 58,399 individuals across 76 countries have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies···.”  Furthermore, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, formed last year by Bill Gates and other billionaire investors, announced on Monday that it is investing $1 billion in the Breakthrough Energy Ventures Fund to spur clean energy technology.

According to the 4^th Quarter 2016 U.S. Solar Market Insight report from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), over 4,100 megawatts of solar PV were installed in the U.S. during the 3^rd quarter of 2016.  A working group of clean energy advocates and utilities has proposed four policy changes that they hope the Virginia General Assembly will enact next year to expand the state’s solar market.  Ivy Main has devoted a blog post to the proposal.

There are 58 “Climatescope” countries and all are regarded as developing nations in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East.  According to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, PV solar is now on a par with wind energy and will soon become the cheapest form of energy in those countries.  They also installed more renewables this year than the OECD countries, with 69.8GW deployed versus 59.2GW.

Beginning January 15, 2017 land-based wind farms will be granted 30-year U.S. government permits that allow for the accidental deaths of bald and golden eagles.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the population of golden eagles in the U.S. could withstand a loss of about 2,000 birds annually, whereas bald eagles could sustain as many as 4,200 fatalities a year.  On Monday, the first off-shore wind farm in the U.S. began sending electricity to the grid.

According to a new paper in Environmental Research Letters, in 2014 atmospheric methane concentrations rose 12.5 parts per billion (ppb) and in 2015, 9.9 ppb, compared to an annual increase of about 0.5 ppb a decade ago.  The major source of the increase was agriculture, especially in the tropics.  This finding was consistent with a study published in April in the journal Science.  Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA removed language claiming that hydraulic fracturing has no “widespread systemic impacts” on drinking water from its final report on the subject.

According to an analysis by the Carbon Tax Center, 38% of the electricity sector’s carbon reduction in the U.S. since 2005 is due to energy efficiency and 20% is due to solar and wind; only 42% is due to substitution of natural gas for coal.  According to a new report from the Brookings Institution, 33 states have decreased their carbon emissions since 2000 while simultaneously growing their economies.  Carbon Brief has prepared an interactive graphic illustrating how each state performed.  Finally a new analysis from the University of Texas Energy Institute provides a county-by-county map showing the cheapest energy source for electricity production in the U.S.

A new report by the MIT Energy Initiative, in collaboration with the Institute for Research in Technology at Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, Spain, offers a roadmap for the redesign of the electrical grid.  According to David Unger at Midwest Energy News “the report’s recommendations fall under two broad headings: 1) Charge consumers for electricity in a way that takes into account when and where it is produced and used, and 2) Reform regulations and policies to level the playing field between traditional, centralized power producers and emergent, distributed ones.”

According to The Guardian: “The Canadian government has agreed [to] a deal with eight of the country’s 10 provinces to introduce its first national carbon price, Justin Trudeau has told reporters.  The prime minister said the move would help Canada meet its international climate change obligations.”  The price would start at C$10 (US$7.60) a tonne in 2018, rising by C$10 a year until it reaches C$50 in 2022.

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.

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.