We’re coming out of a bear an El Nino, maybe biggest ever, and looks like we are sliding into a La Nina, according to many reports. La Nina is kind of El Nino’s nasty sibling, and has it’s own distinct fingerprint of extremes. Last big one in 2011 was extreme enough that it carved it’s own dip in the satellite sea level record.
One of the only places you’ll find context like this on climate change is here. Hope you’ll support it.
I interviewed NASA’s Josh Willis at the American Geophysical Union as the last La Nina was winding down – see if it might apply to coming months.
I don’t think we’re actually in a real La Nina yet, but this will do till a real one comes along.
“Hurricanes are like bananas,” Former Hurricane hunter Jeff Masters told me not long ago, “..they come in bunches.”
For the last 10 years, following the remarkable season of 2005, the mainland US has avoided impacts from a major, Category 3 or higher, hurricane. Not likely that will last forever. I’m working on a new video that will discuss hurricanes in a warming world.
For now, see NASA above.
Above, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan on Climate change.
Hawking, aka the smartest guy in the world, admits he’s baffled by Donald Trump’s appeal. Mr Trump has responded, “I prefer people who aren’t in wheelchairs. This guy’s a loser.”
Ok, I lied about that, but you bought it for a second, right?
Still, Hawking has no doubts about where climate change is taking us.
So it’s understandable why, on Tuesday, people sort of freaked out when Hawking said there was one thing he could not explain: The popularity of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“I can’t,” Hawking responded, when asked to explain Trump’s rise as part of an exclusive interview with British news station ITV News. “He is a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.”
But here’s the thing: in that same interview, Hawking also said he didn’t believe Trump was the greatest threat facing America, or even the world. The greatest threat, he said, is human-caused climate change.
“A more immediate danger is runaway climate change,” Hawking said. “A rise in ocean temperature would melt the ice-caps, and cause a release of large amounts of carbon dioxide from the ocean floor. Both effects could make our climate like that of Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees.”
Hawking’s comments about Trump made headlines in nearly every major American media outlet. His comments about climate change being the world’s greatest threat, however, did not make the cut.
It’s not like there is some kind of choice as to whether we rebuild our electrical grid. We either do it, and remain a superpower, or we don’t, and our already-obsolete infrastructure degrades further, as we slide gradually into decrepitude and the ash heap of history.
Maybe we should rebuild it to help sustain a liveable planet?
The United States could slash greenhouse gas emissions from power production by up to 78 percent below 1990 levels within 15 years while meeting increased demand, according to a new study by NOAA and University of Colorado Boulder researchers.
The study used a sophisticated mathematical model to evaluate future cost, demand, generation and transmission scenarios. It found that with improvements in transmission infrastructure, weather-driven renewable resources could supply most of the nation’s electricity at costs similar to today’s.
“Our research shows a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years,” said Alexander MacDonald, co-lead author and recently retired director of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder.
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Although improvements in wind and solar generation have continued to ratchet down the cost of producing renewable energy, these energy resources are inherently intermittent. As a result, utilities have invested in surplus generation capacity to back up renewable energy generation with natural gas-fired generators and other reserves.
“In the future, they may not need to,” said co-lead author Christopher Clack, a physicist and mathematician with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
This is a complicated, developing story, but if you’ve been following the videos, you know at least the most important fundamentals.
New documents show Exxon oil executives were briefed by their own scientists as far back as the 1970s, that climate change was real, caused by humans, and would demand definitive action within a decade. Exxon eventually chose not only to ignore the science, but actively support groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute, who deliberately lied, dissembled, distorted and obfuscated the science – deceiving not only citizens and policy makers, but – critically – Exxon’s own shareholders.
This deception of investors is the target of current investigations being pursued by several state Attorney Generals. And, predictably, the issue is being spun completely on it’s head, lead by right wing media and the House “Science” Committee.
The operative memes are “first amendment”, and “free speech” – the perverse application of which we saw when Tobacco industry executives defended their right to lie under oath to Congress – an interpretation that the energy industry defended at the time. – perhaps anticipating a time like this. In this fun-house version of the constitution, telling people the poison you’re selling them is perfectly safe – is “free speech” – and lying to legal authorities about it is “protected”.
What’s not protected, in bizarro world, is citizen’s right to organize and defend themselves against this kind of activity.
The battle over Exxon Mobil and the issue of climate change took a new turn Wednesday.
Environmental groups, citing constitutional rights, said they would not comply with a sweeping request for information from the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology led by Chairman Lamar S. Smith (R-Tex.).
The environmental groups and foundations said the request was unreasonably broad, violated their rights to free speech and free assembly, and interfered with their right to petition government officials.
On May 18, Smith’s committee had asked for any communications that might show that eight leading environmental groups and nonprofit foundations — along with the attorneys general from about 20 states — had coordinated a legal strategy to uncover internal information about climate change that they allege Exxon Mobil had concealed for decades. Smith also asked for communications between environmental groups related to state investigations into Exxon Mobil and whether the oil giant had violated securities and consumer fraud laws.
The environmental groups don’t think the committee is entitled to see that communication.
“In a democracy built on principles and the rule of law, 350.org cannot in good faith comply with an illegitimate government request that encroaches so fundamentally on its and its colleagues’ protected constitutional rights,” said a letter sent Wednesday from the group’s law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
The Smith letter appeared to be part of a tit-for-tat after state attorneys general sought old Exxon Mobil documents related to climate.
It’s the first day of Hurricane season. I’m working on a video with some recent interviews, including Kerry Emanuel of MIT, who I caught up with at the AGU conference in San Francisco.
Dr Emanuel is probably the best known, and most quoted Hurricane/Tropical Cyclone expert on the planet, – and he has some things to say.
Above, in 2012, via skype, Dr. Emanuel walked me thru a “play by play” of Hurricane Sandy with satellite video. Wonk Fun.
Remember, donating to Dark Snow is the way to support truly independent climate journalism.
Below, a lot of people stopped watching this spaced-out, in depth exam of Sandy, in the first minute, thinking it was an ad.
Wind power engineering is governed by a simple fact: The higher you go, the stronger and steadier the wind gets and the more power you can generate. So the evolution of wind power over the years has largely been a process of building bigger and bigger blades and perching them atop higher and higher towers.
The turbine being assembled in this video, by MidAmerican Energy, will be the tallest land-based wind turbine ever built in the US, with a hub height (ground to center of blades) of 115.5 meters (379 feet) and a capacity of 2,415 kW. It’s not quite up to the level of the best turbines in Europe, but it’s mainly meant as experiment.
In 2014, the average cost of Power Purchase Agreements for new wind power in the US was around 2.35 cents per kwh, the lowest it has ever been. In the windiest parts of the great plains, prices are as low as 2 cents per kwh.
Upon each new astounding milepost in the explosion of solar, wind and renewable technology – most predictable go-to response from renewable energy haters = “but… SUBSIDIES”.
No sense bringing up, well, let’s see, every major infrastructure and technical advance since the Erie Canal – Transcontinental railroads, superhighways, air travel, jet engines, radar, microchips, space travel, weather satellites, the internet – all substantially or completely products of public funding. You might as well try to brief them on the mainstream science of climate change. Good luck.
But now the nook-ya-ler boys want (more) subsidies. That wasn’t in the script.
Just a few years ago, the United States seemed poised to say farewell to nuclear energy. No company had completed a new plant in decades, and the disaster in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011 intensified public disenchantment with the technology, both here and abroad.
But as the Paris agreement on climate change has put pressure on the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some state and federal officials have deemed nuclear energy part of the solution. They are now scrambling to save existing plants that can no longer compete economically in a market flooded with cheap natural gas.
“We’re supposed to be adding zero-carbon sources, not subtracting,” Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary, said recently at a symposium that the department convened to explore ways to improve the industry’s prospects.
As a result, there are efforts across the country to bail out nuclear plants at risk of closing, with important test cases in Illinois, Ohio and New York, as well as proposed legislation in Congress.
