Month: January 2018

One of climate denialdom’s greatest hits is, how expensive it will be to convert our energy infrastructure to renewables.  Forget that continuing with a fossil economy will cost even more. One key piece of the system has to be upgraded no matter what direction we choose.

Our electrical grid is rapidly descending into developing world quality, and no longer adequate to serve a 21st century economy, be resilient to increases in climate extremes, or defend against increasingly sophisticated enemies.

The  improvements needed for a distributed, renewable grid, are much the same as those needed to harden the country against a new generation of threats, both military and climatic.

Washington Post:

Russian government hackers were behind recent cyber-intrusions into the business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies in what appears to be an effort to assess their networks, according to U.S. government officials.

The U.S. officials said there is no evidence the hackers breached or disrupted the core systems controlling operations at the plants, so the public was not at risk. Rather, they said, the hackers broke into systems dealing with business and administrative tasks, such as personnel.

At the end of June, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security sent a joint alert to the energy sector stating that “advanced, persistent threat actors” — a euphemism for sophisticated foreign hackers — were stealing network log-in and password information to gain a foothold in company networks. The agencies did not name Russia.

The campaign marks the first time Russian government hackers are known to have wormed their way into the networks of American nuclear power companies, several U.S. and industry officials said. And the penetration could be a sign that Russia is seeking to lay the groundwork for more damaging hacks.

Sara Kendzior in Fast Company:

On June 13, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified to the Senate Intelligence committee about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. After fielding hours of questions about his knowledge of the plot, Sessions was greeted by an abrupt change in topic from Senator John McCain. “Quietly, the Kremlin has been trying to map the United States telecommunications infrastructure,” McCain announced, and described a series of alarming moves, including Russian spies monitoring the fiber optic network in Kansas and Russia’s creation of “a cyber weapon that can disrupt the United States power grids and telecommunications infrastructure.”

When McCain asked if Sessions had a strategy to counter Russia’s attacks, Sessions admitted they did not.

In a normal year, McCain’s inquiries about documented, dangerous threats to U.S. infrastructure would have dominated the news. His concerns are well founded: in recent years, Ukraine’s power grid has been repeatedly hacked in what cybersecurity experts believe was part a test run for the United States. Russian hackers have also hacked many centers of U.S. power, including the State Department, the White House, and everyone with a Yahoo email address in 2014, the Department of Defense in 2015, and, of course, the Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee, state and local voter databases, and personal email accounts of various US officials in 2016.

Continue reading “US Energy Infrastructure Vulnerable to Hack Attack”

Relevant spot starts at 19:30.

For my take and interviews on the same topic, see below. Continue reading “Vice News on Weathermen Who Don’t do Climate”

Look for Gil Scott Heron revival in wake of hearing him on the trailer for “Black Panther”.(below) Continue reading “Music Break: Gil Scott Heron – Winter in America”

Once again with feeling.

I took a detour from another video project to take advantage of the teachable moment while the “Bomb Cyclone” cold snap is still fresh in people’s minds.
As usual, Fox News took advantage of a snowstorm to question the last 300 years  of physics.  I grafted my interviews with Arctic All stars from last year’s Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost video to answer the question.

Hope viewers will take the opportunity to spread widely, by all means, share with Uncle Dittohead and Aunt Teabag

Yale Climate Connections:

With New England, much of the middle Atlantic region, and parts of the southeast extending well into Florida suffering through late December-, early January-punishing cold temperatures, and in a number of places, record night-time lows and heavy snowfalls – the inevitable “so much for global warming” argument seemed certain to arise.

On the one hand there were analytical news stories such as The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang’s story headlined “Historic ‘bomb cyclone’ unleashes blizzard conditions from coastal Virginia to New England. Frigid air to follow.”

There also was President Trump’s “we could use a little more of that good old global warming” tweet from his “balmy Mar a Lago” residence looking forward to a frigidly cold New Years Eve dropping of the 2018 ball at Times Square in New York City.

So how then to explain such not-at-all-unusual experience of cold weather temperatures even as the global temperatures continue rising? (One can safely anticipate having to explain cool summer-time daily temperatures in some places as the world continues warming.) To some extent, it’s a simple question of needing to repeatedly explain the difference between weather (short term and local) and climate (long term and global).

Continue reading “New Video: If It’s Global Warming, Why am I Freezing?”

Stanford University:

In the past few decades, improvements in energy efficiency in our homes, buildings and cars have significantly reduced carbon emissions by cutting demand. In addition to the environmental impacts, this enhanced efficiency has improved national security, reducing energy imports four times as much as the combined increases in domestic production of all energy sources combined.

Continuing that trend of increasing efficiency has been the focus of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center (PEEC), which emphasizes efficiency in buildings and homes – like more efficient heating, cooling and lighting – as well as transportation, green computing and how people make energy decisions in their daily lives.

Yi Cui, a professor of materials science and engineering who works on energy efficiency as well as improved batteries, said he started thinking about heating and cooling when looked at where most energy goes.

“We spend 30 percent of electricity to cool and heat the building, which is about 13 percent of the total energy consumption,” he said. “The estimation is, if you can change the set point of air conditioning by 1 degree Celsius, you save 10 percent of energy use in the building heating and cooling.”

A team led by Shanhui Fan has developed a rooftop device that reflects heat from the sun back into space rather than letting it be absorbed by the building. The group recently showed that it could cool water for air conditioning without electricity, and calculated that on a hot day it could save as much as 21 percent on energy to cool the building. Another group has developed a window that quickly transitions between clear and dark to block heat on sunny days.

Inspired by the cost of cooling buildings, Cui wondered if he could cool people instead. He and his group developed an opaque fabric that allows body heat to pass through. People wearing cooling clothing made from this material would require less energy spent on air conditioning.

Continue reading “Energy Efficiency: The Most Important Resource”

In New Orleans for December’s American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, I met writer and Ski instructor Karin Kirk, who has been producing some great pieces on climate communication across the great American ideological divide.
Hope to interview Karin soon on this work – here’s a sample.

Yale Climate Connections:

The daily dose of news is often served up as a popularity poll: 26% of Americans like the tax plan; 37% approve of the President; 61% prefer dogs to cats.

Any hope of nuance is lost in a one-dimensional, up/down poll, as when it comes to climate change. For some, it’s irresistible to focus on “deniers,” in part because their perceived misrepresentations of the science are infuriating to many. But those who flat-out dismiss the science of climate change are a small minority, hovering at fewer than 10% of Americans, according to Global Warming’s Six Americas public opinion research, done by the Yale Program on Climate Communication, which publishes this site.

A larger segment consists of those uncertain, unmotivated, or having mixed emotions and views on the topic. When it comes to improving public understanding of climate change, that middle group can be a wise place to start.

Susan Elizabeth is one who sees herself as part of the middle ground on climate change: She is “cautious” on the Six Americas scale (along with 23% of Americans). Elizabeth, 60, living in Seattle, considers herself a moderate amid a fairly liberal community. She’s a software tester, with a Master’s degree in philosophy. “For somebody who’s not a ‘true believer,’” she says of her opinions on climate change, “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

Elizabeth volunteered for our series of “common ground” interviews, based on a recommendation from a friend and reader. Describing her preferred partner for her interview, she emailed: “my dream person would be someone who knows a lot about the science, maybe even a climate scientist.”

Fulfilling that dream was easy; many scientists are happy to discuss their work. Elizabeth was paired up with Ed Maurer, a civil engineering professor who studies climate change effects on water resources. Maurer, 56, conducts research and teaches at Santa Clara University, south of San Francisco, and also makes time to distill climate science to general audiences.

Elizabeth and Maurer are the latest pairing in the sequence of Yale Climate Connections “common ground” conversations, wherein people with differing views engage in a real-life dialogue. (Read about the first and second matchups in this series.)

Settling in for the video conference, Elizabeth expresses her anticipation for the discussion. “I’ve always wanted to go out to lunch with a climate scientist,” she muses, “so I can ask lots of questions.”

Continue reading “Seeking Middle Ground for Climate Comms”

Trump plan to subsidize coal, nuclear plants hit a snag.

Washington Post:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday unanimously rejected a proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry that would have propped up nuclear and coal power struggling in competitive electricity markets.

The independent five-member commission includes four people appointed by President Trump, three of them Republicans. Its decision is binding.

At the same time, the commission said that it shared Perry’s stated goal of strengthening the “resilience” of the electricity grid and it directed regional transmission operators to provide information to help the commission examine the matter “holistically.” The operators have 60 days to submit materials. At that time the agency can issue another order.

Perry’s proposal favored power plants able to store 90 days fuel supply on site, unlike renewable energy or natural gas plants.

The plan, however, was widely seen as an effort to alter the balance of competitive electricity markets that federal regulators have been cultivating since the late 1980s. And critics said that it would have largely helped a handful of coal and nuclear companies, including the utility FirstEnergy and coal mining firm Murray Energy, while raising rates for consumers.

The argument coal and nuclear proponents make is that those fuels provide “base load” power that is more reliable than a mix of renewables and natural gas – and are therefore critical for “national security”.

Recent events shed some light on the fallacy of that idea – when in the midst of last week’s fierce “bomb cyclone”, the Pilgrim nuclear facility in Massachusetts tripped offline due to a grid snafu.

MassLive.com:

Amid howling winds and rising seas, Entergy’s Pilgrim nuclear reactor was forced to shut down shortly after 2 p.m. when one of two 345-kilovolt transmission lines that supply the plant with electricity “became unavailable.”

The 728-megawatt plant continues to receive power from a second line, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region I spokesman Neil Sheehan told The Cape Cod Times. The reactor was operating at full capacity Thursday when the power line failed, and the plant was shut down manually. Plant managers deployed diesel generators for safety systems.

On Wednesday, the group Pilgrim Watch had asked the NRC to order the reactor closed during the severe snow storm, but plant managers and three onsite federal inspectors decided to keep operating, the Cape Cod newspaper reports.

Pilgrim was previously shut for 12 days in 2015 when two 345-kilovolt transmission lines became inoperable during a snowstorm. The plant is categorized as one of the country’s worst performing reactors. It is slated to close for good in mid-2019.

Reuters:

Jan 4 (Reuters) – Entergy Corp said on Thursday it shut its 688-megawatt Pilgrim nuclear power plant in eastern Massachusetts because of the failure of one of the two lines that connect the reactor to the New England electric grid.

The outage occurred during a winter storm that tested the power grid’s ability to keep the lights on as homes and businesses used most of the region’s natural gas supplies for heating, leaving less of the fuel available for power generation.

Continue reading “Trump Coal Rescue Hits Pothole”

This is unsourced, purports to be from the current bomb cyclone.
I was a street medic for 15 years — this absolutely terrified me.

As the Northeast is battered by a gigantic winter storm, a reminder from the past of what can happen with sharper temperature differentials in a warming world.

Sea level rise is a force multiplier.

Continue reading “Bomb Psychlone: Climate, Sea Level, and Superstorms in a Warming World.”