Month: April 2018

Recent headlines somewhat alarming about retreat of Antarctica glaciers.
Having just spent a lot of time interviewing a significant cross section of glacier and ocean experts, (although not the authors of the current study) – I have to raise a bit of caution about immediately going to the “worst case” scenario.

All the experts are deeply concerned about what is happening, all realize that high end, and even moderate, scenarios indicate very serious impacts – but the experts I talked to were cautious and measured in regard to the very high-end, worst case scenarios. Simply put, getting to the higher sea level numbers, especially in this century, entails a lot of assumptions.

Notably, Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol was pretty clear that, in his view, a meter was at the upper end of what we can expect in the coming century. (worth noting, sea level rise will not stop in 2100)  Even Eric Rignot, who has made some of the most jaw dropping warnings in recent years, made a point that aggressive decarbonization, and subsequent drawdown (tall order I know) could substantially slow, or even stop, the losses.
Rob DeConto, who has contributed a lot to understanding mechanisms for very rapid ice loss in the past, wanted to clarify that the largest area of uncertainty was not in the ice sheets, but in humanity’s collective decisions about carbon emissions.
That said, clear that trends in sea level projections have been going up in recent decades,  based mostly on better observations. In that sense, the new study is a step forward, and of great concern. Stay tuned.

Inside Climate News:

A new analysis of satellite data has found “extreme” changes underway at eight of Antarctica’s major glaciers, as unusually warm ocean water slips in under their ice shelves.

The warmer water is eating away at the glaciers’ icy grasp on the seafloor. As a result, the grounding line—where the ice last touches bedrock—has been receding by as much as 600 feet per year, a new study shows. Behind the grounding line, the land-based ice then speeds up, increasing the rate of sea level rise.

The new continent-wide measurements of grounding lines suggests a widespread pattern of melting all around Antarctica, said University of Leeds climate researcher Hannes Konrad, lead author of the analysis published today in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience.

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Climate models suggest that the current rate of retreat could lead to “centennial-scale collapse of the inland catchment areas,” the study says. That suggests that huge areas of ice far from the ocean could collapse within 100 years, leading to unexpected pulses of sea level rise.

The land-based ice can also speed up in response to ice shelf thinning more than 500 miles away, according to a new study by British and Germanclimate scientists who showed that the effects of localized ice shelf thinning can reach across the entire shelf. Konrad said those findings help show where Antarctica is most vulnerable to future ocean warming, including the large Ross and Filchner-Ronne ice shelves. Continue reading “New Sea Level Study Raises Concerns, Scientists still Counsel Caution”

Red State, conservative roughnecks moving from Oil and Gas, to wind.

 

To adapt to climate change, we need to preserve the resilience that Biodiversity gives.

Paradoxically, climate change is the greatest threat to that biodiversity.

Scientific American:

Climate change will be the fastest-growing cause of species loss in the Americas by midcentury, according to a new set of reports from the leading global organization on ecosystems and biodiversity.

Climate change, alongside factors like land degradation and habitat loss, is emerging as a top threat to wildlife around the globe, the reports suggest. In Africa, it could cause some animals to decline by as much as 50 percent by the end of the century, and up to 90 percent of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean may bleach or degrade by the year 2050.

The reports, released last week by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), included a sweeping set of biodiversity assessments for four major regions around the world, with contributions from more than 500 experts. A separate report on global land degradation, which was launched yesterday, included more than 100 authors. Both were approved by IPBES’s 129 member states at an ongoing plenary session in Medellín, Colombia.

Desmogblog:

Three years in the making, the study concluded humans are causing the planet to lose species at such a rapid clip that the resulting risks are on par with those presented by climate change. On top of being unfortunate for those species that no longer exist, these losses also endanger people’s access to food, clean water, and energy, according to the report.

“We must act to halt and reverse the unsustainable use of nature or risk not only the future we want but even the lives we currently lead,” Robert Watson, current IPBES chair and former IPCC chair, told The Guardian.

In addition, by 2050, the report found that under a “business as usual” scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could jump ahead of other threats, such as habitat loss and change in land use, as the primary cause of extinctions in North and South America.

Wildlife and ecosystems across the world are threatened by the impacts of a warming climate.

Coral reefs, under assault from warming, acidifying waters and pollution, are the poster child for this. They have suffered extensive damage already in South and Southeast Asia, and this report determined that “up to 90 percent of corals will suffer severe degradation by 2050, even under conservative climate change scenarios.”

In Africa by the year 2100, climate change could threaten over half of the continent’s species of birds and mammals and many of its plants. Continue reading “Saving a Diverse Planet”

US Auto industry complains about mileage standards.

While GM/Ford hire lawyers and lobbyists, China, Japan, Germany hire engineers.

We know how this ends.

BTW, keeping fuel use high yet one other bonus to Oil export-dependent Russia and Vladimir Putin. See how that works?

Vox:

The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back one of the biggest, most impactful environmental regulations of the Obama era, giving a boost to America’s big three automakers.

EPA officials announced Monday afternoon that they intend to weaken greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks as a favor to automakers. “[I]n light of recent data, the current standards are not appropriate and should be revised,” the agency said in a statement.

The current rules were designed to limit carbon emissions and pollution from transportation, which has overtaken the power sector to become America’s biggest climate problem and remains the largest source of air pollution. The standards would avert 570 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, equivalent to stopping 140 typical coal-fired power plants for a year, the Union of Concerned Scientists has estimated.

They’d save consumers money too. According to Margo Oge, former head of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, the fuel savings alone through 2025 would add up to $1.7 trillion.

While some car companies say they support the current rules, trade groups like the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers have been clamoring to lower the goalposts for fuel economy and tailpipe emissions since President Trump took office, arguing that the current regulations are too stringent and expensive to meet.

Relaxing the rules would let companies like Chrysler and GM, which scrape the bottom of average fuel economy rankings, breathe easier.

But it also pulls out the rug from under carmakers that top the efficiency list and are ahead of schedule to meet the higher standards. Many of these companies with very fuel-efficient lineups earn revenue from selling emissions and efficiency credits to other manufacturers that aren’t able to comply with the stringent rules.

And the company that perhaps earns more from this side market than any other is Elon Musk’s electric carmaker, Tesla.

That means the weaker regulations will simultaneously help the dirtiest, hurt the cleanest, and derail years of tenuous progress in reducing environmental harm from a growing source of pollution.

These rules were put in place to save automakers from a crisis

First, some brief history: After the 2008 financial crash and the ensuing economic crisis, Chrysler and General Motors were on the ropes and came to Congress with their hands out looking for a bailout. They received cheap loans and financial assistance under Presidents Bush and Obama totaling almost $80 billion, with a net cost to taxpayers of $9.3 billion.

A big reason US car companies were foundering was that gas prices suddenly shot up and US automakers, who for years were making bigger, thirstier cars, were suddenly facing a cash-crunched, fuel-abstemious market.

Continue reading “Exhausting Options: How Dropping Mileage Rules will Hurt US Auto Industry”

Sniffing out the answers.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance:

London and New York, March 28, 2018 – Coal and gas are facing a mounting threat to their position in the world’s electricity generation mix, as a result of the spectacular reductions in cost not just for wind and solar technologies, but also for batteries – according to research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).
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In bulk generation, the threat comes from wind and solar photovoltaics, both of which have reduced their LCOEs further in the last year, thanks to falling capital costs, improving efficiency and the spread of competitive auctions around the world.

In dispatchable power – the ability to respond to grid requests to ramp electricity generation up or down at any time of day – the challenge to new coal and gas is coming from the pairing of battery storage with wind and solar, enabling the latter two ‘variable’ sources to smooth output, and if necessary, shift the timing of supply.

In flexibility – the ability to switch on and off in response to grid electricity shortfalls and surpluses over periods of hours – stand-alone batteries are increasingly cost-effective and are starting to compete on price with open-cycle gas plants, and with other options such as pumped hydro.

Elena Giannakopoulou, head of energy economics at BNEF, said: “Our team has looked closely at the impact of the 79% decrease seen in lithium-ion battery costs since 2010 on the economics of this storage technology in different parts of the electricity system. The conclusions are chilling for the fossil fuel sector.

“Some existing coal and gas power stations, with sunk capital costs, will continue to have a role for many years, doing a combination of bulk generation and balancing, as wind and solar penetration increase. But the economic case for building new coal and gas capacity is crumbling, as batteries start to encroach on the flexibility and peaking revenues enjoyed by fossil fuel plants.”

BNEF calculates LCOEs for each technology, taking into account everything from equipment, construction and financing costs to operating and maintenance expenses and average running hours. It found that in the first half of 2018, the benchmark global LCOE for onshore wind is $55 per megawatt-hour, down 18% from the first six months of last year, while the equivalent for solar PV without tracking systems is $70 per MWh, also down 18%.[1] Offshore wind’s LCOE is $118 per MWh in 1H 2018, down 5%.

New York Times:

As environmental concerns drive power companies away from using coal, natural gas has emerged as the nation’s No. 1 power source. Plentiful and relatively inexpensive as a result of the nation’s fracking boom, it has been portrayed as a bridge to an era in which alternative energy would take primacy.

But technology and economics have carved a different, shorter pathway that has bypassed the broad need for some fossil-fuel plants. And that has put proponents of natural gas on the defensive.

Some utility companies have scrapped plans for new natural-gas plants in favor of wind and solar sources that have become cheaper and easier to install. Existing gas plants are being shut because their economics are no longer attractive. And regulators are increasingly challenging the plans of companies determined to move forward with new natural-gas plants.

“It’s a very different world that we’re arriving at very quickly,” said Robert McCullough, an energy consultant in Portland, Ore. “That wind farm can literally be put on a train and brought online within a year. It is moving so fast that even critics of the old path like myself have been taken by surprise.”

Continue reading “Updating: Will Gas Break Wind? Will Wind Pass Gas?”

C’mon winter, there’s only one way this ends.

University of California:

These numbers are nearly impossible to envision, but the general takeaway is this: as millions go hungry, we continue to waste perfectly good food on an enormous scale.

The issue goes beyond hunger: Producing the food we waste takes land, water, labor and other valuable resources. To add insult to injury, food waste is a major source of greenhouse gases, mostly in the form of methane, a pollutant at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

When we talk about climate pollution, we tend to focus on power plants, transportation and industry. If we think about food at all, it’s generally cows and their – ahem – “emissions.” Wasted food often gets overlooked, but according to an assessment by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 6.7 percent of all global greenhouse gases come from food waste.

How big is the problem of food waste?

If 6.7 percent sounds small, here’s one way to put it into perspective. Imagine that all the world’s food waste came together to form a country. It wouldn’t be a very popular country to live in, but it would have an outsize impact on everyone else: the nation of, Food Waste would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the U.S.

Just how big is the country of Food Waste? According to the FAO, the land devoted to producing wasted food is roughly 5.4 million square miles, which would make it the second largest country in the world behind Russia. That’s an area equivalent to Central America, Mexico, plus the lower 48 states and a big part of Canada used for nothing but producing food we don’t eat.