“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” – H. G. Wells
Month: May 2018
New Video: The Myth of the Mini Ice Age
Not the first time I’ve had to shoot down this nonsense, probably not the last.
The internet’s perverse algorithms select for “man bites dog” stories, which explains why every yahoo with a “global cooling”, “imminent ice age” video gets pushed to the front of the queue.
This includes a spate of stories after a recent study of solar cycles. Naturally, I talked to the author.
Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Jack Black on Miami’s Sea Level Denial
Actor Jack Black explores South Florida’s looming sea level crisis in the riveting documentary ‘Saving Miami’ for the Emmy-winning climate change series Years of Living Dangerously.
Black meets with South Florida oceanographers, mayors, activists, property developers and even a psychiatrist to better understand how the region can cope with its dilemma.
There’s one sure bet about the hundreds gathering for the annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference, which runs this week in West Palm Beach: They’ll all want to hear forecasters’ predictions on how active the 2018 hurricane season is going to be.
And whenever a tropical storm forms in the Atlantic Ocean, they’ll keep a nervous eye on the computers’ predicted hurricane paths. They’ll become fluent on wind speeds and shear, drops in barometric pressure, cones of uncertainty.
They’ll be talking, in other words, about science.
And they’ll be heeding scientists. When the experts say a hurricane is about to make landfall, the governor and other leaders will urge Floridians to take appropriate action: stay put or evacuate, open shelters, stock up on bottled water, kennel the pets.
But if science is to be trusted when it comes to hurricanes, why is it so hard for state officials in Florida and federal officials in the Trump administration to respect science when it comes to climate change and sea-level rise?
How is it that everyone will accept science whenever it shows that Florida is in danger of getting slammed by a storm, but that many stubbornly refuse to believe in science when it shows that the southern end of the peninsula is on a decades-long course to disappear under water?
This is not just a theoretical question. This is no parlor game. The scientists who have measured the global temperatures, the melting of the world’s great ice sheets and the rising of the oceans are no less worthy of our trust than are the weather experts who will alert us to the next tropical storm.
They’re in the exact same business: reading the data and warning us of imminent danger. The only difference is that the creeping rise of the sea level is far less visible than the ominous spiral of a hurricane.
In fact, the warnings are interrelated. One of the greatest dangers of global warming and rising seas to us will be the increasing intensity of hurricanes as they feed on warmer ocean water. As the sea level gets higher, storm surges will be stronger, more destructive and deadlier.
Climate expert Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami Department of Geological Sciences, says that if Hurricane Irma had remained a Category 5 and hit the east coast of Florida — instead of veering west — our region would have suffered a devastating, transforming blow from a 20-foot surge that would have pounded us for hours.
The destruction would have been “much worse” than Katrina’s hit on New Orleans. South Beach’s famous row of Art Deco hotels, to take one example, would be gone.
In the video above, Black talks to developers who are planning billions of dollars in new high rise development, in areas that we know will be flooding more and more in coming decades.
I spoke to Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone writer and author of “The Water Will Come”, for insight about that state of mind, see below.
Continue reading “Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Jack Black on Miami’s Sea Level Denial”
Devil Horns and Duck Curves: Renewables Reshaping Grid in California, Elsewhere
The Duck curve about to get Duckier.
California just mandated that nearly all new homes have solar, starting in less than two years. Now, it’s going to have to figure out what to do with all of that extra energy.
Already, the state is flooded with so much solar power during the day that it has to turn off some of its sun-fueled plants at times and often needs to ship excess green energy to neighboring states. The phenomenon has produced what state grid operators have been calling the duck curve — that’s when net power demand craters during daylight hours and then ramps up after sunset and natural-gas generators fire up to meet customer demand.
It’s an unintended consequence of the Golden State’s effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions and get half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and has vexed the state’s grid operators. California’s top utility regulator warned last week of a looming energy crisis if the region doesn’t start planning for a future with more people either generating their own power or getting it from suppliers besides the big utilities.
“As the amount of renewables on the system grows, grid operators need increased visibility into behind-the-meter resources,” said Steven Greenlee, a spokesman for California Independent System Operator Corp., which runs the state’s power grid. Grid operators will need more visibility into how these home systems are working, he said.
To put it another way, “it has the potential to make the duck curve duckier,” said Ethan Zindler, a Washington-based analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Germany’s renewables sector produced more than 100 per cent of the nation’s electricity demand yesterday, pushing wholesale power prices into negative, the latest government data shows.
Continue reading “Devil Horns and Duck Curves: Renewables Reshaping Grid in California, Elsewhere”
The “Atlantification” of the Arctic
Codfish and Mackerel migrating from the Atlantic north into the Arctic.
Someone needs to explain to them that there is no global warming, they can all go back where they came from.
Reminder: Deep explainer interviews from Scientists like Dr. Barber happen because of your support for Dark Snow Project.
Above Scandinavia, on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, mackerel, cod, and other fish native to the European coast are migrating through increasingly ice-free waters, heading deeper into the Arctic Basin toward Siberia. Thousands of miles to the west, above Alaska, kittiwakes and other polar seabirds are being supplanted by southern birds following warm waters streaming north through the Bering Strait. And midway between, above Canada, sea ice-avoiding killer whales from the Atlantic are increasingly making themselves at home in a thawing Arctic.
As the Arctic heats up faster than any other region on the planet, once-distinct boundaries between the frigid polar ocean and its warmer, neighboring oceans are beginning to blur, opening the gates to southern waters bearing foreign species, from phytoplankton to whales. The “Atlantification” and “Pacification” of the Arctic Ocean are now rapidly advancing. A new paper by University of Washington oceanographer Rebecca Woodgate, for example, finds that the volume of Pacific Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait surged up to 70 percent over the past decade and now equals 50 times the annual flow of the Mississippi River. And over on the Atlantic flank of the Arctic, another recent report concludes that the Arctic Ocean’s cold layering system that blocks Atlantic inflows is breaking down, allowing a deluge of warmer, denser water to flood into the Arctic Basin.
Because the oceanographic conditions in the Atlantic and Pacific sectors of the Arctic are distinct, the physical mechanisms behind these widespread changes differ. But scientists say that the growing intrusions on both sides of the Arctic Ocean are driving heat, nutrients, and temperate species to new polar latitudes — with profound impacts on Arctic Ocean dynamics, marine food webs, and longstanding predator-prey relationships.
Recognizing the Mother of Global Warming
University of California at Santa Barbara:
By all rights, Eunice Newton Foote should be a household name.
More than a century and a half ago, Foote was part of one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time: revealing the role of carbon dioxide in the earth’s greenhouse effect.
And yet relatively few people have heard of her.
Foote was the first person to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and also the first person to suggest that an atmosphere containing high levels of carbon dioxide would lead to a warmer earth.
Her research findings, contained in the paper “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays,” were presented at the August 23, 1856, annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Being female, however, Foote was not allowed to read her own paper. Instead, Professor Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution spoke on her behalf.
A few years later, Foote’s findings were reflected in the studies of physicist John Tyndall, whose research expanded on Foote’s discovery. And while Tyndall’s research is widely accepted as one of the foundations of modern climate science, Foote has faded to relative obscurity.
The morning of August 23, 1856, saw hundreds of men of science, inventors and curious persons gathered in Albany, New York, for the Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest attended to date. The annual meetings of the AAAS brought together scientists from around the United States to share groundbreaking new discoveries, discuss advancements in their fields and explore new areas of investigation. Yet this particular meeting failed to deliver any papers of quality—with one notable exception
That exception was a paper entitled “Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays,” by Eunice Foote. In two brisk pages, Foote’s paper anticipated the revolution in climate science by experimentally demonstrating the effects of the sun on certain gases and theorizing how those gases would interact with Earth’s atmosphere for the first time. In a column of the September 1856 issue of Scientific American titled “Scientific Ladies,” Foote is praised for supporting her opinions with “practical experiments.” The writers noted: “this we are happy to say has been done by a lady.”
Blinding Me With No Science. Trump Cancels Carbon Monitoring
Above:
An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.
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Crimes so grave we have no name for them.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage—and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet’s flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned.
The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts. “If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” she says. Canceling the CMS “is a grave mistake,” she adds.
The White House has mounted a broad attack on climate science, repeatedly proposing cuts to NASA’s earth science budget, including the CMS, and cancellations of climate missions such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3). Although Congress fended off the budget and mission cuts, a spending deal signed in March made no mention of the CMS. That allowed the administration’s move to take effect, says Steve Cole, a NASA spokesperson in Washington, D.C. Cole says existing grants will be allowed to finish up, but no new research will be supported.
Continue reading “Blinding Me With No Science. Trump Cancels Carbon Monitoring”
Quacking the Code. Solar Energy’s Biggest Challenge Looks like a Duck
Coal Baron Con Man Update
A night Republicans feared would end in disaster in at least one state instead produced Senate nominees that party leaders are pleased to run against three vulnerable Democratic senators in November’s midterm elections.
In West Virginia, Don Blankenship — the ex-convict and coal baron who had taken aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “China family,” in a reference to his wife and in-laws’ heritage — finished third behind Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who CNN has projected will win, and Rep. Evan Jenkins, the second-place finisher.
How Rural Areas Benefit from Wind Farms
Benefit sharing and community engagement are best practices for wind siting.
NEW YORK, May 7 (Reuters) – Wind farms have boosted local tax bases and generated new revenue as they expand across the United States, especially for rural areas, Moody’s Investors Service said in a report on Monday.
“What we’re seeing is wind farms generate new operating revenues, lower the tax burden for local residents,” Moody’s analyst Frank Mamo told Reuters. “In many cases, local governments are using this new money to address what was a growing backlog of deferred capital expenditures.”
In Adair County, Iowa, construction of 10 new wind farms has grown the tax base nearly 30 percent over the last decade, giving it money to fix bridges and streets.
Wind farm taxes are also paying over 40 percent of debt service for Webb Consolidated Independent School District in Texas, Moody’s noted.
In Jackson County, Minnesota, a wind production tax generates nearly 20 percent of the county’s annual operating revenues and helped fund construction of a new public works facility.
Nearly half of the country’s installed wind power capacity is located in Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma and California, the report showed.