Month: June 2018

Is that bad? That sounds bad.

But I thought “CO2 is plant food”.
Video above is 8 years old, one of my “Climate Denial Crock” series –  but more current than ever.

DeutscheWelle:

A new study has further revealed how climate change is reducing yields and sucking the nutrients from our vegetables and legumes, raising serious questions over the future of food security and public health around the world.

The report, which was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is apparently the first of its kind to methodically examine to what extent environmental changes such as water scarcity, increases in temperature and a greater concentration of carbon dioxide could impact the nutritional quality and yield of crops vital to our everyday nutrition.

Previous research into the impact of environmental change on food has mostly focused on the yield of staple crops such as wheat, rice and corn. However, there has been comparatively little discussion on how climate change is affecting nutritious foods that are considered more important to a healthy diet.

The phenomenon of crops being stripped of their high nutritional qualities due to environmental factors has become known as the “junk food effect.”

For some time now, researchers have been aware that many of our most important plant-based foods are becoming less nutritious. Studies have shown how the mineral, protein and vitamin content in fruits and vegetables has decreased over the past few decades, although until recently this had been explained away by the fact that we had been prioritizing higher yields over nutrition.

“Vegetables and legumes are vital components of a healthy, balanced and sustainable diet, and nutritional guidelines consistently advise people to incorporate more vegetables and legumes into their diet,” says lead author Pauline Scheelbeek.

“However, our new analysis suggests that this advice conflicts with the potential impacts of environmental changes that will decrease the availability of these crops.”

The carbon dioxide factor

Alongside water scarcity and increasing temperatures, higher levels of carbon dioxide are being blamed for stripping crops of their nutritional value.

But carbon dioxide is good for plants, so why should we be worried about rising CO2 levels? While it’s true that plants do require carbon dioxide in order to grow and thrive, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

Rising carbon dioxide levels ramp up the process of photosynthesis — which is what allows plants to transform sunlight into food. While this certainly helps plants grow, it has the side effect of causing them to produce more simple carbohydrates such as glucose.

And this comes at the expense of other important nutrients we need in order to stay healthy including protein, zinc and iron.

Continue reading “Climate Change: Stripping Food of Nutrients”

Climate as an amplifier.

As refugees crowd the US border, increasing extremes of heat, and precipitation portend greater misery in coming days.

El Paso Times:

As of Friday, the shelter in Tornillo had 400 beds prepared and Hurd said it is expected to hit its targeted capacity of 360 people shortly.

Hurd said federal officials are evaluating whether to up the number of beds at the site to 4,000.

“Which is just absolutely nuts,” said Hurd, who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The new shelters that have been constructed near the Tornillo Port of Entry resemble tents that federal officials used after Hurricane Harvey hit the Southeast coast of the state last year.

Each tent has bed space for 20 children and two adults, as the federal government requires one adult for every ten children. There are also showers, bathrooms, medical facilities, fire trucks and spaces for children to meet with case management workers and lawyers. Hurd said there is also a “chow hall that can fit a couple hundred people at one time.”

The heat in the area has been a key point of concern for El Paso area lawmakers, as temperatures in the area are expected to reach 105 degrees in the coming weeks. Hurd said each tent has a four-ton air conditioning unit.

Continue reading “As Refugee Crisis Roils Border, Climate Change is a Misery Multiplier”

Bloomberg:

The world’s biggest companies are increasingly worried about climate change.

The terms “climate” and “weather” combined were among the most frequently discussed topics among executives of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies, beating “Trump,” “the dollar,” “oil” and “recession” according to analysis of 10 years of earnings call transcripts by S&P Global Ratings.

“The effect of climate risk and severe weather events on corporate earnings is meaningful,” S&P said in the joint report with Hamilton, Bermuda-based Resilience Economics Ltd. “If left unmitigated, the financial impact could increase over time as climate change makes disruptive weather events more frequent and severe.”

The analysis shows that 15 percent of S&P 500 companies publicly disclosed an effect on earnings from weather events, with only 4 percent quantifying the effect. The average impact on earnings was 6 percent in financial year 2017.

More companies are expected to increase reporting on climate issues as management teams become more accountable for understanding the financial impact of weather events, S&P said.

“We may begin to see institutional investors build climate risk factors into their portfolio selection processes, thereby placing greater emphasis on climate when directing investments,” the ratings agency said.

 

 

Solar, in Northern Europe, at 4 cents/Kwh. Wind same.
Offshore wind with no subsidy.
Sounds like something we can learn from.

I’ve listened to the first third of this so far, and it’s worthwhile.

Forbes:

Baseload power is not the answer to the variability of renewable energy, a German energy official said Friday, and energy storage may not be the answer either.

Germany has achieved moments in its Energiewende, or Energy Transition, in which renewables met 100 percent of demand without the aid of baseload power or batteries, said Thorsten Herdan, a director general for energy policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Germany was able to do that, he argued, because of its system’s flexibility.

1. Flexibility Trumps Baseload

“What we need for this fluctuating renewable energy in the electricity mix is not baseload. Baseload is poison for our electricity transition in Germany,” Herdan said in a briefing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. “What you need is flexibility, because the sun is shining and then you have PV production, wind is blowing and you have wind production. So it’s not according to demand, it’s according to weather conditions, which means they are there in any case and then you need to have flexibility to fill the gap.”

Baseload power was traditionally supplied by coal and nuclear plants, with peaks in demand met by natural-gas plants.

But flexibility can displace the old notion of baseload and peak, Herdan said, and flexibility can take many forms, including gas peaker plants, batteries, demand management or regional exchanges. It’s most important to keep in mind, he argued, that flexiblity is the goal, not any one of the forms it takes.

2. Flexibility Trumps Storage

Herdan appeared in a briefing on Germany’s Energy Transition hosted by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Asked whether an energy transition like Germany’s will increase the demand for energy storage, Herdan said, “I don’t know whether the demand for storage will increase. What I know is the demand for flexibility will increase, will increase dramatically… and if storage proves to be the cheapest flexibility, and the market chooses storage, then of course storage will increase.

“It’s always coming down to flexibility. That’s what we need and storage is one sort of that.”

But other sorts may prove cheaper:

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Baseload is Poison -The State of Germany’s Renewable Transition”

Above, Michigan’s largest utility, Consumer’s Energy, lays out a plan to retire coal and replace with efficiency and solar.

Bloomberg:

Despite tariffs that President Trump imposed on imported panels, the U.S. installed more solar energy than any other source of electricity in the first quarter.

Developers installed 2.5 gigawatts of solar in the first quarter, up 13 percent from a year earlier, according to a report Tuesday from the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research. That accounted for 55 percent of all new generation, with solar panels beating new wind and natural gas turbines for a second straight quarter.

The growth came even as tariffs on imported panels threatened to increase costs for developers. Giant fields of solar panels led the growth as community solar projects owned by homeowners and businesses took off. Total installations this year are expected to be 10.8 gigawatts, or about the same as last year, according to GTM. By 2023, annual installations should reach more than 14 gigawatts.

“Solar has become a common-sense option for much of the U.S., and is too strong to be set back for long, even in light of the tariffs,” SEIA Chief Executive Officer Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement.

Detroit News:

Consumers Energy said Wednesday it will stop using coal to generate electricity by 2040.

The announcement comes as the utility company files a plan this week with the Michigan Public Service Commission outlining how it will meet that goal. The company said it will increase its use of renewable resources, especially solar, and begin closing its remaining five coal-fired units in 2023.

“We know as an energy company we have an impact on the planet,” said Patti Poppe, president and CEO of Consumers and its parent, CMS Energy, “and we intend our impact to be positive and, in fact, to leave that better than we found it. Michigan can be seen as a leader in clean energy and a leader nationally in clean and affordable energy.”

Consumers’ announcement comes as inexpensive natural gas and renewable electricity has brought serious competition to coal-fired power plants. DTE Energy Co. said in May 2017 that it would close its five coal plants in Michigan by 2040.

Continue reading “In Face of Trump’s War on Renewables, Solar Makes Big Inroads on Coal”

Two Universes.
Two reasons not to worry about a thing.

Above, Bob Marley, below, Mose Allison.

Guardian:

Tubs of Strawberry Breeze-cake, Cherry Gale-cia and other wind-themed ice-creams will feature in a campaign by Ben & Jerry’s to persuade the government to rethink its opposition to onshore windfarms.

The renamed flavours will be sold at half price on “windy Wednesdays” to support a pro-renewables push by the Unilever-owned firm, which has a history of campaigning on climate change and environmental issues.

The company’s intervention comes amid an industry lobbying effort to convince ministers to scrap obstacles for onshore windfarms.

They have largely stopped being built since the Conservatives ended subsidies and introduced planning reforms.

Ben & Jerry’s drive will feature a tour of the UK, including London, Birmingham and Bristol, to encourage people to take action supporting the technology.

The firm is also backing a petition by the climate change charity 10:10, which calls on the government to “remove the additional planning requirements” for onshore windfarms. More than 25,000 people have already signed the petition.

Rebecca Baron, the company’s UK social mission manager, said: “If we want to move away from polluting fossil fuels and build a future based on clean energy, then wind power is a vital ingredient.”

The government’s own polling found public support for onshore windfarms at a record high of 76% in April, up from 74% last November.

There is now mounting pressure on ministers to make a U-turn on its policy, with big energy companies including ScottishPower, Vattenfall and Innogy urging the Department for Energy and Industrial Strategy to allow the windfarms to compete for subsidies.

Continue reading “Ben & Jerry’s Start Creamy Campaign for Wind, Renewable Energy in UK”

New research out of Antarctica shows the continent’s ice mass loss has tripled in the last 5 years or so.

That’s not good, so might be time to review some of the key Antarctica videos from the last few years.

Key points:

Sea level markers from the past indicate that very large changes in Sea Level are possible with relatively small differences in global temperature.
Prediction of future sea level rise difficult, as human forcing is stronger than natural forcing – no natural analog to what we are doing currently.

Ice sheets can move very quickly when the physics lines up.

 

Continue reading “Why Antarctica’s Melt is Important”

A lot of news and talk about carbon capture and negative emissions this week.

James Hansen talks us down.

James Hansen’s Blog:

I am minimizing Communications, so that I can (really!) finish Sophie’s Planet, while also providing expert testimony for several lawsuits aimed at using the judicial branch of government to force the other branches of government to do their job. However, there is enough popular misinterpretation of recent news about the cost of carbon capture that I should comment on that.

David Keith has done some of the most credible work on direct air capture of CO2, so his recent paper1 in Joulereporting on the cost of carbon capture deserves attention. Media reports emphasized that these reported costs were lower than costs estimated in a report by the American Physical Society (APS) in 2011. This caused some people to believe that we may be on the way to a “get out of jail free” card, the hope of many that technology will come to the rescue, so we do not need to be so concerned about the mess we are leaving for young people.

Unfortunately, the new news on carbon capture costs provides no support for the notion that we can solve the climate problem without fossil fuel phase-out. On the contrary, the Keith et al. study reinforces our concerns.

Many people failed to notice the matter of units. Keith reports a cost of $113-232 per ton of CO2 for plant designs in which the resulting CO2 is ready for sequestration The cost per ton of carbon (tC) is higher by the factor 44/12. So the reported cost is $414-850/tC.

Furthermore, none of the four cases include the cost of carbon storage! According to the 2015 National Academy of Sciences report on CO2 removal2 the costs of geological sequestration are $37-73/tC. So the total costs for capture plus storage would be $451-923/tC. Continue reading “James Hansen: Can Carbon Capture Work?”

Above, I interviewed Glaciologist Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in December at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans.

I wanted to ask him to comment on a point I had heard in regard to Antarctica, that, as the planet warmed, the atmospheric water vapor would increase ( warmer air holds more moisture), therefore, more snow could be expected on Antarctica, balancing out any possible increased losses around the edges.
One obvious question arises – how then to account for very high known sea level in past epochs?  There are some other flies in the icecap as well.

Below – today’s big news is pretty grim insofar as huge jump in Antarctic melt has been pretty reliably recorded by an international team.

Carbon Brief:

The rate of sea level rise resulting from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet has tripled over the past five years, according to new research from a global team of scientists.

The study, published in Nature, finds that ice loss from Antarctica has caused sea levels to rise by 7.6mm from 1992-2017, with two fifths of this increase occurring since 2012.

At a press conference held in London, scientists said the results suggest that Antarctica has become “one of the largest contributors to sea level rise”.

A glaciologist not involved in the paper tells Carbon Brief that the findings show “there now should be no doubt that Antarctica is losing ice due to regional climate change, likely linked to global warming”.

Melting continent

The new research was carried out by a team of scientists from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE). The international group was established in 2011 with the aim of creating a comprehensive view of how melting in world’s polar regions could be contributing to sea level rise.

In its last assessment report, released in 2012, it found that ice melt in Antarctica was causing global sea levels to rise by 0.2mm a year. (Over the past two decades, global sea levels have risen around 3.2mm a year in total.)

However, the new analysis finds that Antarctic ice melt is now driving sea level rise of 0.6mm a year – suggesting that the rate of melting has increased three-fold in just five years.

The results show that Antarctic ice melt has become “one of the largest contributors to sea level rise”, says Prof Andrew Shepherd, co-leader of IMBIE and director of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Polar Observation based at the University of Leeds.

Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference held in London, he explains the significance of the new findings to Carbon Brief. Continue reading “Antarctica Melt Increase Confirmed”