Researching a new piece on energy storage, and came across this 10 year old video from Vermont Public Broadcasting.
Very much on the money describing the roll out of EVs that we see today, and the potential for grid storage in EV batteries.
The vid above is a preview for a longer program, which I have not seen – features Steve Letendre, a Professor at Green Mountain College.
Below, Stephen Colbert does additional prognostication. Continue reading “10 Years Ago, EV Projection was on the Money”
Description:
As three major fires blaze in California, we consider some of their causes, both human and meteorological. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien has been filming a NOVA documentary on megafires and witnessed the Camp Fire not long after it began. He joins William Brangham to describe that stunning experience, along with the broader scientific context around these destructive phenomena.
Below, Jeff Bridges, the Dude himself, on his personal experience with post fire mudslides. Continue reading “PBS NewsHour: The Science Behind Megafires”
Above, former chair of the House “Science” Committee, Lamar Smith, in a classic House floor speech, declares that President Trump is the “only source of unvarnished truth.”
Smith retired, giving up his seat this year, and was replaced by a brand new climate denier in his Texas district.
With the return of House control to Dems, Climate will again be on the House docket.
House Democrats are planning to resurrect a special committee focused on climate change, giving them a platform to spotlight an issue on which polls show President Donald Trump is out of step with the public.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California will ask her colleagues to reconstitute the select committee, which was created under her watch 11 years ago and disbanded by Republicans after they took control of the House in January 2011. The plan was described by senior Democratic aides who asked not to be named before a formal announcement.
If lawmakers vote to resurrect the panel, it would give Democrats a chance to amplify concerns about climate change following a dire United Nations report as well as scrutinize the Trump administration’s approach to the issue.
In its previous iteration, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming was not authorized to advance its own bills, but it still used dozens of hearings to emphasize Democratic priorities, evaluating advancements in renewable power and the consequences of climate change. The panel’s work helped pave the way for broad legislation to create a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions that passed the House in 2009 before faltering in the Senate.
“They can only do messaging,” said Anna Burhop, an environmental policy expert with Bracewell LLP. Although legislation on energy and climate issues falls to other House panels, “the select committee can have as many messaging hearings as their little hearts desire,” and use them to “address wildfires, hurricanes and sea level rise.”
On Sunday, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater offered a lengthy and brutal fact check of President Donald Trump‘s claim that forest mismanagement was to blame for the deadly, destructive fires in California.
While in Paris over the weekend, with reports of devastation and lost lives still being reported, Trump said that there is “no reason” for the “costly” forest fire.
He then threatened to yank federal monies.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments,” Trump wrote.
Meanwhile, outgoing GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo slammed Trump’s climate denial in a tweet.
Curbelo was a member of the bi-partisan Climate Caucus, and actually introduced carbon pricing legislation, but lost last week to Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a climate-hawk Dem.
In addition to TV Mets, Trump managed to tick off the firefighters on the front lines.
Brian K. Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters union, blasted Trump’s comments on Saturday.
“The president’s message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines,” Rice said in a statement.
Continue reading “CNN Meteorologist, GOP Congressman Fact Check Trump on Fires, Climate”
PBS Newshour from August has perspective from Michael Mann and others.
Much of the heat that’s gripped California and hastened the spread of deadly wildfires recently is due to a strange but familiar shift in the jet stream — one that’s haunted the West with threatening fire conditions in the past and could cause more hot, dry spells in the future, especially with a changing climate.
The jet stream, the river of wind high above the Northern Hemisphere, has been weaker and wavier in the past few weeks, scientists say. Instead of pushing weather systems along as it usually does, it’s allowing the patterns to stagnate.
Not only has this meant searing temperatures for the West Coast, where the hot spot of Death Valley averaged a record 108 degrees last month, but also for Scandinavia and Japan. Norway and Sweden flirted with a rare 90 degrees at the Arctic Circle this week, while the Japanese city of Kumagaya recently landed that nation’s highest-ever temperature: 106. Other places, such as the East Coast, have endured relentless rain, even flooding.
“We’re seeing this mix of conditions across North America and Europe, but they’re all connected,” said Jennifer Francis, a professor at Rutgers University who studies atmospheric circulation. “The weather patterns are just stuck. They’re trapped.”
The shift in the jet stream that’s driving the stagnation, say Francis and other climate scientists, is almost certainly tied to global warming.
It’s just one of the ways that climate change is probably contributing to the spree of fires in California that has killed eight people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.
California’s fire season, most fundamentally, is saddled with higher temperatures — with or without a heat wave, scientists say. The greenhouse gases emitted from cars, power plants and factories, which trap sunlight and warm the atmosphere, have created baseline conditions that are more hospitable to wildfire. Water loss from soil and plants is generally up while snowmelt and river flows are down.
Continue reading “Climate Fingerprints All over Cali Wildfires”
When Jennifer Francis and others advanced the idea that arctic ice losses could be impacting extreme weather patterns in the temperate zone, it was considered cutting edge, or even fringe science.
7 years later, a steady drumbeat of observations and studies have strengthened the science, which is now, if not yet “pound on the table we’re done”, as Richard Alley says, but, very much in the mainstream discussion.
Last summer’s extreme weather was a showcase of how global warming is altering our atmosphere, from a scorching heat wave that contributed to a spate of wildfires in Scandinavia and California to devastating floods and all-time record-high temperatures set around the Northern Hemisphere.
What’s new: A new study, published last week in the journal Science Advances, ties these events and other summertime extremes to human-caused climate change via an increase in a specific jet stream phenomenon, lead author Michael Mann of Penn State tells Axios.
Details: Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA who was not involved in the new research, explains the phenomenon — known as quasi-resonant amplification, or QRA — this way: “Quasi-resonant amplification refers to a condition where high-altitude winds across the Northern Hemisphere enter a spatial configuration favorable for the development and persistence of big loops in the jet stream,” he says.
- That extra-wavy jet stream can cause extreme events, such as heat waves and flooding rains, to occur on either side of the jet stream’s “ridges” and “troughs,” particularly when such patterns get locked in place.
What they did: The authors devised an indirect method of detecting changes in QRA events by examining the differences in temperature across the Northern Hemisphere and how it changes from north to south worldwide.
- The researchers also simulated the recent and future climate using numerous computer models to project how such jet stream patterns might change.
What they found: An uptick in such QRA events can, in part, be tied to rapid Arctic climate change.
- The Arctic is warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the planet, altering the temperature contrast between the equator and the pole. This gradient is a large part of what drives the jet stream.
- Overall, the jet stream phenomena tied to prolonged, severe weather extremes are likely to increase in frequency by about 50% during this century if current emissions trends continue.
- Some models show a tripling in QRA frequency.
The new study also found an unexpected result: Cutting aerosol pollution (tiny particles in the air from burning coal, for example) may prevent the jet stream from getting hung up as frequently in the future.
- Cleaning up aerosols quickly, such as by cutting power plant pollution in China and India, could lead to fewer QRA events during part of the 21st century.
- Mann cautioned that the computer models showed considerable uncertainty around this finding, though.
What they’re saying: Jennifer Francis, a scientist at Woods Hole Research Center who was not involved in the new research, told Axios the study adds valuable new information.
“I think they’re onto an important mechanism that helps explain the influences of a rapidly warming Arctic on summer weather extremes over midlatitude continents. … The underlying drumbeat in both seasons is about persistent patterns and conditions that can turn into extreme events; in summer, this means heatwaves, floods and drought.”
Pretty impressive breakdown of environmental impacts from EV vs ICE vehicles.
Huge impact of increasing coastal flooding will be the societal costs as thousands, then millions of residents are eventually forced to move as their homes and businesses become untenable due to repeated inundation.
Taxpayers will be on the hook for much of this.
A measure approved by Virginia voters this week to cut taxes on homes in flood-prone areas of the flood-prone commonwealth has climate experts warning that it might encourage people to remain in vulnerable areas — and could spread to other states.
The constitutional amendment passed Tuesday with more than 70 percent of the vote allows cities and other local governments to cut taxes on homes that repeatedly flood, providing the property owners take protective steps. Supporters say the change will keep residents from abandoning coastal communities that are increasingly deluged.
That’s what worries some climate policy advocates.
“It will be an incentive to stay in a risky area,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, adding that other states could follow. “This is potentially a big deal.”
Virginia, with its low-lying coastal areas along the Chesapeake Bay, has some of the worst flooding in the country. As of 2015, almost 700 homes in the state qualified as what the Federal Emergency Management Agency describes as severe repetitive loss properties. Those homes cost the federal flood insurance program more than $111 million in flood claims between 1978 and 2015, according to data obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Climate change is making the problem more acute. By 2030, as many as four communities in coastal Virginia, including Chesapeake and Poquoson, will experience what the Union of Concerned Scientists characterizes as “chronic inundation,” meaning that at least 10 percent of their land area will be underwater an average of twice a month. That number is expected to grow to as many as seven communities by 2045, and as many as 38 by 2100.
Still, Berginnis said that until Washington does more to help people in coastal areas over the long run — for example, buying and demolishing more homes that keep flooding — the benefits of Virginia’s approach outweigh the risks, by making it cheaper to protect homes while they’re still standing.
“You need short-term solutions, and you need long-term solutions,” Berginnis said.
Congress so far hasn’t agreed on a long-term approach. The House last year passed a flood insurance bill that would prevent homes that keep flooding from getting federally subsidized coverage. The Senate didn’t take up the bill.
The Virginia measure passed Tuesday would let cities, towns and counties exempt their most vulnerable homeowners from part of their property tax burden. In return, those homeowners would have to take steps such as elevating their houses, which may slow the rate at which those properties decline in value.
Last fall, after a trio of deadly hurricanes, ratings companies warned vulnerable coastal cities to get ready for climate change — or face higher borrowing costs on the $3.9 trillion municipal bond market. Climate advocates cheered, hoping the prospect of downgrades would push local officials to better protect their residents from the effects of global warming.
Twelve months, two catastrophic storms and thousands of credit ratings later, those companies have yet to downgrade a single city because of climate change. The companies, which include Moody’s Corp. and Fitch Ratings Ltd., say that’s because cities are taking steps to protect themselves.
Continue reading “Do Coastal Policies Guarantee Greater Disasters?”
