Month: March 2019

Mayor Bill DeBlasio in New York Magazine:

Six years ago, Hurricane Sandy slammed into New York City. The storm put 51 square miles of it under water. Seventeen thousand homes were damaged or destroyed. Forty-four New Yorkers lost their lives.

We don’t debate global warming in New York City. Not anymore. The only question is where to build the barriers to protect us from rising seas and the inevitable next storm, and how fast we can build them.

On Thursday, I am joining a group of climate scientists and local officials to announce we’re filling one of the biggest gaps in our coastal defenses. We’re going to protect Lower Manhattan, which includes the Financial District, home to a half-million jobs, 90,000 residents, and the nexus of almost all our subway lines.

It will be one of the most complex environmental and engineering challenges our city has ever undertaken and it will, literally, alter the shape of the island of Manhattan.

All across this country, cities are grappling with the same existential threat. But nowhere in the $4.75 trillion budget President Trump just proposed is there anything approaching a plan to protect our coastal cities from rising seas.

This is a national emergency without a national policy. And that has to change.

It’s a twisted reality, but big federal dollars to protect our coastlines only flow in the wake of disasters like Sandy. Those investments have helped protect our Rockaway peninsula with new, reinforced sand dunes nearly 20 feet above sea level. Thanks to our congressional delegation, we just announced a new $615 million sea wall that will protect the east shore of Staten Island — another vulnerable area flooded by the storm.

The plan we’re announcing will invest a half-billion dollars to fortify most of Lower Manhattan with grassy berms in parks and removable barriers than can be anchored in place as storms approach. But there’s one part of this area that will prove more complex, and more costly, to defend than all the others combined.

South Street Seaport and the Financial District, along the eastern edge of Lower Manhattan, sit so close to sea level — just eight feet above the waterline — and are so crowded with utilities, sewers, and subway lines that we can’t build flood protection on the land. So we’ll have to build more land itself.

Over the coming years, we will push out the Lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or up to two city blocks, into the East River, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Battery. The new land will be higher than the current coast, protecting the neighborhoods from future storms and the higher tides that will threaten its survival in the decades to come.

Continue reading “Climate Proofing Manhattan”

Trying to piece together some bits and pieces on this – scientists have been telling me for years that the permafrost feedback, while real and serious, amounts to about 10 percent of human emissions – in other words, the biggest control knob is still in our hands.

Big IF, but, IF we can get human emissions under control, natural emissions from, say, arctic permafrost, could be manageable.
Need to quantify current contributors to methane emissions, as I pointed out yesterday.

Science Daily:

A study by researchers from IIASA, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, however, suggests that it is possible to neutralize the natural gas threat that lies in wait under the Arctic soil. The team looked at several possible future scenarios, including some where the world continues to release human-made carbon and methane emissions into the atmosphere at the current rate, and some where we meet the targets of the Paris Agreement.

In their analysis, the researchers quantified the upper range value for natural methane emissions that can be released from the Arctic tundra, as it allows it to be put in relation to the much larger release of methane emissions from human activities. Although estimates of the release of methane from natural sources in the Arctic and estimates of methane from human activity have been presented separately in previous studies, this is the first time that the relative contribution of the two sources to global warming has been quantified and compared.

“It is important to put the two estimates alongside each other to point out how important it is to urgently address methane emissions from human activities, in particular through a phase out of fossil fuels. It is important for everyone concerned about global warming to know that humans are the main source of methane emissions and that if we can control humans’ release of methane, the problem of methane released from the thawing Arctic tundra is likely to remain manageable,” explains Lena Höglund-Isaksson, a senior researcher with the IIASA Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases Program and one of the authors of the study published in Nature Scientific Reports earlier this week.

According to the researchers, their findings confirm the urgency of a transition away from a fossil fuel based society as well as the importance of reducing methane emissions from other sources, in particular livestock and waste. The results indicate that human-made emissions can be reduced sufficiently to limit methane-caused climate warming by 2100 even in the case of an uncontrolled natural Arctic methane emission feedback. This will however require a committed, global effort towards substantial, but feasible reductions.

“In essence, we want to convey the message that the release of methane from human activities is something we can do something about, especially since the technology for drastic reductions is readily available — often even at a low cost. If we can only get the human emissions under control, the natural emissions should not have to be of major concern,” concludes Höglund-Isaksson.

 

Gary Cohn was a Chief Economic Advisor to President Trump from 2017 to 2018. He was the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2017.
He was recently interviewed for the Freakonomics podcast.

Freakonomics:

COHN: The president ran on coal and coal jobs. I remember vividly having a conversation with the president on coal jobs versus solar-panel installers. We ended up putting tariffs on solar panels, which I didn’t understand either. And I did turn to him one day and I said, “Mr. President, how many coal miners do we have in the United States and how many solar-panel installers do we have?” And I said, “I’m not here to trick you up — the answer’s — I’ll make it simple: less than 50,000 coal miners in the United States and more than 350,000 solar-panel installers. And by the way, 10 years ago we had no solar-panels installers. It’s a growth industry in the United States. In fact in California now, you cannot build a house without solar panels. It’s an industry that’s going to continue to grow. And we have to recognize where this country is going, not where this country has been.”

DUBNER: And was his connection to that, what most people would consider an outdated belief, was that political, was it intellectual, was it just kind of spiritual?

COHN: I think it was all the above. I think during his formative years growing up, coal might have been an integral part in thinking about the energy sectors, but clearly in states like West Virginia and parts of Pennsylvania, he understood, and he was a bit of a marketing genius on this. He understood in West Virginia, and southern Ohio and Pennsylvania, you better go talk about coal. And he understood in certain steel towns, when he looked at the empty steel mills, he should talk about bringing back steel jobs.

The Trump plan to bring back steel jobs included placing tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum — along with solar panels and washing machines and hundreds of other imported goods, especially those made in China.

COHN: And when you put tariffs on goods that people in the United States consume every day, it’s a consumption tax. So all the tariffs did is they made products that Americans were going to buy more expensive. And in fact we got the final trade data numbers this morning for what trade deficit looked like for last year in the United States. And lo and behold, we hit an all-time record-high trade deficit globally, and with China.

DUBNER: Despite the best efforts of the White House.

COHN: Tariffs don’t work. If anything, they hurt the economy because if you’re a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend. If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy. And you definitely don’t have anything left over to save. So we should try and make the goods as cheap as possible. And we don’t produce the goods in the United States; we import the goods from other countries. And if we could produce the goods as cheaply as other countries do, we would produce them in the United States.

03.14.19 | 8pm PDT

— Tesla (@Tesla) March 10, 2019

Like past Tesla events, a live stream will be available on Tesla’s website, either directly on the main page, or through the Events & Presentations section on the Investor Relations page.

CNN:

New York (CNN Business)Tesla on Thursday is expected to unveil the Model Y, its most important car yet.
Tesla expects the electric SUV to become its best-selling vehicle. Car buyers in the United States are increasingly choosing SUVs over sedans.
Tesla (TSLA) already makes the Model X SUV, a luxury model that is often priced at more than $100,000. It only accounted for 15% of Tesla’s sales in the fourth quarter, but it did edge out sales of the Model S, it’s luxury sedan.
The Model Y is expected to be priced for the mass market. But getting to that affordable price could take time. Tesla has just begun taking orders for the long-promised $35,000 version of the Model 3, almost three years after it was unveiled.

The Model Y will soon have a lot more competition from other automakers, which are making their own electric SUVs. That raises the stakes for Tesla’s launch because it risks losing its grip on the electric car market.

One of reason electric vehicles haven’t taken off is because most of them have been available only in sedan models, said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for AutoTrader. Electric vehicles represent just over 1% of new car sales in the United States.
“It really hasn’t been in a body style that people are buying,” she said. “The only one out there now is the Model X. But that won’t be the case for long.”
CEO Elon Musk is clearly counting on big things for the Model Y.
“The demand for Model Y will be maybe 50% higher than Model 3 — could be even double,” Musk told investors on a conference call in January when he announced the Model Y would be going into production next year.If his figures are correct, the Model Y will have a chance to become the bestselling SUV of any kind — gas or electric — in the United States, a title currently held by the Toyota Rav 4.

LA Times describes scientist’s general uneasiness about a rise in atmospheric methane. Problem is, no one knows where it’s coming from – and we’re pretty sure it’s not from the fabled Arctic “Methane Bomb”. (wrong isotopic signature)
In a postscript to my interview with Carolyn Ruppel of the US Geological Survey, Dr. Ruppel raised the issue of increased out put from wetlands as, with hydrological changes, increased rainfall in some areas, and sea level rise, wetland areas could increase their out put of methane – one of the primary suspects in the ongoing detective story.

LATimes:

This enigma involves methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Twenty years ago the level of methane in the atmosphere stopped increasing, giving humanity a bit of a break when it came to slowing climate change. But the concentration started rising again in 2007 — and it’s been picking up the pace over the last four years, according to new research.

Scientists haven’t figured out the cause, but they say one thing is clear: This surge could imperil the Paris climate accord. That’s because many scenarios for meeting its goal of keeping global warming “well below 2 degrees Celsius” assumed that methane would be falling by now, buying time to tackle the long-term challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

“I don’t want to run around and cry wolf all the time, but it is something that is very, very worrying,” said Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, and lead author of a recent study reporting that the growth of atmospheric methane is accelerating.

Methane is produced when dead stuff breaks down without much oxygen around. In nature, it seeps out of waterlogged wetlands, peat bogs and sediments. Forest fires produce some too.

These days, however, human activities churn out about half of all methane emissions. Leaks from fossil fuel operations are a big source, as is agriculture — particularly raising cattle, which produce methane in their guts. Even the heaps of waste that rot in landfills produce the gas.
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For 10,000 years, the concentration of methane in Earth’s atmosphere hovered below 750 parts per billion, or ppb. It began rising in the 19th century and continued to climb until the mid-1990s. Along the way, it caused up to one-third of the warming the planet has experienced since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Scientists thought that methane levels might have reached a new equilibrium when they plateaued around 1,775 ppb, and that efforts to cut emissions could soon reverse the historical trend.

“The hope was that methane would be starting on its trajectory downwards now,” said Matt Rigby, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Bristol in England. “But we’ve seen quite the opposite: It’s been growing steadily for over a decade.”

That growth accelerated in 2014, pushing methane levels up beyond 1,850 ppb. Experts have no idea why.

“It’s just such a confusing picture,” Rigby said. “Everyone’s puzzled. We’re just puzzled.”

Continue reading “Methane is Up. It’s Not from the Arctic. Where Then?”

Yale Climate Connections:

Some Americans appear increasingly ready to give up their gas cars for electric vehicles. But are the country’s electric grids prepared for them?

The question is a critical one in the quest to address climate change, because transportation is now the single largest sector contributing to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. EVs are widely viewed as a key way to help change that.

“The broad answer is actually yes, the grid can handle the introduction of large amounts of EVs,” said Matt Stanberry, vice president of Advanced Energy Economy, a business association dedicated to development of clean and affordable global energy systems. “The capability is there,” Stanberry said. “The question is how do you get there.”

Stanberry, along with others looking at the issue, believes what’s needed is not more power, it’s more efficiently and strategically provided power.

“Cars sit around 20, 21 hours a day. There’s plenty of time to charge – so quite a bit of flexibility,” said Dan Bowermaster, program manager for electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent non-profit center for public interest energy and environmental research, which has been looking at grid readiness for EVs.

But he said with new technology coming, such as storage and the ability to use a vehicle’s battery to power a home or to provide extra power to the grid, “Now is the time for everyone to prepare.”

What to think about

Ideally, people would charge their cars when the grid isn’t jammed with activity or when there’s extra power available. That would be in the middle of day in the sunny West when solar power is peaking. In windy areas like Texas, it’s nighttime. In the Northeast, it’s overnight when there’s less power usage. Utilities think they can influence people’s charging behavior by making it more advantageous to charge during those times.

Even before EV use becomes widespread, there are a lot of factors utilities have to think about as they gauge future power needs. Most critically, neighborhood circuits and transmission lines will need substantial changes. For instance, gas stations and highway rest stops one day may be filled with charging stations. That would not only put pressure on the grid, but also do it in concentrations and locations that are different from those that exist now.

With the potential for EVs to become power sources for homes and for emergency back-up power after disasters, utilities will also have to start planning for power to be able to flow in two directions. And they may need figure out how to hook it all to rooftop solar and energy storage.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin also point out in a recent report that a low-population state like Maine may need more power to support EVs than you’d think. Continue reading “Is the Grid Ready for EVs?”

Lots of media fun this week with the viral clip of Patrick Moore, who has made a living for decades as the self described “Founder of Greenpeace”, (not) going around shilling for every hideous pollution spewing mine, mountain removal, or tarsands mega project.

I met the guy once at a conference in Northern Michigan, and have to say I was surprised, (well, maybe not) that, other than a practiced ability to recite talking points, he didn’t seem to have much on the ball.  About as much charisma as you see in the clip above – where he gets called out after claiming one could safely drink a glass of glyphosate, the pesticide also known as “Roundup”.

Time:

In an interview with the French television station Canal Plus, an advocate for genetically modified foods said Roundup, a weedkiller that is manufactured by chemical giant Monsanto, is safe for human consumption but refused to drink the herbicide when offered a glass by an interviewer.

Patrick Moore says he leads a campaign in support of “golden rice,” a genetically modified grain that contains high amounts of vitamin A. In the interview, which Moore says he believed would focus on “golden rice,” he says the active ingredient in the herbicide, glyphosate, is not causing cancer rates in Argentina to increase.

———

Serendipitously, Mr Moore has also penned a recent piece for the The Province, a Vancouver paper, extolling the virtues of carbon dioxide where he writes:
—

The story goes that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere the oceans will absorb more of it and this will cause them to become acidic; well not exactly, but at least to become less basic. This in turn is predicted to dissolve the coral reefs and kill the oysters, clams, mussels and microscopic algae that have calcareous shells. It was named “global warming’s evil twin.”
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It is also a fact that greenhouse growers around the world purposefully inject CO² into their greenhouses to increase the growth of flowers and food up to 80 per cent. That is because CO2 in the atmosphere today is so low that plants are starved for it. Plant growth continues to increase in an atmosphere up to four to five times the current level of 400 parts per million. Yet we are told that CO2 is too high and we will suffer for it. Nothing could be further from the truth. We should celebrate CO2 as the giver of life it is.

Not clear who put Mr Moore up to the Op-Ed above, but what we know is that a few weeks before, the paper had carried the awkward-for-the-co2-is-life-crowd headline below.

Continue reading “Reposting: Trump’s Latest “Climate Expert” is a Well Known Fraud”

MIT Technology Review:

Here are four key takeaways.

1. Clean, not renewable

For some, the concern had been that the proposal would limit energy generation to renewable sources alone, mainly wind and solar, as some environmental groups had advocated.

Instead, the package adopts a relatively technology-agnostic approach to how we clean up the power sector, stating that the nation must meet “100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.”

That seems to allow for the use of carbon-free sources like nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture systems. Most energy researchers argue that such steady carbon-free sources will make it faster, easier, and less expensive to overhaul the energy system. That’s because wind and solar generation fluctuates wildly, which requires expensive forms of energy storage or transmission, in the absence of other consistent sources.

2. No new nukes?

That said, at least one of the authors obviously wants to rapidly get rid of nuclear power and fossil-fuels plants.

An early version of an accompanying FAQ, released this morning from Ocasio-Cortez’s office, stated that the plan wouldn’t include any new nuclear plants, adding: “It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and fossil fuels as soon as possible.”

The nuclear language didn’t appear in a later draft, though.

“Although a fact sheet from one of the resolution’s sponsors has created confusion, the text of the actual resolution makes it abundantly clear — we must embrace every zero-carbon resource available to eliminate climate pollution and dramatically increase our investment in clean energy innovation,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president at Third Way, a clean-energy think tank, in a statement. Continue reading “What’s in the Green New Deal?”

Good morning. pic.twitter.com/q727wLqLbX

— John Homenuk (@jhomenuk) March 13, 2019

CNN:

An intense and ferocious winter storm — a “bomb cyclone” — is expected to bring hurricane-force wind gusts, blizzard conditions and a flood threat across a swath of the US heartland Wednesday.A bomb cyclone occurs when there is a rapid pressure drop, falling at least 24 millibars (which measures atmospheric pressure) over 24 hours known as bombogenesis. 
The massive storm is expected to wallop areas including the Rockies, Central/Northern Plains to the Upper Midwest with blizzard conditions and winds that could blow from 50 to 70 miles per hour. Other hazards include heavy snow and severe storms with possible tornadoes and flooding.Blizzard and winter storm warnings are in effect for portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Heavy snow is expected in portions of the Rockies and northern Plains, including Denver into Thursday. Travel will be dangerous, if not impossible, at times, across the front range where the blizzard warning has been issued. Severe storms capable of producing damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes is forecast from the southern Plains and into the Mississippi River Valley. More than 45 people million are under a high wind threat; more than 10 million are under winter storm threats; and more than 15 million are under a flood threat

Media Matters:

Key findings:

• There was a 45 percent drop in climate change coverage on the broadcast networks’ nightly news and Sunday morning political shows from 2017 to 2018 — from a total of 260 minutes in 2017 down to just 142 minutes in 2018.
• Nearly a third of the time that the networks spent covering climate change in 2018, or 46 minutes, came from a single episode of NBC’s Meet the Press on December 30 that was dedicated to discussion of climate change.
• NBC was the only network that aired more minutes of climate coverage in 2018 than in 2017 — an increase of 23 percent. CBS’ time spent on climate coverage fell 56 percent from 2017 to 2018, Fox News Sunday‘s fell by 75 percent, and ABC’s fell by 81 percent.
• People of color made up only 9 percent of those who were interviewed, featured, or quoted in the networks’ climate coverage, and women made up only 19 percent.
• None of the broadcast TV networks’ news reports on hurricanes Florence or Michael mentioned climate change. Only nine of their segments reporting on other weather disasters of 2018 mentioned that climate change exacerbates extreme weather. 
• Almost three-quarters of 2018’s climate coverage occurred in the last three months of the year. Much of it focused on major climate science reports released by the United Nations and the U.S. government.
• The links between national security and climate change were discussed only once in 2018, in an NBC segment. ABC and CBS did not mention that climate change poses serious threats to national security.
• Solutions or actions offered in response to climate change were mentioned in only a fifth of climate segments aired on ABC, CBS, or NBC.