There were some standout findings in the report, such as how average surface air temperatures for the Arctic as a whole in the past year ranked as the sixth warmest since 1900, and summer (July through September) was the warmest on record. This year’s sea ice extent was the sixth lowest in the satellite record, which began in 1979. The Greenland Ice Sheet continued to lose mass despite above-average winter snow accumulation. A new chapter in the report also emphasized how the unprecedented abundance of sockeye salmon in western Alaska’s Bristol Bay contrasted with record-low Chinook and chum salmon that led to fishery closures on the Yukon River and other Bering Sea tributaries.
“The overriding message from this year’s report card is that the time for action is now,” said Rick Spinrad, a NOAA administrator. “NOAA and our federal partners have ramped up our support and collaboration with state, tribal and local communities to help build climate resilience. At the same time, we as a nation and global community must dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are driving these changes.”
Month: December 2023
Poll: Majorities Increasingly Want Climate Action
Above, new “6 Americas” data available from Yale and George Mason University pollsters.
CNN also has new polling reflecting increased concerns about climate and support for climate action.
Nearly two-thirds of US adults say they are worried about the threat of climate change in their communities, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. More than half are worried about the impact of extreme weather, as the climate crisis touches every region in the form of extreme heat, devastating storms and drought.
Even more want the federal government to do something about it. A broad majority of US adults – 73% – say the federal government should develop its climate policies with the goal of cutting the country’s planet-warming pollution in half by the end of the decade.
That has been the goal of President Joe Biden, who has made tackling the climate crisis a greater priority than any other president, including through billions of dollars in tax subsidies to create more renewable energy infrastructure and help consumers buy discounted electric vehicles, solar panels and energy-efficient appliances. The Biden administration is also crafting and implementing several federal regulations designed to cut pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants, and gas-powered vehicles.
Yale Program on Climate Change Communication:
In 2018, we created and published the Six Americas Survey (SASSY), a short, four-question online questionnaire that can be used to identify which Six Americas segment people belong to. Using SASSY as part of our Fall 2023 Climate Change in the American Mind nationally representative survey, we find that 28% of Americans are Alarmed and that the Alarmed outnumber the Dismissive (11%) by a ratio of more than 2 to 1. Further, when the Alarmed and Concerned are grouped together, a majority of Americans (56%) fall into one of these audiences.1 Overall, Americans are more than twice as likely to be Alarmed or Concerned than they are Doubtful or Dismissive (23%). Additionally, the percentage of Republicans who are either Alarmed or Concerned has increased by 6 percentage points over the past year (from 22% to 28%), while the already high percentage of Democrats who are Alarmed or Concerned has remained the same
After Decades of Little Growth, Electric Demand will Jump. Care and Resources Needed, Not Disinformation
The power grid is increasingly unreliable, and NERC officials say it is not clear how the trend will be reversed.
“In recent years, we’ve witnessed a decline in reliability, and the future projection does not offer a clear path to securing the reliable electricity supply that is essential for the health, safety, and prosperity of our communities,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessment and performance analysis, said in a statement.
“We are facing an absolute step change in the risk environment surrounding reliability and energy assurance,” Moura said.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator faces a projected 4.7 GW shortfall beginning in 2028 “if expected generator retirements occur,” NERC found. The grid operator is adding more than 12 GW to shore up a previously identified reserve deficit but more will be needed.
NERC also noted that there are 50 GW of generation in MISO with signed generation interconnection agreements that are not yet online, “and another 200+ GW of new resources within the interconnection queue that are still being evaluated.”
A spokesperson for MISO said the grid operator “concurs with NERC’s key conclusions and recommendations,” and is taking steps to address potential resource shortfalls. A new seasonal resource adequacy construct, changes to resource accreditation, development of a long-range transmission plan and adoption of a reliability-based demand curve will help, they said.
—
With electricity demand growing, concerns about reliability are legit. However, a quick survey of some context is required.
In a recent US News and World Report ranking of states by grid reliability, the top performing states were Nebraska, South Dakota and Illinois – all top ten states for wind energy by percentage, or number of turbines (Illinois), with a lot of solar coming on board.
Continue reading “After Decades of Little Growth, Electric Demand will Jump. Care and Resources Needed, Not Disinformation”Is Fusion Fuel’s Gold? Or the Solution We Need?
The old joke, “Fusion has been just around the corner for 40 years..” still applies, but recent developments continue to fan hopes. But 2030s sounds wildly optimistic.
Stanford clean energy advocate Mark Jacobson is not a fan.
Continue reading “Is Fusion Fuel’s Gold? Or the Solution We Need?”The United States will work with other governments to speed up efforts to make nuclear fusion a new source of carbon-free energy, U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said Tuesday, the latest of many U.S. announcements the last week aimed at combatting climate change.
PBS News Hour on COP Agreement
“30 years into this process, we are finally getting around to mentioning fossil fuels.”
Al Gore on The Problem
Long version, 26 minutes, above. Highly recommended. This would be a great and enlightening lecture in your favorite college class.
Short version below.
COP28 – Small Words Loom Large
For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to confront climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet.
The sweeping agreement, which comes during the hottest year in recorded history, was reached on Wednesday after two weeks of furious debate at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled disasters were urging language that called for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels. But that proposal faced intense pushback from major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iraq, as well as fast-growing countries like India and Nigeria.
In the end, negotiators struck a compromise: The new deal calls on countries to accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade in a “just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury. It also calls on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy, like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term.
While past U.N. climate deals have urged countries to reduce emissions, they have shied away from explicitly mentioning the words “fossil fuels,” even though the burning of oil, gas and coal is the primary cause of global warming.
Al Jazeera:
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber hailed the deal, approved by almost 200 countries on Wednesday, as an “historic package” of measures that offers a “robust plan” to keep the target of capping global temperatures at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, within reach.
“We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever,” said al-Jaber, CEO of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil company Adnoc.
Officials from around the globe suggested the deal is an important step towards ending the use of fossil fuels.
US climate envoy John Kerry said that both the United States and China intend to update their long-term climate strategies, hailing the agreement as one which “sends very strong messages to the world”.
However, the deal doesn’t go so far as to seek a “phase-out” of fossil fuels, for which more than 100 nations had pleaded. Rather, it calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade”.
That transition would be in a way that gets the world to net zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 and follows the dictates of climate science.
Al Gore on CNN: Climate, Poly-Crisis, and Poly-Solution
Have a Climate Crisis Christmas
Temperatures across the northern U.S. are often above normal during El Niño winters, and it appears that this winter will start that way too. While the outlook has a greater than 50% chance of above-average temperatures in the northern Plains and western Great Lakes for December as a whole, the outlooks for the first 2 weeks of the month favor above-average with even greater confidence (60-80%). The Week 3-4 outlook (released on November 24, 2023) also favored above-average temperatures in that region.