Climate
hrynyshyn | June 4, 2009For your consideration: Two possible, if not probable, future scenarios for the human race should the business of fossil fuel combustion continue as usual for the next few decades. The first, an ABC-TV special that aired this Tuesday night, "Earth 2100." The second, a film by UK documentarian Frannie Armstrong, "The Age of Stupid." The former depicts a world that is increasing hostile to civilization as the century draws to a close, the latter an even less habitable planet, not just for humans, by 2055.
Are either visions realistic, or just more worse-case scenarios that grossly exaggerate…
hrynyshyn | June 3, 2009This morning, for the first time this year, the experts who monitor air pollution in these parts issued an "orange" alert. Folks who might have trouble breathing should minimize outdoor activity. As we live in a rural area near the leeward side of the Great Smoky Mountains, this is always a reminder of just how bad the smog from the coal-fired plants upwind of us in Tennessee and Kentucky can be. To make matters worse, a few hours after hearing that news, I came across a recently published paper in PNAS that suggests things are going to get worse if the world continues to warm.
The good news…
hrynyshyn | June 2, 2009It's hard for me to ignore a headline like this: "Climate deal uncertainty clouds carbon market -- survey." According to a Reuters story, a poll of companies around the world with an interest in trading permits to emit greenhouse gases finds that "over half of respondents expect a major climate pact to be postponed until further meetings in 2010." The Greenhouse Gas Market Sentiment survey was released by the International Emissions Trading Association just before today's opening of the latest round of negotiations leading up to December's Copenhagen conference, at which we'll see if a…
hrynyshyn | May 29, 2009A coalition of 15 environmental organizations has released a joint statement explaining why they can't get behind the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. Waxman-Markey. They complain that it:
sets targets for reducing pollution that are far weaker than science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. The targets are far less ambitious than what is achievable with already existing technology. They are further undermined by massive loopholes that could allow the most polluting industries to avoid real emission reductions until 2027.
All of which is true. There's a…
hrynyshyn | May 27, 2009Peter Behr at Scientific American has a wonderfully clear explanation of just how the cap and trade mechanism prescribed by the Waxman-Markey bill will work, should it make it through Congress. It's not rocket science, but my suspicion is that a lot of observers feel intimidated by the concept and don't make an effort to get their minds around it.
Which is a shame because it's largely a matter of simple math, and Behr turns to Harvard University economist Robert Stavins for help. Here are the essential facts:
In 2016, the U.S. economy would produce an estimated 7.3 billion tons of CO2, based…
hrynyshyn | May 26, 2009There's an interesting but frustrating little essay up at Grist, which has become the go-to publication to follow the fate of the Waxman-Markey bill as it wends its way through Congress. Frequent columnist Gar Lipow argues that
Mainstream environmentalists who take the position that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill "could be worse" help ensure that it will be.
I take it he thinks those who want to see the United States embrace serious climate change mitigation strategies should be working hard to strengthen the bill. Sure.
Proclaiming "It could be worse" makes the bill in its current…
hrynyshyn | May 25, 2009SEED magazine has just published my report on the 2009 Summit of The Climate Project, Al Gore's effort to spread the word on the climate crisis with the help of 2,500 volunteers trained to present his "Inconvenient Truth" slide show. Here's the intro:
Polling data leading up to last week's summit of The Climate Project wasn't exactly inspiring. The widely respected Pew Forum says the share of Americans who believe the Earth is warming is stuck at less than 50 percent, while Rasmussen Reports--often accused of Republican bias--shows that the number has fallen to 34 percent. Both polls have…
hrynyshyn | May 21, 2009Al Gore wants Waxman-Markey to pass. Business (Shell, Duke, Alcoa, etc) likes Waxman-Markey. Joe Romm likes Waxman Markey. Everybody wants this last, best hope to do something about climate change to survive. Everybody, but a few stubborn extremists, like Greenpeace. I say that's a good thing.
I can understand why some climate change campaigners would be annoyed with Greenpeace for not falling into line. Waxman-Markey may be flawed, but it's simply too late in the game to try another approach (a flat carbon tax, say) and political realities make it clear that it's almost certainly the best we…
khannula | May 17, 2009In the news this week:
Andy Revkin at the NY Times has a news story and a blog post about the UN's new report assessing disaster risk. One of the experts quoted in his story sent him a comment with a lot of concern about the promotional video. Dave Petley (who writes Dave's Landslide Blog) looked at the report, and criticizes its assessment of landslide hazards. I haven't looked at the report myself (and it's long, unfortunately, so there's no way I'll be able to digest it in time for class this week), but I will try to keep the criticisms in mind when I do.
I had no idea that there was a…
hrynyshyn | May 15, 2009While I attend (and cover for SEED) the North American Summit of the The Climate Project -- a reunion of members of Al Gore's army of climate change slide show presenters -- this weekend, I won't be posting much. Not that I ever post much on the weekends. Meanwhile, however, there's a new mini-collective blog at ScienceBlogs, to which I am contributing. The Energy Grid blog tackles issues "revolving around issues of energy security and environmental sustainability." Royal Dutch Shell is paying us to write weekly responses to questions posed by a moderator, one Jonas Meckling, a research…
hrynyshyn | May 13, 2009Canadians had a chance to introduce a national carbon tax last year during a federal election, but failed to elect the party that was pushing it. Yesterday's provincial election in British Columbia produced the opposite result: the governing party, which had introduced a carbon tax last year, survived.
Interesting.
No one considered the 2008 national campaign a referendum on the merits of a carbon tax, and there were certainly other issues at play in the B.C. vote. But the tax attracted an enormous amount of attention, largely because the opposition party, the New Democrats, have…
hrynyshyn | May 8, 2009The Real Climate gang rarely disappoint. But the latest post from Gavin Schmidt is not just useful, but downright brilliant:
Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do.
Read the…
hrynyshyn | May 6, 2009Here's how I would have liked to have introduced this post:
The good news is that, other than for an increasingly marginalized minority, the focus of attention on climate policy has shifted from the reality of global warming to the economic tools needed to address the problem.
Sadly, climate change denialism remains relatively robust and widespread, with more half of all Americans and popular columnists of George F. Will's stature still unwilling to accept the science. I have no choice but to acknowledge the task of getting everyone on board will require more time and energy, even while we…
hrynyshyn | May 5, 2009The more I read about the trillionth ton (or tonne for our non-American friends), the more intrigued I am by its power to change the way we approach the threat of global warming. I wrote last week about the idea, which represents a whole new way of thinking about carbon emissions, but I'd like to take another stab at it, in hopes of spreading the meme further than my last post managed.
The "trillionth ton" refers to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Before the invention of the steam engine and everything that followed since the middle of the 18th century, there was a certain amount of…
hrynyshyn | May 5, 2009Which of these recent developments raises your eyebrows the highest?
Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists. (The Guardian, May 3, 2009)
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has decided to accept all federal stimulus money her state is eligible for, with one exception: the nearly $29 million for the state energy office. Ms. Palin has rejected the state energy office funds out of concern that it would obligate Alaska to enact more stringent building codes. "Alaska's vast…
hrynyshyn | April 30, 2009This comment, posted to a Yahoo Finance forum by one dianasullivan1953 in response to a pointer to my recent post about the possible end of coal, was a great start to the day. I laughed for ages.
Some one smoking left handed cigarettes. wrote this memo.
What are the replacing coal with?
wHEN ARE THEY GROUNDING AIRPLANES.
They polute more than coal fired plants daily.
China is building three coal fire plants every month.
US is less than 4 % air polution. Fact.
Try tyelling Chian and India to stop coal usage.
This rfeport just like AL Gore invented then internet and
he has no nterest in Kleiner…
hrynyshyn | April 30, 2009This week's Nature includes a trio of climate features, book reviews, an essay, a pair of new papers, and and editorial highlighting how little wiggle room we have left if we want to avoid warming the planet 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. It's science journalism at its best. Sadly, it's up to us bloggers to lift as much as we can without incurring the wrath of the journal's intellectual property lawyer to spread the word. So here goes.
The most interesting of the features, in my opinion, covers the spreading meme that 450 parts per million isn't a low enough concentration of atmospheric…
hrynyshyn | April 29, 2009In the past week both Canada and the UK have announced a phase-out of conventional coal-fired power plants. Could this be the beginning of the end? Are we seeing the first stages of a global moratorium? Too soon, to tell of course. But it's encouraging.
First, came the British news:
Any new coal-fired power stations built in Britain will have to be fitted with cutting-edge technology to capture their carbon emissions, the Government announced yesterday in a revolution in energy policy.
...
As the technology is in its infancy and still unproven, new generating stations would have to be built…
hrynyshyn | April 27, 2009CBS' 60 Minutes didn't break any news with its report on the dilemma posed by coal-fired power plants. It was probably inevitable that they would look into the fascinating contradictions posed by Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. For a man who make a lot of money emitting greenhouse gases into the planet's biosphere, he sure seems to grok the climate crisis. And he seems to be sincere about transforming his business into a carbon-neutral supplier of electriticy.
When it comes to walking the walk, though ...
"Controlling carbon emissions in the near future is inevitable in your view. This is going…
hrynyshyn | April 24, 2009I feel I'd be neglecting my duties to those few readers of mine who don't read enough other sources if I didn't at least mention Andy Revkin's piece in today's New York Times. An anonymous lawyer slipped him, in what would have once arrived in a brown paper envelope, a document unearthed in a California lawsuit. It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know, generally speaking, but it's always good to be able to point to specific evidence when you summarily dismiss an entire industry as untrustworthy.
Here's what a coalition of coal, oil and auto industries said their scientific advisers…