Category Archives: solar power

Solar vs. Nuclear: Battle for the Best Carbon-Free Power

by Gina44Yfvzfh Posted on January 11, 2019

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Solar vs. Nuclear: Battle for the Best Carbon-Free Power

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Remember that $20 million ocean cleanup project? It isn’t working.

by AundreaLyzht Posted on December 26, 2018

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The $20 million effort to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has hit a bit of a snafu.

Organizers for The Ocean Cleanup, which launched the project in September, already had their work cut out for them — the floating garbage patch is made up of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, which has coalesced into a field of debris twice the size of Texas, weighing in at 88,000 tons (that’s the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets, yikes).

In order to clean up the massive garbage island, engineers at the non-government organization built a U-shaped barrier, which they hoped would act like a coastline, trapping the plastic floating in large swathes of the patch. The system can communicate its whereabouts at all times, allowing a support vessel to come by periodically to pick up all the junk in the device’s trunk, so to speak, for recycling.

The highly anticipated endeavor deployed out of San Francisco in September, when the floating device — known as System 001 or Wilson — was towed out to the island of rubbish located between California and Hawaii. The goal of The Ocean Cleanup is to remove up to 50 percent of plastics in the area within five years.

But so far, the giant garbage catcher is having issues holding on to plastic waste.

George Leonard, chief scientist of the Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit environmental advocacy says the organization’s goal is admirable, but can’t be the only solution to ocean plastics pollution. He said a solution must include a multi-pronged approach, including stopping plastic from reaching the ocean in the first place. Humans dump more than 8 million tons of trash into the ocean each year — the equivalent of one dump truck full of plastic every minute.

“The clock is ticking; we must confront this challenge before plastics overwhelm the ocean,” Leonard said.

The Ocean Cleanup Fonder Boyan Slat said the slow speed of the solar-powered 600-meter long barrier isn’t allowing it to scoop up plastic from the swirling trash island. Over the next few weeks, a crew of engineers will make tweaks to the system. Slat says it’s all part of the process when you take on a project this ambitious (Forbes called it “the world’s largest ocean cleanup”).

In a statement released on December 20, Slat said that he always expected it was going to be a bit of an ongoing experiment. “What we’re trying to do has never been done before,” he said. “For the beta phase of [the] technology, this is already a success.”

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Remember that $20 million ocean cleanup project? It isn’t working.

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China is both the best and worst hope for clean energy

by leoratulk31488 Posted on December 8, 2018

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This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In Katowice, Poland, delegates from around the world have gathered to discuss how to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. The intent is to meet the goals that emerged from the 2015 Paris United Nations Climate Summit. But this year there’s a new top dog at the table.

The United States, led by a president who doesn’t believe in climate change or the scientists who study it, will take a back seat at this month’s climate summit, known as COP24. Meanwhile China, with its massive economy and growing green energy sector, has become the world’s climate leader.

That might seem like a good thing if it weren’t for a couple of problems. China is the world’s biggest carbon polluter, and its emissions won’t start easing for many years. Chinese leaders are also exporting dirty energy around the world through their “belt and road” development program, which is spurring economic growth throughout Africa and Southeast Asia. A construction boom in coal-fired power plants has accompanied that growth in places like Vietnam, Pakistan, and Kenya, for example.

So having China as the big power at a climate summit doesn’t bode well for any new get-tough-on-carbon deals between now and the end of the meeting on December 14, experts say. “The negotiations abhor a vacuum,” says Andrew Light, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and a former climate negotiator in the Obama administration. “The U.S. is not showing leadership, so China steps in.”

The latest round of climate negotiations (held in the capital of Poland’s coal-producing region of Silesia) are focused on the technical issues of how best to measure and verify each country’s stated emissions reductions. Even though the negotiations are held under the flag of the United Nations, there’s no real carbon police out there. So it’s up to each country to self-report their carbon dioxide emissions from factories, automobile tailpipe emissions, and other sources that end up forming a warming blanket in the Earth’s atmosphere. Those numbers are then fact-checked by other nations and NGOs.

A major report released in October by a panel of the world’s leading scientists says that the planet will experience severe environmental damage — wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods — that could top $54 trillion by 2040 unless there’s a big downward shift in carbon dioxide emissions. That’s going to require every nation to make changes, as well as individual cities, states, and businesses.

“It will require things that are more aggressive, like shutting down existing power plants, and by 2030, we probably need to reduce global coal power production by 70 or 80 percent,” says Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.

Hultman, who worked on climate issues in the Obama White House, says the solutions may be politically impossible for now. “Are we doing enough quickly enough?” he said. “The answer is probably no. At the same time, we have to ask, how do we ramp up contributions toward limiting emissions.”

Still, Hultman and others see progress, and they see China as both a cause of the problem and a potential solution. China burns half the world’s coal and has added 40 percent of the world’s coal capacity since 2002. More than 4.3 million Chinese people work in coal mines, compared to 76,000 in the U.S. (that’s fewer employees than work at Arby’s or in radio).

While China is gaga for coal, it also is more green than anyone else. China owns half the world’s electric vehicles and 99 percent of the world’s electric buses. One quarter of its electricity comes from renewable power like solar or wind. Its cheap silicon panels have driven down the price of solar energy worldwide, and Chinese manufacturers are now starting to export EV batteries to automakers in Europe, Asia, and the U.S.

For Chinese leaders, boosting global green energy isn’t a moral issue, it’s an economic one, according to Jonas Nahm, assistant professor of energy, resources, and environment at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “It doesn’t come from an altruistic place,” Nahm said. “They are doing this as an economic development strategy.”

Nahm has been studying the disconnect between green energy targets announced by party leaders in Beijing, and the actions of local leaders in China’s far-flung provinces. He found that up to 40 percent of renewable energy is wasted because there’s no national power market in China. That means that wind and solar power generated in one province can’t be sent to an adjacent province, so more coal plants are fired up even if there’s cheaper green energy next door.

But China’s reliance on dirty coal has come back to haunt its own citizens, according to Nahm. “The air pollution crisis is a reason to get away from coal,” he said. “That’s the first environmental crisis that’s pushed the government to act, and then the impact of climate change. There’s desertification, water shortages, giant dust storms, and some of these problems are getting more severe.”

Nahm and the other experts believe that China is headed in the right direction on climate change, but its economy is so big and so dependent on coal that it takes a while to get there. As for the climate summit in Poland, it’s possible that China might try to wiggle out of meeting even tougher new climate commitments, even as it becomes the biggest nation supporting the U.N. Paris agreement goals. President Trump said he plans to walk away from the Paris agreement; the earliest he can do that is in 2020.

There’s also the issue of checking up on each country’s measurements. Before the Paris agreement, China was considered a “developing” nation subject to less stringent reporting requirements. That changed after 2015. But without a strong U.S. influence to check it today, China might try to loosen the bookkeeping, says Samantha Gross, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

“What will the reporting requirements be and how will they be verified,” said Gross. “That’s what the negotiators will be duking out in Poland. I’m curious to see how far they get.”

As for China, Gross says they hold the cards for the world’s climate future. “We’re all gonna fry if they don’t do something.”

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China is both the best and worst hope for clean energy

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First Solar-Powered Car To Be Introduced in Late 2019

by WillisSteffan6 Posted on December 7, 2018

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First Solar-Powered Car To Be Introduced in Late 2019

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What is the Impact of Voting on the Environment?

by PatrickOtoole Posted on November 8, 2018

With the close of the midterm elections, many are glad to end the discussion on voting. With the constant barrage of political ads on TV and even via text message, the next proposition or candidate is the last thing on many voters? minds.

Even though election fever has subsided, one of the often-forgotten pieces of elections is the environmental impact of voting. Our society gets so caught up in policy and candidates that we fail to think about the impact that the physical process of voting has on the world around us.

How Does Voting Affect the Environment?

Almost all states use some form of paper ballot. There are only five states that run their elections without paper ballots ? Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Delaware. There are also nine other states that use a combination of both paper ballots and electronic machines ? Pennsylvania, Texas, Kansas, Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

Although the most secure, paper ballots generate plenty of waste. From the envelopes used for mail-in ballots to the physical ballots themselves, an election is a very paper-intensive project. After an election, ballots are stored for about 22 months, at which point local authorities can dispose of them, usually by shredding.

While it may not seem like a lot of waste, in the 2014 midterm election, there were over 83 million ballots counted. Current projections for the 2018 midterms put that figure in the 114 million range. And the examples above only include midterms. Turnout in presidential elections is generally much higher and local city elections happen all the time. Therefore, every year we are forced to scrap and attempt to recycle millions of pounds of paper, adding to the 71.8 million tons of paper waste that the US generates each year.

Are Electronic Voting Machines Any Better?

Some argue that electronic voting machines can have a positive environmental impact. While this is true regarding paper waste, there are a few important caveats with electronic voting machines:

-??????? Electronic voting machines need power. Unless they run on solar power, they would still be using resources.

-??????? With the pace that technology advances, these devices will become quickly outdated or need to be replaced, thus generating e-waste. In the United States, we already scrap about 400 million units of consumer electronics every year.

-??????? The simple act of driving to the nearest polling place likely does more environmental damage that the ballot you cast. Unless voters are able to walk or bike to the polls, they are still burning fuel and generating carbon dioxide to reach the ballot box.

What is the Best Option for the Environment?

Other than cutting down on paper waste, which can only be seen as a positive, electronic voting machines do not represent a large step forward for the environment. Coupled with the fact that electronic voting machines are not seen as secure, electronic voting machines do not seem like the right answer.

The most environmentally friendly form of voting would be to vote via the internet. Voters would not have to rely on paper ballots, drive to the nearest polling station, or use any devices other than the ones they already own. Moreover, even though 29 states have laws that allow you take time off work to vote, internet voting would reduce the transaction cost of participation and have a positive impact on turnout.

That said, the security technology is simply not there yet for a country as large as the United States and likely will not be for some time. With such high stakes, it is not a risk the country can afford to take. Estonia does have an e-voting system that has been in place since 2005, but it is a country of only about 1 million eligible voters with a national ID card system. Even then, a 2014 team at the University of Michigan found that interfering with Estonia?s election is possible, even though it may not have happened yet.

Therefore, it appears that until the technology is created, we are stuck with the traditional paper ballot methods that have been around since ancient Roman times. Hopefully with the rapid pace by which technology advances, one day soon we will have a voting system that maximizes both efficiency and care for the environment.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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What is the Impact of Voting on the Environment?

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5 things I learned from watching political ads that actually mention climate

by WilfredAla Posted on October 27, 2018

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Politicians usually like to play it safe with their campaign ads: American flags, factories, Labrador retrievers, and kids in suspenders. The environment doesn’t typically (if ever) make an appearance minus a pretty backdrop for an American flag.

But this year is different. A burst of political advertisements about the changing climate has hit television screens across the country. Could it be a sign that some politicians might soon stop avoiding climate change like the plague (and starting talking about it like… well, an actual plague)?

The New York Times tracked down those ads — there are more than a dozen out there. And I spent the day watching them all so you don’t have to. The following takeaways are NOT endorsements. Nothin’ like tearing apart some political ads on a Friday afternoon.

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Say “jobs,” not “climate change”

Renewables. Are. Big. Clean energy seems like the safest way for politicians to talk about climate change without coming on too strong or like too much of an environmentalist, heaven forbid. Take Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s ad, titled “The Ocean State.” In the 30ish-second ad, the Democrat touts her state’s clean energy credentials. “We’re now the only state with an offshore wind farm,” she says, standing on a boat (with — you guessed it — an American flag flying in the background). She never mentions the words “climate change,” instead taking the tried-and-true approach of linking the project to potential economic growth.

Green is the new extreme sport

Democratic Congressperson Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico’s 1st District took a less traditional approach in her ad for governor. She climbed 265 feet to the top of a wind turbine to prove she’ll go the extra mile (or foot) for renewable energy. Did she impress viewers, or just give them vertigo? We’ll find out on November 6.

The environment = anti-Trump ammo

Other politicians used climate change as fodder to slam President Trump in their ads, doubling down on partisan politics. Sean Casten, a scientist running in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, tore into the president’s history of climate skepticism. “This facility is on the leading edge of clean energy,” Casten says, standing in front of some expensive-looking monitors. “Donald Trump doesn’t think we need it because he thinks climate change is a hoax.”

It makes for pretty, pretty policy

Steve Sisolak, Nevada’s Democratic candidate for governor, has a “bold environmental vision” for his state. His ad starts in front of a sad-looking lagoon, but quickly transitions to Instagram-worthy drone footage of solar farms. He says he wants to protect Nevada’s national monuments, like Golden Butte, and ends with a pledge to uphold the Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan.

Climate is at least bipartisan-curious

OK, so there weren’t a horde of Republicans releasing ads in favor of reducing emissions. But at least one Republican representative, Carlos Curbelo of Florida’s 26th District, was down to bring climate change up in his ads — maybe not too surprising for a guy whose district is at sea-level. Curbelo is one of the founding members of the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan effort to get politicians in Congress to act on climate change. He also appears on our Grist 50 list, though he somehow neglected to mention that in his campaign video.

“I just call ‘em like I see him,” Curbelo says in his T.V. spot, which seems to take place entirely on a basketball court for some reason. “The right didn’t do enough for our environment.” The ad also features a 2018 quote from the National Wildlife Federation, which calls him a leader on climate change. Watch Curbelo make an astounding number of basketball metaphors here:

Are politicians ready to stop swerving climate change in their campaigns? A dozen or so ads isn’t a seismic shift in the way politicians approach this issue. But it’s a start!

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5 things I learned from watching political ads that actually mention climate

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Typhoon Yutu spurs disaster in a remote U.S. territory

by Greg36271607917 Posted on October 26, 2018

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Far away from the mainland, American citizens are reeling from a direct hit by Super Typhoon Yutu.

During its landfall on Thursday, Yutu lashed the Mariana Islands with more than a foot of rain, coastal flooding in excess of 15 feet, waves the size of five-story apartment buildings, and winds of 180 mph.

Saipan and Tinian are the two most-populated islands of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the central Pacific Ocean about 8,000 miles from Washington, D.C. — nearly twice as far away as Honolulu. Both islands took a direct hit. About 50,000 people live in the Commonwealth, and after Yutu, they’re fighting for survival.

Most structures have lost their roofs, and even the leaves have been stripped from trees and bushes, local lawmaker Edwin Propst told the Associated Press. Closed circuit video from near the point of landfall showed an entire hotel lobby destroyed in seconds.

Just hours after landfall, local news reports said that food, drinking water, and fuel were already in short supply. “This damage is just horrendous, it’s going to take months and months for us to recover,” Propst said.

If recent history holds, he’ll be right. Yutu is the third tropical cyclone (the scientific term for typhoons and hurricanes) in just over a year to plunge a remote U.S. territory into humanitarian crisis. Last year, Hurricane Irma’s devastation in the U.S. Virgin Islands was eclipsed just days later when Hurricane Maria made a direct hit in Puerto Rico.

In historical context, Yutu is an exceedingly rare disaster, though storms like Yutu are coming with a worrying frequency these days. According to preliminary weather data, Yutu is tied for the fifth-strongest tropical cyclone ever to hit land. Six of the 10 strongest landfalls in world history have occurred this decade.

The United States has borne a particularly damaging share of horrific storms lately. Yutu is the fifth Category 4 or 5 tropical cyclone to make landfall in the past 15 months on U.S. soil. No previous decade has had more than four such strikes on American shorelines, making this an outbreak unseen in nearly 170 years of recorded weather history.

Like so many recent hurricanes, Yutu rapidly strengthened just before landfall, going from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in just 36 hours. Waters near Yutu were 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal, consistent with the effects of climate change and a key factor in rapidly strengthening storms.

Despite signing an emergency declaration to help speed the flow of federal aid to the islands, a routine task for a storm of this magnitude, President Trump has yet to publicly comment on the disaster. Mainstream media coverage has also been sparse; The New York Times’ initial story ran on page 16.

“It’s been tough seeing the lack of mainstream coverage for this,” said Steven Johnson, a native of Saipan and marine biologist now studying climate change at Oregon State University, wrote in an email interview with Grist.

Johnson pointed to the round-the-clock coverage of the mail bombs sent to Trump critics in comparison. It “hurts to know that +50K people living on U.S. soil deserve a fraction of the attention of Robert de Niro,” he said.

A lack of media and federal attention could prove deadly in the Marianas, as it did in the aftermath of Maria in Puerto Rico. Despite convincing evidence of a humanitarian catastrophe in Puerto Rico, the federal response was slow. That official neglect, plus logistical bottlenecks, lead to a nearly total breakdown in medical services and contributed to the storm’s outsized death toll, according to an independent study.

Johnson has been trying to bring attention to the storm by tweeting to celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio. He said that communicating with friends and family over social media had turned into a full-time job.

“Growing up on Saipan and Tinian, you go through storms all the time,” Johnson said. “This was the first time I’ve heard family and friends say they feared for their lives.”

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Typhoon Yutu spurs disaster in a remote U.S. territory

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Trump has an F in science. Can we change that?

by KandiLyons Posted on October 25, 2018

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It’s no secret that President Trump doesn’t have a firm grasp of climate science. I mean, “climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese” isn’t a particularly informed stance on the biggest issue facing humanity. But Trump hasn’t succeeded in completely isolating himself from people who know (and even possibly care!) about the way rising temperatures affect human beings.

At least one of Trump’s officials, through a pretty painful-to-watch process of rapid-fire evolution, now understands the science behind human-made climate change. His name is Jim Bridenstine, and he’s the new director of NASA. Bridenstine appears to have brains, but, unfortunately for us (people who have to live on this planet), he doesn’t have balls.

And if there’s one thing we know about this president, it’s that he responds well to stunts and tough talk, and he absolutely hates being bored. On Monday, we got an inside look at the way Bridenstine advises the president and, bad news: the NASA head likes to play it safe.

Reporter Chris Mooney interviewed Bridenstine at an event hosted by the Washington Post, alongside Bill Nye and astronauts Chris Ferguson and Victor Glover. During the interview, Mooney pressed Bridenstine on what NASA is doing to help Americans understand climate change. “We do not want NASA to get involved in telling politicians what the solutions to the problems are,” he said in response. “If we do that, we become very partisan, very political.”

Bridenstine said he was willing to supply the president with facts about climate change, but showed reluctance when it came to giving him solutions, such as not burning so much carbon, arguing it isn’t NASA’s job to put on a partisan show.

But why wouldn’t NASA be able to supply data, make assessments, and suggest obvious solutions without being partisan? Isn’t that … kind of its job? “We want to do dispassionate science,” Bridenstine said in that same interview. If that’s the way Bridenstine is choosing to advise the president, it’s no wonder his lessons about climate science haven’t exactly stuck.

You know who isn’t afraid of coming off as too political for Trump’s taste? The Heartland Institute. The conservative think tank likes to pull political stunts and cause a ruckus — traits that align with Trump’s general worldview.

The tension between timid takes on science and incendiary climate denial was put on display this week, when E&E news reported that the White House asked Heartland for a powerpoint on climate change during the transition period after Trump won the election. This occurred right after the president had spoken with Al Gore about rising temperatures.

“[Trump’s] an open-minded and intelligent man, so of course he wanted the best information arguments that both sides had to offer,” James Taylor, senior fellow at Heartland, told E&E. Taylor then said he could “kick Gore’s butt” in a climate science smackdown. Clearly, the Heartland Institute is more than willing to provide passionate dis-science.

There’s no evidence that Trump actually laid eyes on the powerpoint Taylor and his team of science phonies cooked up for him. But if I was a betting woman, I’d put my money on Trump siding with the guy who randomly challenges his opponents to duels. Then again, E&E reporter Scott Waldman points to a change of course in Trump’s comments on climate. He’s now less prone to call climate change a hoax, and more likely to focus on the debate about humanity’s role in causing the problem. Progress, I guess? Maybe Bridenstine can bridle this runaway president after all. Or maybe the head of NASA will keep calm and carry on until the world ends.

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Trump has an F in science. Can we change that?

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New York just filed a big ol’ lawsuit against ExxonMobil

by HenrietBernard Posted on October 24, 2018

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Donald Trump has said time and time again that he only hires “the best people.” He sure ends up firing them a lot, too. That may have been a wise decision with his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who was implicated in a major lawsuit filed on Wednesday. The issue at hand? Climate change.

In a blistering series of tweets, New York Interim Attorney General Barbara Underwood laid out the basic tenets of her office’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil. The suit alleges that Exxon — formerly run by Tillerson — tricked investors with a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” that downplayed the financial risks climate change regulation posed to the company.

Unlike other climate change lawsuits, like those launched by California or Colorado in recent months, this one doesn’t seek to hold Exxon responsible for its role in creating climate change. In a nutshell, this case is about fraud: lying to someone to get their money.

Underwood’s lawsuit argues that Exxon overstated how prepared the company was for the tough regulations that are necessary to combat climate change. She hopes to prove that Exxon told investors one thing while doing another. Climate change regulations can take a toll on fossil fuel businesses. Exxon said it was (and still currently is) taking steps to make sure that toll doesn’t hurt its interests, but the receipts say otherwise.

Will Exxon wiggle out of this suit like it wiggled out of lawsuits by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and even a previous lawsuit launched by New York City? It’s already argued that these lawsuits a) limit its right to free speech and b) are a big conspiracy. And the company has even counter-sued the people taking it to court!

But, again, this new lawsuit takes a different tack. In the event that it succeeds, it would require the oil company to cough up all the money it made from investors through climate fraud, and then pay back its investors. That’s a lot of dough, but we don’t yet know exactly how much — Underwood’s lawsuit doesn’t include a final sum.

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New York just filed a big ol’ lawsuit against ExxonMobil

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Here’s what climate scientist James Hansen would have said in the Valve Turner trial

by KathrinN44 Posted on October 18, 2018

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Most activists are relieved if a judge frees them from the charges brought against them. But when the tar sands “valve turners” found out last week that they had been acquitted, they had a different reaction — disappointment. They had hoped to use the trial to discuss the global climate threat posed by the controversial pipelines.

On October 11, 2016, this small group of activists manually shut down multiple pipelines carrying oil from Canadian tar sands to the United States. Reuters called it “the biggest coordinated move on U.S. energy infrastructure ever undertaken.” It wasn’t exactly “Mission Impossible.” More like Mission “righty-tighty.” They simply snuck into the stations in Washington, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota and turned the valves clockwise to halt the flow of crude oil.

The “valve turners,” as the group came to be called, knew they’d be caught — they even called the operating companies 15 minutes before turning the valves to tell them what they were about to do. They wanted a proper trial as a kind of public forum to discuss the urgency of climate change. As one of the activists, Emily Johnson, told Democracy Now, “You know, we very much wanted everyone to be able to hear—for our jurors to be able to hear—from our expert witnesses.”

But on Tuesday of last week, just as their trial was getting started, the group was acquitted of all charges. Not to be deterred, one of the key experts who would have been called in the trial has made his would-be testimony public.

Former top NASA climate scientist James Hansen repurposed his testimony as an op-ed for the Denver Post. In the article, he describes the many ways we can observe climate change now: the spate of record-breaking hurricanes fueled by warming oceans, the way that bark beetles—a beneficiary of climate change—have destroyed millions of acres of Colorado forests, and how the island nation of Kiribati has had to negotiate to relocate all 103,000 of its people.

Hansen, who was arrested in 2011 at the Tar Sands protest, wanted to highlight the dire necessity behind the valve turners’ actions. He wrote, “[A]s I was prepared to swear under oath this week, we need to leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to prevent truly catastrophic climate change.”

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Here’s what climate scientist James Hansen would have said in the Valve Turner trial

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