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No, the IPCC climate report doesn’t call for a fracking boom

by Abraham Lowe Posted on April 16, 2014

No, the IPCC climate report doesn’t call for a fracking boom

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You might have heard that the latest installment of the big new U.N. climate report endorses fracking, urging a “dash for gas” as a bridge fuel to put us on a path to a more renewable energy future. These interpretations of the report are exaggerated, lack context, and are just plain wrong. They appear to have been based on interviews and on a censored summary of the report, which was published two days before the full document became available.

The energy chapter from the full report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “near‐term GHG emissions from energy supply can be reduced” by replacing coal-fired power plants with “highly efficient” natural gas–burning alternatives — a move that “may play a role as a transition fuel in combination with variable renewable sources.” But that’s only true, the report says, if fugitive emissions of climate-changing methane from drilling and distribution of the gas are “low” — which is far from the case today. Scientists reported Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that methane measurements taken near fracking sites in Pennsylvania suggest such operations leak 100 to 1,000 times more methane than the U.S. EPA has estimated. The IPCC’s energy chapter also notes that fracking for gas has “created concerns about potential risks to local water quality and public health.”

To protect the climate and save ourselves, the new IPCC report says we must quit fossil fuels. That doesn’t mean switching from coal to natural gas. It means switching from coal and gas to solar and wind, plugging electric vehicles into those renewable sources, and then metaphorically blowing up the fossil-fueled power plants that pock the planet.

Stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at “low levels” requires a “fundamental transformation of the energy supply system,” the IPCC says. Overall, its latest report concludes that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent by midcentury, and stop producing any such pollution by the turn of the century, if we’re to keeping warming to within 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.7 F. And nothing is more important in meeting those goals than revolutionizing the way we produce electricity. Humanity’s thirst for electricity is the biggest single cause of climate change, with the energy sector fueling a little more than a third of global warming.

Wind, solar, hydro, and other renewable forms of energy account for a little more than half of all new generating capacity being built around the world, the report says. But that is not enough. The report notes that renewable energy still requires government support, such as renewable portfolio standards and prices and caps on carbon emissions.

But, as desperately as we need to be curbing fossil-fuel burning, we just keep increasing it instead. Greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector rose 3.1 percent every year from 2001 to 2010. In the 1990s, they rose just 1.7 percent annually. “The main contributors to this trend were a higher energy demand associated with rapid economic growth and an increase of the share of coal in the global fuel mix,” the report states.

Of course, slaking our thirst for electricity with renewables wouldn’t just be good for the climate. The energy chapter highlights “co-benefits” from the use of renewable energy, “such as a reduction of air pollution, local employment opportunities, few severe accidents compared to some other forms of energy supply, as well as improved energy access and security.”

A revolution doesn’t sound so scary when you put it that way.


Source
Chapter 7: Energy Systems, IPCC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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No, the IPCC climate report doesn’t call for a fracking boom

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U.S. urges IPCC to be less boring, try this whole “online” thing

by LeahShowers Posted on April 14, 2014

More GIFs, please

U.S. urges IPCC to be less boring, try this whole “online” thing

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Thousands of scientists volunteer to review research published by thousands of other scientists – part of an effort to pack all of the latest and best climate science into assessment reports from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But anybody who takes the time to read these reports is in danger of being bored to tears — even before they break down in tears over the scale of the damage that we’re inflicting on humanity and our planet.

After publishing five mammoth reports during its quarter-century of existence, the IPCC is facing an existential crisis. How can it reinvent its aging self – and its dry scientific reports — to better serve the warming world?

The U.S. is clear on what the IPCC needs to do: It needs to get with the times.

Despite the exhaustive amount of work that goes into producing each of the IPCC’s assessment reports, relatively little effort goes into making the information in those reports easily accessible to the public. The IPCC’s main website is ugly and static, mirroring the dry assessment reports to which it links. The IPCC’s online presence seems designed to meet day-to-day demands for climate information by bureaucrats — and nobody else.

Instead of publishing huge, three-part reports every five to seven years, the U.S. thinks the IPCC’s assessment reports should be divided into two main sections that would be published on staggered timelines — a little bit like how the winter and summer Olympics arrive two years apart. The U.S. is also urging the IPCC to publish “special reports” on emerging topics between its blockbuster assessments. Here are some highlights from the U.S. recommendations to the IPCC about its future:

Between these regular assessments (which would be easily searchable on a web-based platform), IPCC authors could add relevant publications to the web site to yield a “living document.” … A possible solution could be the kinds of modalities used in various moderated listserves and wikis. …

Consider taking advantage of the significant advances in information technology by providing the full content of the reports online in an interactive format that hyperlinks in-text citations to the abstracts/articles/reports they reference, as well as links to underlying data and research, where available.

America’s comments mirror those of other groups and countries. Here, for example, are highlights from the European Union’s recommendations to the IPCC:

[G]iven the relatively long period between assessment reports (currently seven years) there is a clear need for updates over shorter time-periods, especially when important new elements of information are available and existing pieces of information become outdated. This could be facilitated by a full digitalisation of the reports and complementary use of a web-based ‘wiki-type’ approach, to provide an ‘interim’ (advanced) version of the assessment report.

The changes that would be needed to get climate science onto smartphones and into living rooms seems like basic stuff in an increasingly internet-savvy world. But it could be challenging to drive such change in a group that’s understandably more interested in climate science than public engagement. To this end, Sweden and other countries have suggested that the IPCC hire professional science writers, while others are urging it to hire multimedia professionals.


Source
Future work of the IPCC: Collated comments from Governments, IPCC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.S. urges IPCC to be less boring, try this whole “online” thing

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Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

by GerardoAmbrose Posted on April 7, 2014

Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

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NOAA

There have been so many oil spills lately — from trains, from pipelines, from barges, from a refinery – that it’s easy to forget about the particulars of each one. Unless you’re an unlucky local resident or an emergency responder.

In Texas, where more than 100,000 gallons of heavy fuel spilled into Galveston Bay two weeks ago following a collision between a barge and a ship, the Coast Guard has recovered more than 300 oiled birds – nearly all of them dead. The Texas Tribune reports:

While the Houston Ship Channel is open and fishermen have mostly resumed activities in the bay, officials say they are at least several weeks away from fully containing the fuel oil, and its devastating effects on shorebirds are becoming increasingly apparent. The effects of the spill, [said David Newstead, a research scientist at the Corpus Christi-based nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program], are particularly troubling in the ecologically sensitive area in which the birds have already been in peril from human activity.

Newstead and Coast Guard officials said birds affected by the spill include ducks, herrings, herons, brown and white pelicans, sanderlings, loons, willets, black-bellied plover and the piping plover, which is classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. …

Newstead said he has surveyed Mustang Island, about 200 miles southwest of the initial spill site, and observed at least 500 more birds with some traces of oil. The soiled birds came into contact with the contaminated water as it washed ashore.

Birds and shorelines aren’t the only things being smeared with toxic oil in the wake of the shipping accident. An attorney representing a shrimp boat captain said Friday that his client had pulled up an “entire catch” that was “covered with oil.”


Source
Galveston Bay Oil Spill Leaves Hundreds of Birds Oiled, Texas Tribune
Feds seize cargo ship involved in oil spill, Galveston Daily News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

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Obama admin sued for dragging feet on studies of climate impacts

by ColemanPermewan Posted on April 4, 2014

Obama admin sued for dragging feet on studies of climate impacts

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Just over a year ago, we told you that the Obama administration would soon start requiring federal agencies to consider climate change when analyzing the environmental impacts of major projects that need federal approval. Bloomberg reported in March of last year that the new guidelines would “be issued in the coming weeks.”

But many weeks have come and gone and the guidelines still haven’t been released, so now activists are suing the administration to hurry things along.

The lawsuit revolves around the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to study the environmental impacts of projects they oversee and to develop strategies for reducing those impacts. Since passage of the landmark law in 1969, NEPA assessments have covered a variety of potential environmental impacts. In early 2008, major environmental groups petitioned the George W. Bush administration to include climate impacts among them. After Obama came into office, his administration said it would broaden the scope of NEPA studies to cover climate change, and in 2010, it issued draft guidelines to this effect, but they’ve been bottled up at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) ever since.

This week, frustrated after years of inaction, the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to force Obama’s CEQ to finalize the new rules. From the lawsuit:

With the effects of climate change becoming more and more evident, prompt action is necessary to ensure that climate change analysis is integrated into all levels of federal agencies’ planning. Full analysis and meaningful consideration of these impacts before federal government decisions are made will strongly affect the extent to which climate change and its consequential dangers are limited or avoided in the coming century.

“The Obama Administration has repeatedly promised to take action on climate, but talk is cheap. Its delay here is unlawful, as well as inexplicable and irresponsible,” said George Kimbrell, a senior attorney with the Center for Food Safety. “This unlawful delay is the opposite of the Obama Administration’s repeated promises to address climate change. CEQ action is a perfect example of something the administration can do unilaterally, without requiring congressional efforts. Yet the CEQ process has mysteriously gone into a black hole.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Californians to receive $30 to $40 climate credit this month

by Chauncey43M Posted on April 1, 2014

Californians to receive $30 to $40 climate credit this month

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A year and a half after California started forcing some big polluters to pay for pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, households in the Golden State are about to start cashing in on the program.

The state’s cap-and-trade program has raised nearly $1.7 billion so far. About 40 percent of proceeds are earmarked to be spent on clean energy initiatives, while the rest will be distributed to small utility customers through various programs, helping offset any increase in electricity prices. Residential customers of the state’s investor-owned utilities, which together serve more than two-thirds of the state’s electricity, will receive the first California Climate Credits on this month’s electricity bills, reducing the amount due by roughly $30 to $40. The next residential credits will be paid out in October. Small business customers will receive them monthly.

California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey said the credits will give “millions of Californians a stake in the fight for clean air and a healthy environment.” He suggested electricity customers reinvest the money in efficient lightbulbs, smart thermostats, and other energy-saving measures to further reduce costs and to join the fight against climate change.

The state’s motorists could end up seeing the minor cash infusion whittled away next year, when transportation fuels start to be included in the carbon-trading program. That could drive up the price of gas by about 12 cents a gallon.

Oil giant Chevron, which operates a huge, dirty, explosion-prone refinery in the poor Californian city of Richmond, is crying foul. Despite the company’s long-running efforts to overcome neighborhood opposition and secure permits needed to upgrade its Richmond refinery, a company exec recently claimed that the cap-and-trade program could force its closure. We call bullshit on that. But if it does happen, good bloody riddance, and don’t forget to take your filthy propaganda rag with you.


Source
CPUC and ARB announce the California Climate Credit, cutting electricity bills for millions of households, California Air Resources Board
What is the California Climate Credit?, Energy Upgrade California
Californians to Receive “Climate Credit” from Pollution Permit Sales, NRDC
Californians to get first power bill credits from climate program, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Californians to receive $30 to $40 climate credit this month

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What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

by FerminCockrell Posted on March 31, 2014

What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

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NASA

Global warming is a global crisis, but the effects of climate change are being felt differently in different corners of the globe. The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns of a world wracked by hunger, violence, and extinctions. But the IPCC also dedicates chapters to impacts that are underway and anticipated in individual regions and continents.

For North America, the report states there is “high confidence” of links between climate change and rising temperatures, ravaging downpours, and declining water supplies. Even if temperatures are allowed to rise by just 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C), which is the goal of current international climate negotiations (a goal that won’t be met unless everybody gets a lot more serious about curbing greenhouse gas pollution), such severe weather is going to get a lot worse.

North America’s coastal regions will continue to face a particularly long list of hazards, with climate change bringing growing risks of “sea-level rise, warming, ocean acidification, extratropical cyclones, altered upwelling, and hurricanes and other storms.”

Here are some highlights from the North American chapter of the IPCC’s new report:

Observed climate trends in North America include an increased occurrence of severe hot weather events over much of the US, decreases in frost days, and increases in heavy precipitation over much of North America …

Global warming of approximately 2°C (above the pre-industrial baseline) is very likely to lead to more frequent extreme heat events and daily precipitation extremes over most areas of North America, more frequent low snow years, and shifts towards earlier snowmelt runoff over much of the western US and Canada. Together with climate hazards such as higher sea levels and associated storm surges, more intense droughts, and increased precipitation variability, these changes are projected to lead to increased stresses to water, agriculture, economic activities and urban and rural settlements.

The following figure from the report shows how temperatures have already risen — and how they are expected to continue to rise in different parts of the continent under relatively low (“RCP2.6″) and high (“RCP8.5″) greenhouse gas pollution scenarios:

IPCCClick to embiggen.

And this figure shows that rain and snow are falling more heavily in parts of central and eastern U.S., but that the changes are more mixed in the West:

IPCCClick to embiggen.

Care about other parts of the world? Good for you! So do we. Here are links to chapters on other regions, along with our brief summaries of their findings:

Africa. This already overheated continent can expect to experience faster warming than other parts of the world – we’re talking about as much as 11 degrees F of warming by the end of the century. Couple that with worsening water shortages in many areas and more severe floods, and many Africans are staring down a hellish long-term weather forecast.

Europe. Worse floods and droughts, peppered with brutal winter winds over Central and Northern Europe.

Asia. A bento box of impacts varying widely across the region. Water shortages and rising seas are among the big worries. Farmers in some countries might benefit, but rice growers will generally find it more difficult to feed Asia. “There are a number of regions that are already near the heat stress limits for rice,” the chapter states.

Australasia. Crikey, them cyclones are gonna hit Down Under harder than a ‘roo on a bonnet. And that’s not all. Fires, heat waves, and flooding will continue to get worse in many areas of Australia and New Zealand.

Central and South America. Temperatures will continue to rise, and rain and snow will fall harder in some places but grow scarcer in others. The Andes will continue to lose snow.

Polar Regions. As the poles melt and grow more balmy, new biomes will appear. The report notes that the “tree line has moved northward and upward in many, but not all, Arctic areas … and significant increases in tall shrubs and grasses have been observed in many places.” Which sounds like a good thing, except that the melting permafrost is unleashing climate-changing methane.

Small islands. Those island bits that remain above sea level will be buffeted by salty floods, which will make freshwater harder to come by. The coral reefs that foster the ecosystems that support the livelihoods of islanders will continue to bleach and die.

The ocean. Three words: acidic rising seas.


Source
IPCC WGII AR5 Chapter 26, IPCC
WGII AR5 Final Drafts, IPCC

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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What the U.N.’s new climate report says about North America

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States struggling to understand frackquakes

by gorso6 Posted on March 28, 2014

States struggling to understand frackquakes

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Frackers have been triggering earthquakes across the country by injecting their wastewater at high pressure into disposal wells.

That much is certain. The U.S. Geological Survey has linked the practice to a sixfold increase in earthquakes in the central U.S. from 2001 to 2011. It’s also possible that the very act of fracking has been causing some temblors.

What isn’t certain, though, is what governments can do about it. Bloomberg reports on a new initiative that aims to manage some of those earth-shaking dangers:

Regulators from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio met for the first time this month in Oklahoma City to exchange information on the man-made earthquakes and help states toughen their standards.

“It was a very productive meeting, number one, because it gave the states the opportunity to get together and talk collectively about the public interest and the science,” Gerry Baker, who attended as associate executive director of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a group that represents energy-producing states, said in an interview. “It was a good start in coordinating efforts.” …

The goal of the regulators is to develop a set of common procedures to monitor for earthquakes, investigate their cause and draft rules and regulations to prevent them, said Scott Anderson, senior policy adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin, Texas, who has been in communication with state regulators on the issue.

Would we be stating the obvious if we suggested that these states protect themselves from earthquakes by simply stopping fracking — just as New York and countless local municipalities have done — while the drilling risks are better investigated by scientists?


Source
Fracking’s Earthquake Risks Push States to Collaborate, Bloomberg

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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States struggling to understand frackquakes

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

by JacelynZ96 Posted on March 27, 2014

Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

By

Kaj Iversön

America’s fossil fuel-smitten Congress helped China blow the U.S. out of the water last year when it came to installing new wind energy farms.

A little more than 16 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online in China in 2013 — nearly half of the 36 gigawatts installed around the world. Compare that with a little more than 1 gigawatt that was installed in the U.S. — down alarmingly from 13 gigawatts the year before.

That means American wind installations plummeted in a single year despite the falling price of wind energy, which is becoming lower than the price of electricity produced by burning natural gas in some parts of the country.

Dude, where’s our wind? Well, the latest figures were calculated by Navigant Research, and it blamed a “politically divided Congress” in a new paywalled report for the faltering wind growth in the U.S.

Congress allowed wind energy tax credits to blow away at the end of 2013 — so why would 2013′s installation figures be so bleak? According to the report, it was all about uncertainty. Lawmakers ”failed to extend tax incentives in time to positively impact the 2013 development and construction cycle.”

(Needless to say, Congress, which failed to extend the tax credits amid fossil fuel lobbyist whining that the wind energy industry needs to stand on its own feet, failed to do anything about the billions of dollars in subsidies doled out to fossil fuel companies every year.)

The new report contains some bleak news for those accustomed to reading about runaway growth in renewables. Less wind capacity was installed around the world in 2013 than had been the case in 2012 — the first time that such a decline has been recorded in eight years.

Still, thing are looking bright — particularly for the emerging offshore wind sector. Thirteen new offshore projects added 1.7 gigawatts of capacity last year — up by 50 percent compared with 2012. And 6.6 gigawatts of new offshore capacity is currently under construction.

The researchers forecast that the sector will rebound globally this year, with new installations expected to better last year’s effort by 30 percent. By the end of 2014, the researchers say wind energy will be meeting 2.9 percent of the world’s demand for electricity — a figure they expect to rise to 7.3 percent by 2018.

Navigant ResearchClick to embiggen.


Source
World Market Update 2013, Navigant Research

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Congress successfully took the wind out of wind energy’s sails last year

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

by ColemanPermewan Posted on March 27, 2014

Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

By

Tesla

If you live in Ohio, your lawmakers are poised to allow you to purchase a Tesla from a sales center — without forcing you to drive outside the borders of the Buckeye State to do your eco-friendly spending.

But legislative efforts to placate the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association will nonetheless cap the number of sales offices Tesla is allowed to operate inside the state at three – and other auto manufacturers will be barred outright from hawking their wheel-spinning wares direct to buyers. Here’s the news, courtesy of NJTV:

An Ohio Senate committee approved a bill formally barring automakers from selling directly to consumers except for a maximum of three outlets for electric-car builder Tesla Motors Inc.

The measure was a compromise between the company and the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association, which had sought to block Tesla from selling without a middleman, according to state Sen. Scott Oelslager, the committee chairman.

Tesla, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates Ohio stores in Columbus and Cincinnati and will be permitted to add a third as long as the company isn’t sold or acquired and doesn’t produce anything other than all-electric vehicles, under the legislation worked out yesterday.

Why are states getting into the strange business of banning a wildly hyped, pretty cool, awfully expensive electric car manufacturer? Tesla’s direct sales model has drawn opposition from car salesmen — middlemen who fear becoming superfluous as Tesla champions a direct-to-consumer auto-marketing model. That opposition has led to sales bans in five states and restrictions in two others.

In New Jersey, for example, Grist’s Ben Adler explains that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is forcing the electric automaker to shut down its two sales offices. The promising news there is that a Democratic assemblymember recently introduced a bill that would unshackle Tesla from Christie’s new ban on its sales model.


Source
Tesla may be nearer to a compromise in Ohio, NJTV

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Ohio lawmakers: All right, folks, we guess it’s OK for you to buy Teslas

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Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

by MagdalenaSIVG Posted on March 25, 2014

Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

By

Nina Hale

Cairo air pollution.

The World Health Organization’s latest advice could be reinterpreted as a cruel oxymoron: Stop breathing, or you’ll stop breathing. A tall order, but one in eight deaths in 2012 was caused by air pollution. And more likely than not, that one air-pollution-wrecked body lived its shortened life in a poor or developing country — probably in Asia.

WHO’s latest air-pollution-linked mortality estimates double previous annual figures, due largely to medical discoveries about pollution’s poisonous effects. Scientists have been discovering that a shockingly long list of afflictions can be exacerbated or triggered by air pollution — everything from heart attacks and lung cancer to diabetes and viral infections. The inhalation of tiny particles is now regarded as the world’s largest single environmental health risk — responsible for an estimated 7 million deaths in 2012.

According to the WHO, indoor air pollution killed 4.3 million people in 2012. It’s produced by stoves and heaters that are fueled with coal, wood, dung, and crop residue. Some 3 billion people rely on cooking and heating facilities like these. Women and young children were more heavily affected than men by indoor air pollution. Half of the kids who died in 2012 before reaching their 5th birthday were thought to have been killed by pneumonia linked to indoor air pollution.

The WHO also attributed 3.7 million premature deaths in 2012 to outdoor air pollution, which is largely caused by power plants, trucks, cars, and crop-burning — with 88 percent of those deaths in low- and middle-income countries, mostly in Asia.

“The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes,” WHO official Maria Neira said. “Few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution; the evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe.”

If there’s a silver lining to this cloud of soot, it’s that the world’s homicidal air pollution problem is starting to capture the global attention it deserves. Globetrotting journalists have been filing breathless dispatches about China’s famously soupy smog. This report is sure to raise the profile of the issue as well. Slowly, it seems, the message is getting through: The clean air we take for granted in much of the West would be a luxury for the world’s poor.


Source
7 million deaths annually linked to air pollution, WHO

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

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