Wildfires and Other Burns Play Bigger Role in Climate Change

Stanford professor's calculations indicate that wildfires and other types of fires involving plant matter play a much bigger role in climate change and human health than previously thought.

It has long been known that biomass burning -- burning forests to create agricultural lands, burning savannah as a ritual , slash-and-burn agriculture and wildfires -- figures into both climate change and public health.  But until the release of a new study by Stanford University Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, the degree of that contribution had never been comprehensively quantified.

Jacobson's research, detailed in a paper published July 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, is based on a three-dimensional computer model simulation of the impacts of biomass burning.  His findings indicate that burning biomass is playing a much bigger role in climate change and human health issues than previously thought.

"We calculate that 5 to 10 percent of worldwide air pollution mortalities are due to biomass burning," Jacobson said.  "That means that it causes the premature deaths of about 250,000 people each year."

Wildfires and Other Burns Play Bigger Role in Climate Change

'Wetting' a Battery's Appetite for Renewable Energy Storage

Sun, wind and other renewable energy sources could make up a larger portion of the electricity America consumes if better batteries could be built to store the intermittent energy for cloudy, windless days. Now a new material could allow more utilities to store large amounts of renewable energy and make the nation's power system more reliable and resilient.

A paper published today in Nature Communications describes an electrode made of a liquid metal alloy that enables sodium-beta batteries to operate at significantly lower temperatures.  The new electrode enables sodium-beta batteries to last longer, helps streamline their manufacturing process and reduces the risk of accidental fire.

"Running at lower temperatures can make a big difference for sodium-beta batteries and may enable batteries to store more renewable energy and strengthen the power grid," said material scientist Xiaochuan Lu of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

More than 300 megawatts of large, cargo container-sized sodium-beta batteries are running in the United States, Japan and Europe, according to Dupont Energy Consulting. They often store electricity generated by rows of solar panels and wind turbines.

But their broader use has been limited because of their high operating temperature, which reaches up to 350 degrees Celsius, or more than three times the boiling point of water. Such high operating temperatures requires sodium-beta batteries to use more expensive materials and shortens their operating lifespans.

'Wetting' a Battery's Appetite for Renewable Energy Storage

Scientists Point to a Methane Eruption as Cause of Siberian Hole Mystery

The bottom line is that no one knows the definitive cause of the massive craters turning Siberian permafrost into a Swiss Cheese slice.

"I have an opinion, but no proof," said Marina Leibman, a scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in a brief email interview this week.  In mid-July, Leibman led a team of scientists to the site of one of the holes that was approximately 30 meters in diameter and about 70 meters deep and was located about 30 kilometers from the Bovanenkovo gas field.

The holes appeared in the Yamal Peninsula, a reindeer-herding area holding the country's largest natural gas reserves.

In Leibman's view, an unusually warm summer in the Yamal region in 2012 caused extensive permafrost melt, which unleashed methane gas trapped in the ice and sediment. That expanding gas presence unleashed by melt in turn caused the permafrost to pop up like a cork, spraying debris in a visible ring around the created hole, she explained.  The presence of the debris likely couldn't have happened without such a popping action, she said.

It was not an explosion, but more of an eruption that sprayed debris far from the hole itself.  The visited chasm most likely formed in 2013, according to Leibman.  The holes have to be relatively recent, because of vegetation patterns, further indicating that the warm summer of 2012 may have played a role, she said.

Despite concerns about methane release from permafrost generally, the 30-meter-wide (98.4 foot) funnel is not likely to be a constant source of gas after the initial blowout, according to researchers.

Scientists Point to a Methane Eruption as Cause of Siberian Hole Mystery

State Department's Real Errors in Keystone XL Review

Last month, the State Department published an errata sheet for the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project.  State Department's error sheet, and much of the coverage of it, clearly points out that railing tar sands is potentially even more dangerous than pipelines.

Why?  Because moving tar sands crude by rail isn't happening much, isn't very profitable, and it isn't likely to be anytime in the near future.  The reality is using rail to transport tar sands crude to Gulf refineries is in fact very, very expensive - at least $15 per barrel more than pipeline, according to RBN Energy.  Tar sands crude has the double disadvantage of both remote location and poor quality - so adding additional cost for rail transport simply destroys the already slim profit margin of the product.

The State Department has in fact consistently overestimated rail's potential role in moving tar sands crude.  Less than two years ago, the Department was confidently predicting more than 200,000 barrels per day of tar sands crude would reach the Gulf Coast by rail by the end of 2013.  Instead, the Energy Information Administration recorded a high volume of just 57,000 barrels per day in March of 2014.  That is less than 7% of the capacity of Keystone XL.

[T]he flawed analysis of rail's costs [is] only one of the many errors that the State Department made in its FSEIS for the Keystone XL pipeline, as pointed out by a coalition of environmental organizations Thursday.

Why is the State Department seemingly so convinced of the inevitability of tar sands by rail when oil traders themselves are much more cautious?  One answer can be found deep in the State Department's FSEIS.  Their entire analysis rests on a single figure for tar sands production costs, which State describes as a "(h)ypothetical supply cost of a barrel of bitumen at the producing facility."  The figure that State chose as its "hypothetical" is $45 per barrel.

The problem is that this "hypothetical" figure is in fact totally wrong, and doesn't match mainstream predictions from mainstream analysts such as Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Rystad Energy.  It is much more likely that the supply cost will climb to $60 per barrel or more over the expected lifetime of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This is the biggest error that the State Department made in this report, and once you understand it you can't help but wonder why it happened.  High costs of production combined with the higher costs of crude-by-rail means that tar sands producers will not be able to profit from shipping tar sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries by rail, which means that it is not at all inevitable that the tar sands will be produced.

However, because of the low projected costs of Keystone XL transport, constructing the pipeline would enable producers to ship tar sands at a profit even with higher production costs, thereby virtually guaranteeing that more tar sands will come out of the ground.  In short, the well-named Keystone XL pipeline is the key to unlocking more growth in the tar sands.

State Department's Real Errors in Keystone XL Review

California Drought Reaches a Terrifying Milestone

Data released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that 58 percent of California is facing “exceptional drought,” the most severe condition on the center’s scale and the worst ever recorded in the state.

“You keep beating the record, which are still all from this year," climatologist Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center told the Los Angeles Times, noting that this is the first time such dryness has ever been recorded in California since the federal government started releasing drought reports in the 1990s.

The latest assessment is a startling jump from two months ago, when the entire state was first labeled as being in “severe” drought or worse.

The report cited shrinking reservoir levels, river gauges and groundwater observations as reasons for increasing the drought warning.

“California is short more than one year’s worth of reservoir water, or 11.6 million acre-feet, for this time of year,” meteorologist Brad Rippey wrote in the report.

California Drought Reaches a Terrifying Milestone

Sen Whitehouse Schools Sen Inhofe about Global Warming on the Senate Floor

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) throws down an epic schooling of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) on global warming after Inhofe blocked a resolution from Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) simply acknowledging that global warming exists and poses a threat to the interests of the United States.  Whitehouse makes several points that seem to originate from Skeptical Science, like The Escalator steps.  Well worth taking 7 minutes to watch - hat tip to Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.

Sen Whitehouse Schools Sen Inhofe about Global Warming on the Senate Floor

Why the Koch Brothers Are So Interested in Who Becomes the Next Attorney General of Colorado

The campaign for the usually little-noticed position of Colorado Attorney General has been jolted with a stunning influx of outside money — a total one candidate says is more than quadruple the largest amount ever spent by a candidate for the position.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) has reportedly reserved a historic $2.6 million television ad buy in support of Colorado Republican attorney general nominee Cynthia Coffman.  The group has received significant funding from the fossil fuel industry — and dark money groups backed by petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch.  Probably not coincidentally, Coffman is a staunch supporter of the oil and gas industry who has vowed to use the position to protect the rights of frackers and drillers.

Attorneys general play a huge role in choosing which state regulations to defend in court, how much effort will go to prosecuting environmental crimes, and what whether to challenge EPA rules in court.  Coffman’s opponent, Democratic nominee Don Quick, highlights on his campaign website that he as Colorado AG would “strengthen and expand our efforts to protect all of Colorado’s natural resources” and “make protection of our land, water and wildlife” a top priority.

But Coffman’s site takes the opposite approach, making clear her strong fealty to Big Energy.  In a section called “Oil and Gas,” she calls the industry “integral to Colorado’s economic health as well as to the U.S. energy supply.”  If elected, Coffman pledges to take action against localities who try to prevent fracking, which “effectively deprive landowners and companies of their property rights in contravention of the law.”

Why the Koch Brothers Are So Interested in Who Becomes the Next Attorney General of Colorado