Friday, January 02, 2015
Thursday, January 01, 2015
Tallahassee Democrat: Congress Out of Excuses for Climate Change
• Cutting carbon emissions won’t hurt our economy. In June of this year, Citizens Climate Lobby released a study from the highly respected firm, Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI), that showed that a steadily-rising fee on the carbon dioxide content of fossil fuels — with the revenue from the fee returned to all households — would add 2.8 million jobs after 20 years and cut carbon emissions by 50 percent.
This happens because of the economic stimulus of recycling the carbon fee revenue into the pockets of people who are likely to spend the money. It includes a border tariff, which would protect American business by placing a tariff on imported goods from countries with no carbon fee of their own, a powerful incentive for other countries to follow our lead. The study also showed that thousands of lives are saved by reducing toxic pollutants.
This market-based solution is called a revenue-neutral Carbon Fee and Dividend and is supported by leading conservatives like former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson.
• America can be energy independent. In fact, America is close to being energy independent, but we could become truly energy independent if we switch 100 percent of our energy from fossil fuels to renewables. A study released in 2013, entitled “The Solutions Project” prepared by Mark Jacobson at Stanford University indicates that, using current technology, we can generate enough energy with renewables and improved efficiency to meet 100 percent of our energy needs. Their proposal would create millions of jobs, reduce air pollution related deaths, reduce health costs and decrease global climate change costs. By 2050 energy costs would be saving each of us $6,500 per year.
Read more at Congress Out of Excuses for Climate Change.
Aviation Industry Faces Pressure to Stop GHG Threat
The aviation industry is growing so quickly that its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected on present trends to triple globally by 2050. The industry itself is committed to reducing its emissions, but technological and political constraints are hindering rapid progress.
Technologically, the fate of aviation GHGs depends on how much more fuel-efficient airplanes can become, and how soon lower-carbon fuels can be made available at a palatable cost.
Politically, it depends on whether the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) can establish agreement among member states on a regulatory mechanism, which in turn may depend largely on whether – and when – the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chooses to regulate aviation emissions.
A final unknown is whether the sector’s efforts can produce results in time to avoid climate catastrophe.
Falling behind
The group is exploring “biomass-derived synthetic jet fuel”, which includes oils from plants and algae, crop and forest product residues, fermented sugars and municipal solid waste.
While this type of fuel can, in principle, be used in jet engines today, Csonka says the most important goal in the near term is to develop alternatives to petroleum-based fuel “at a reasonable price point”. A few airlines are buying alternative fuels at a higher price to encourage the market, Csonka adds, but widespread adoption awaits competitive pricing.
Aviation fuel efficiency has been increasing, but it is not keeping pace with the sector’s growth. The ICCT report finds there was no improvement between 2012 and 2013, and that the gap between the most and least efficient airlines widened − with American Airlines burning 27% more fuel than Alaska Airlines for the same level of service.
This gap suggests the industry could reduce GHG emissions significantly if the least efficient airlines would emulate the most efficient, says Daniel Rutherford, the ICCT’s programme director for aviation and a co-author of its report. Most of the reductions so far have come from carrying more passengers per flight, replacing old engines and buying new, more efficient planes.
Like most businesses, airlines don’t want to replace equipment until it makes economic sense.
Read more at Aviation Industry Faces Pressure to Stop GHG Threat
South American Commodity Boom Drives Deforestation and Land Conflicts
Now, as prices for oil and other commodities slide, economists and environmental researchers warn that the loss of forest cover may be hastened, leading to new clashes, as governments in the region try to maintain growth rates and spending levels by driving deeper into the jungle.
Satellite imagery of the Amazon basin, the world’s largest tropical forest and a critical bulwark against climate change, shows a stark divergence in the continent’s preservation efforts. In Brazil the pace of deforestation has been reduced 75 percent since 2004, largely the result of tighter regulation and new environmental protections.
But in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and the other five nations whose territories cover 40 percent of the Amazon basin, the loss of vegetation increased threefold in the same period, wiping out a combined area of forest cover larger than the state of Maryland. Last year, the pace of deforestation in those nations jumped 120 percent.
“Commodity prices, directly or indirectly, have increased deforestation in the Amazon,” said Kevin Gallagher, a development economist at Boston University who specializes in Latin America’s trade relations with China. “Price increases create the perception of scarcity, which pushes investors into new terrain,” he said.
Read more at South American Commodity Boom Drives Deforestation and Land Conflicts
Tropical Forests May Inhale Third of Fossil Fuel Emissions
It’s of course much more complicated than that, and slowing the tide of climate change will take a lot more than saving trees from chainsaws. But a new study highlights how critical forests may be, especially in the tropics, in absorbing human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and mitigating climate change.
Tropical forests are so critical to fighting climate change that they may absorb up to one-third of all of humans’ fossil fuel emissions and may become more effective at doing so as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“While forests cannot solve the CO2 and climate change problem, without them the problem would be even harder,” said the study’s lead author David Schimel, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
All forests, especially dense tropical forests, are excellent at capturing carbon and storing it. Scientists call them “carbon sinks” because they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, storing it in tree bark, wood and roots. Logging a forest has the opposite effect, as the felled wood burns or decomposes and releases stored CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Research suggests that higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere may make trees more efficient at storing carbon and force them to grow faster, a phenomenon called the “fertilization effect.”
Roughly half of all of humans’ fossil fuel emissions are absorbed by the land and the oceans, but scientists don’t fully understand why it happens and why forests have been absorbing more CO2 as atmospheric concentrations rise, Schimel said.
“This study provides strong evidence that as CO2 in the atmosphere increases, ecosystems are able to take up more carbon, keeping the ratio between how much CO2 we release from fossil fuels and how much accumulates in the atmosphere,” he said.
The findings build upon 2007 research led by study co-author Britton Stephens, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., suggesting that tropical forests are more effective at absorbing CO2 than those in the Northern Hemisphere.
The new research evaluates the various ways scientists study how forests may absorb CO2, including research methods using measurements taken on the ground and others using measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Read more at Tropical Forests May Inhale Third of Fossil Fuel Emissions
U.S. at Brink of Turning Point in Energy
Scheduled to be finalized in June barring legal challenges, the Clean Power Plan is likely to see its approval complicated by unfolding political theater that could define U.S. climate policies next year, and for many years thereafter. Aiming to slash emissions from existing coal-fired power plants, the plan sends a strong signal to utilities that natural gas and renewables are the federal government’s answer for how electric power companies should tackle climate change.
The natural gas that utilities will use to replace coal was itself the subject of a climate controversy that is likely to a major part of any ongoing energy conversation. Most natural gas is produced using fracking, the same method energy companies use to extract the crude oil that ignited the shale oil boom of the past five years. Public health concerns associated with fracking prompted a ban in New York State, and study after study produced mounting evidence that large amounts of climate change-driving methane is leaking from both fracking operations and the natural gas distribution system leading to homes and power plants.
How those studies and low oil and gas prices will affect renewables will soon be readily apparent. Electricity generation from renewables was expected to grow by nearly 2 percent and power generation from wind, solar and biomass alone was expected to surpass hydropower production for the first time in history by the end of 2014. That growth is likely to continue.
New wind farm power generating capacity is set to double in 2015, contributing nearly 5 percent of all U.S. power generation. Though solar power is expected to account for only a tiny fraction of power generation in the New Year — about 0.6 percent — growth is nearly inevitable as prices, which have fallen about 7 percent each year since 1998, continue to decline.
Read more at U.S. at Brink of Turning Point in Energy
Tracing the Roots of Pope Francis’s Climate Plans for 2015 - by Andrew C. Revkin
Now there are signs that the themes and conclusions developed in those sessions are helping to shape Pope Francis's planned push for serious international commitments in 2015 to curb greenhouse gases and gird communities, particularly the poorest, against climate-related hazards.
A first step will come in less than three weeks, when, during his visit to the Philippines, the pope is scheduled to have lunch with some survivors of the typhoon that devastated Tacloban in 2012. The scope of the human calamity there was as much a result of deep poverty and poorly governed urban growth as the ferocity of Typhoon Haiyan.
The social and environmental roots of that disaster provide just the context the Vatican needs to reinforce its case that sustainable human progress will come as much through attacking poverty and fostering fairness as boosting environmental protection.
Those twin themes resonated throughout the Vatican meeting and have built since then, particularly in a speech delivered in London on Nov. 7 by Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who, as chancellor of both pontifical academies, was the chief organizer of the Vatican sustainability workshop.
That speech sketches out much of the pope's plans on climate change for the coming year.
Read more at Tracing the Roots of Pope Francis’s Climate Plans for 2015 - by Andrew C. Revkin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)