Thursday, June 1

Governors, Faced with Paris Withdrawal, Pledge Climate Action

A host of governors pledged yesterday to intensify their efforts to address climate change regardless of President Trump's ultimate decision over the Paris Agreement.

The proclamations, made mostly by Democrats, were not a surprise in and of themselves.  They nevertheless illustrated the evolution of U.S. climate efforts, as policymakers in green-tinged state capitals assume the responsibility for driving deep reductions in carbon emissions.

State leaders were unsparing in their criticism of Trump, who was widely reported to be on the verge of pulling out of the carbon-cutting agreement yesterday.  Yet many framed their responses in terms of everyday decision making.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said his efforts to promote a carbon tax were more dependent on budget negotiations than the president's decision on Paris.  In Colorado, a purple state boasting coal mines, oil fields and a growing renewable industry, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper pledged to continue working with utilities to lower emissions while reaching out to Republican colleagues in other states to find ways to green the economy.  And in California, where Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is preparing for a trip to China next week to hold a series of high-level meetings on climate change and clean energy, the state Senate passed a bill yesterday to receive all its energy from renewable and zero-carbon sources by 2045.

"America's gone AWOL under Trump," Brown told E&E News yesterday.  "Ironically, Trump, by his actions, is giving climate denial a very bad name, making it utterly implausible.  And that is actually building the energy and strength of the contrary movement, which is climate activism and efforts by countries, states and provinces to do the right thing to get our economy aligned with a decarbonized future."

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Amid Trump Cuts, California Proposes Its Own Energy Moonshot

A pending cap-and-trade bill would earmark hundreds of millions of dollars for clean energy research, as the White House takes aim at federal funding.

An ambitious California cap-and-trade proposal would earmark hundreds of millions of dollars annually for an energy research and development fund, rivaling the investment capacity of the federal energy moonshot program implemented under President Barack Obama.

The proposal offers the latest example of how leaders in the world’s sixth-biggest economy are working to build momentum behind aggressive climate policies and energy research, even as the Trump administration aims to slash funding and roll back regulations.  It would also provide a crucial source of funds for early energy research and development at a point when venture investors have retreated from the space.

Most of the revenue from the proposed program, which State Senator Bob Wieckowski introduced earlier this month, would go directly to California citizens in the form of a climate dividend.  But the bill also sets aside money for a separate infrastructure program and the California Climate and Clean Energy Research Fund (see California Proposes Ambitious New Cap-and-Trade Program).

Wieckowski spokesman Jeff Barbosa confirmed recent political rumblings that the latter fund could be on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.  That may exceed funding for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which collected more than $290 million last year.  But unlike ARPA-E, initially funded at $400 million as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, those funds would rise significantly over time as the price floor and ceiling for a metric ton of carbon dioxide climb each year.  California’s proposed cap-and-trade program would establish one of the highest prices on carbon in the world, generating billions annually.

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Acidified Ocean Water Widespread Along North American West Coast

A three-year survey of the California Current System along the West Coast of the United States found persistent, highly acidified water throughout this ecologically critical nearshore habitat, with 'hotspots' of pH measurements as low as any oceanic surface waters in the world.

The researchers say that conditions will continue to worsen because the atmospheric carbon dioxide primarily to blame for this increase in acidification has been rising substantially in recent years.

One piece of good news came out of the study, which was published this week in Scientific Reports.  There are "refuges" of more moderate pH environments that could become havens for some marine organisms to escape more highly acidified waters, and which could be used as a resource for ecosystem management.

"The threat of ocean acidification is global and though it sometimes seems far away, it is happening here right now on the West Coast of the United States and those waters are already hitting our beaches," said Francis Chan, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University and lead author on the study.

"The West Coast is very vulnerable.  Ten years ago, we were focusing on the tropics with their coral reefs as the place most likely affected by ocean acidification.  But the California Current System is getting hit with acidification earlier and more drastically than other locations around the world."

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As U.S. Retreats, EU and China Seek Climate Leadership at Summit

China and the European Union will seek on Friday to save an international pact against climate change that U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be set to pull out of.

As China emerges as Europe's unlikely global partner on areas from free trade to security, Premier Li Keqiang will meet top EU officials at a summit in Brussels that will also discuss North Korea's missile tests.

In a statement backed by all 28 EU states, the European Union and China will commit to full implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, EU and Chinese officials said.

The joint statement, the first between the China and the EU, commits to cutting back on fossil fuels, developing more green technology, and helping raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer countries cut emissions.

"The EU and China consider climate action and the clean energy transition an imperative more important than ever," the statement, by European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and China's Li, will say.

"The increasing impacts of climate change require a decisive response."

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The Larsen C Iceberg Is on the Brink of Breaking Off

The saga of the Larsen C crack is about reach its stunning conclusion.  Scientists have watched a rift grow along one of Antarctica’s ice shelves for years.  Now it’s in the final days of cutting off a piece of ice that will be one of the largest icebergs ever recorded.

It’s the latest dreary news from the icy underbelly of the planet, which has seen warm air and water reshape the landscape in profound ways.

The crack has spread 17 miles over the past six days, marking the biggest leap since January. It’s also turned toward where the ice shelf ends and is within eight miles of making a clean break.  There’s not much standing in its way either.

“The rift has now fully breached the zone of soft ‘suture’ ice originating at the Cole Peninsula and there appears to be very little to prevent the iceberg from breaking away completely,” scientists monitoring the ice with Project MIDAS wrote on their blog.
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The breakup is sure to be a spectacle both awe-inducing and horrifying.  The iceberg on the verge of splitting off is estimated to be the size of Delaware, covering an area of 1,930 square miles.  That’s equal to 10 percent of the ice shelf’s total area.
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In February the New York Times reported that when the iceberg breaks off, it will weaken or destroy two key areas where ice overlaps islands.  Those areas help keep the ice shelf from falling apart.  Losing them could dramatically reduce the remaining ice shelf’s stability.  Larsen C is substantially larger than its former neighbors Larsen A and B, and its loss would be a huge blow to ice on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The changes don’t just stop with the Larsen C crack or the Antarctic Peninsula in general.  The vast majority of ice shelves are losing volume due to rising ocean and air temperatures. That’s helped prime parts of West Antarctica for what might be unstoppable melt that could raise sea levels at least 10 feet.

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Warming Could Push Earth’s Rains Northward

The Earth’s rising temperature is expected to knock the global water cycle out of whack, but exactly how it will change is uncertain.  Scientists, though, can look for clues as to what the future might bring in the major climate swings that have happened in the past.

A new study that does just that suggests that Earth’s rain belts could be pushed northward as the Northern Hemisphere heats up faster than the Southern Hemisphere.  That shift would happen in concert with the longstanding expectation for already wet areas to see more rain and for dry ones to become more arid.

The study, detailed Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, “adds to the large body of evidence that climate change is going to mess with the large-scale motions of air and water in the atmosphere.  And this matters, because those patterns largely determine where it's rainy or arid, broadly speaking,” NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, who wasn’t involved with the study, said in an email.

These changes in rain distribution could have implications for future water resources, particularly in areas where water supplies are already stressed, such as the western U.S. and parts of Africa.

From the basic physics of the atmosphere, scientists expect that as the planet heats up from ever-mounting levels of greenhouse gases, net global precipitation will increase because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.  But that increase won’t be uniform and is likely to be concentrated in the already moist tropics.  And because higher temperatures also increase evaporation, other areas, such as the already dry subtropics, are likely to dry out further.

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