Islamic State and Climate Change Seen as World’s Greatest Threats, Poll Says - The New York Times

Climate change is essentially tied with the Islamic State as the most-feared security threat across much of the world — except in the United States, where cyberattacks are considered a greater danger than global warming, according to a Pew Research Center report released on Tuesday.

Residents of 13 countries ranked climate change as the greatest threat to national security, while in 17 countries the Islamic State was considered a more immediate problem.

In the United States, however, a gaping partisan divide pushed climate change to third-most severe perceived threat, after ISIS and cyberwarfare.  Just 56 percent of Americans surveyed identified global warming as the most serious threat to the country, compared to 71 percent for cyberwarfare and 74 percent for Islamic State attacks.

The American intelligence community concluded that Russia used cyberweapons to interfere with the presidential election last year, perhaps accounting for the heightened sense of threat. The Trump administration has consistently played down the dangers of a warming climate and has withdrawn the United States from the Paris accord on climate change signed by nearly 200 nations.

Jacob Poushter, Pew’s senior researcher and a co-author of the study, said that in most countries terrorism and climate change were seen as the most pressing dangers.  The United States was an exception, he said.

“The stark partisan divide between those on the left and the right means there is a large portion in the United States that doesn’t see climate change as a threat,” Mr. Poushter said. “But there’s a large percentage that does, so that lowers the number.”

The survey of 41,953 people in 38 countries was conducted from February through May.

Read more at Islamic State and Climate Change Seen as World’s Greatest Threats, Poll Says

Tesla Batteries May Back Up Wind Farm Off Massachusetts Coast

Deepwater Wind LLC is proposing to pair Tesla Inc. batteries with massive offshore wind turbines as part of a bid to supply the state of Massachusetts with clean energy generated at sea.

The 144-MW development would stockpile electricity produced late at night, then deliver it when the grid needs it most, Deepwater Chief Executive Officer Jeff Grybowski said in an interview Monday.

Deepwater submitted its bid last week in response to a request from National Grid Plc, Unitil Corp. and Eversource Energy for about 9.45 million MWh of annual clean energy supply.  The contracts — open to hydro-electric, solar and other forms of clean energy — require the majority of power to be delivered during late winter afternoons and evenings.

“Those hours are very valuable to the grid,” said Grybowski, who plans to use a 40-MWh storage system.  “The battery will ensure that we can do that.”

Massachusetts will award the contracts in December and is expected to make the bids public this week, Grybowski said.  Deepwater, which built the first U.S. wind farm off Rhode Island, also plans to compete later this year for contracts limited exclusively to offshore wind developers to comply with a Massachusetts law to aggressively develop the nascent industry in the U.S.

Read original at Tesla Batteries May Back Up Wind Farm Off Massachusetts Coast

Tighten Emissions Rules in the Northeast? RGGI Has a Big Decision

Members of the 9-state cap-and-trade program talk tough on climate change.  What they decide now will reflect on states’ ability to counter Trump’s climate rollbacks.

Nine northeastern states that broke ground with the nation's first cap-and-trade program are nearing a decision on whether to seek even deeper greenhouse gas emissions cuts.  It will be an important test of whether state governments will be able to counteract the Trump administration's retreat from climate policies.

The member states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) are expected to unveil their decision in the coming weeks, following a 20-month review process that involved public meetings and intense private negotiations among states with differing energy mixes and political landscapes.

In three of those states—Maine, New Hampshire, and Maryland—the Republican governors or their appointees have expressed concerns over the potential costs of deeper emissions cuts. If the rest of the RGGI states push for deeper cuts, any of these three could decide to follow in the steps of New Jersey's GOP governor, Chris Christie, who withdrew his state from RGGI in 2011.

Across the compact, however, there is bipartisan support for increasing RGGI's ambition. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, are the most outspoken advocates of more stringent goals.

It is possible that the more ambitious states will take a stand that causes a rift in the RGGI nine—if only temporarily, said Mark Kresowik, eastern region deputy director of the Sierra Club.

Read more at Tighten Emissions Rules in the Northeast?  RGGI Has a Big Decision

Successful Prediction of Multi-Year US Droughts and Wildfire Risk

Longer-term forecasts will benefit agriculture and natural resource management.

The next mega-droughts and subsequent active wildfire seasons for the western U.S. might be predictable a full year in advance, extending well beyond the current seasonal forecast and helping segments of the economy related to agriculture, water management and forestry.

The new model, developed by an international team of scientists from the U.S., South Korea and U.K., and led by Utah State University climate scientist Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, was reported in the July 26 edition of Scientific Reports.

The source of this improved predictability is based on a combination of factors, including tropical climate variability, global climate change and the natural filtering effects of soils.  To mitigate drought-induced socioeconomic risks, water resource managers require detailed drought forecasts as far in advance as possible.  Climate prediction centers generate and routinely disseminate seasonal drought outlooks.  However, predicting multi-year droughts that reach well beyond seasonal timescales is challenging for climate scientists.

Over the past 15 years, parts of the western U.S. have experienced severe drought conditions and an increasing number of wildfires that take a toll on people and ecosystems.  The team's research shows that in addition to contributions from natural forcings and global warming, temperature differences between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans play a role in causing drought and increasing wildfire risks.  The new findings show that a warm Atlantic and a relatively cold Pacific enhance the risk for drought and wildfire in the southwestern U.S.

Read more at Successful Prediction of Multi-Year US Droughts and Wildfire Risk

Women Take Control of Solar Revolution

The solar revolution is reaching the remotest parts of the world and changing the lives of women otherwise trapped in poverty.

A solar revolution is transforming the lives of women in the remotest parts of Asia.  They no longer have to wait decades to be connected to a power grid but are able today to exploit the huge potential of the abundant sunshine.

In societies where women normally play a subservient role and spend much of their time on menial chores, solar businesses are creating a new breed of female entrepreneur who are bringing electricity to their villages.

In the last two years two schemes designed to encourage women to bring the solar revolution to parts of rural India and Nepal have won international Ashden Awards, which bring the organisations involved £20,000 (US$26,360) each in prize money and a lot of guidance to improve and extend their businesses.

The 2017 winner of the Ashden Award for clean energy for women and girls, Empower Generation, has enabled 23 women in Nepal to set up clean energy businesses and manage a network of 259 sales agents.  They in turn gain a commission on sales of solar panels, lights, clean cooking stoves, and water filters.

In a country where all but 12% of women are engaged in farm work, Empower Generation’s staff are now able to lead their communities out of energy poverty.  Overcoming family and cultural resistance, they are developing leadership skills and setting up businesses employing women and also men as agents.

For customers who have no chance of a grid connection, solar lanterns and solar home systems bring clean electric light and ’phone charging, often for the first time.  Even those who are connected to the grid use the products as a back-up during the frequent blackouts, or for attending to crops and animals after dark. 

Customers include both local families and NGOs, many of which are working on programs initiated as a response to the 2015 earthquake.

The scheme is designed to build women’s confidence in themselves and their ability to run their own affairs and manage their finances.  It also helps reduce the use of kerosene and therefore air pollution.

Read more at Women Take Control of Solar Revolution

Benefits of Investments in Dikes Worldwide Known

This is according to a study led by Philip Ward of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and colleagues in the Netherlands, UK and USA.  The research appears in the paper 'A global framework for future costs and benefits of river-flood protection in urban areas' in Nature Climate Change.



Benefits outweigh costs
In a first of its kind study of the costs and benefits of taking measures to reduce flood risk at the global scale, the authors assessed how much flood damage could be avoided in the future per state, if new dikes are constructed or dikes that are already in place are heightened.  They then assessed how much it would cost to build and maintain these dikes, and whether the benefits would outweigh the costs.  To do this, they used a cascade of global hydrological and economic models by Deltares, known as GLOFRIS.

Ward: "It is well-known that economic damages from floods are expected to increase over the coming decades due to climate change and an increase in population and assets in flood prone areas.  However, in this study we show that flood damages in the year 2080 can actually be reduced to below today's level, if we effectively invest in flood protection measures.  This is important information for policy-makers; the results help to identify those regions where we could efficiently invest in flood protection, and also highlight those regions in which other adaptation strategies may be needed, like creating more room for rivers and constructing flood resistant buildings".

Effectively address flood risk
The research will allow for more informed dialogue on flood risk management at the international level.  Whilst past studies have shown that flood risk will increase in the future, this is the first study at the global scale to examine how we can effectively address this.  The results and methods will be integrated in the Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer, a tool developed by the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, together with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Deltares, the World Bank, Utrecht University, and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Read more at Benefits of Investments in Dikes Worldwide Known

Two Studies Show the World Is on the Brink of Locking In Dangerous Levels of Climate Change.

Two dire studies show the world is on the brink of locking in dangerous levels of climate change.  In separate reports published Monday, researchers found that only a short window of opportunity remains to prevent widespread, irreversible planetary-scale impacts.

The two studies reveal that factoring in current emissions, as well as a wide range of future trends, we may have already locked in a temperature rise surpassing the universally agreed-upon global warming target of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius — which the 2015 Paris accord sought to set as an upper limit.

If all the world’s human-derived sources of greenhouse gases stopped today (which obviously will not happen), by 2100 global temperatures would stabilize somewhere between a temp slightly cooler than the current average and about 2.3 degrees higher than preindustrial levels, according to the first study (reported here Monday).  That report found a 13 percent chance that the hard-won target of 1.5 degrees favored by small island states was already lost.

The second study simulated 100,000 potential future versions of our civilization out to 2100.  In only about 1,000 of them, or around 1 percent, did human society move quickly enough to avert a temperature rise of greater than 1.5 degrees.  “We’re closer to the margin than we think,” said Adrian Raftery, lead author of the simulation study.

Read more at Two Dire Studies Show the World Is on the Brink of Locking In Dangerous Levels of Climate Change.