Category: Global Warming

Low Interest Rates May Have Favored Investment in Solar Energy

(p. A17) For the three years straddling the 2015 Paris conference, carbon-dioxide emissions were more or less flat. Then they resumed their upward trend–up 1.6% in 2017 and a projected 2.7% this year.
. . .
Explaining why the efforts thus far hadn’t bent the curve of rising emissions, the Potsdam Institute’s chief economist, Ottmar Edenhofer, said the fundamental reality was an oversupply of fossil fuels, making it harder for renewables to be cost-competitive with coal. An underappreciated factor, he suggested, is monetary policy. Zero interest rates act as an artificial stimulus to renewable energy, which is much more capital-intensive than gas and coal. To students of Austrian economics, it’s a classic malinvestment: When interest rates are suppressed below the natural rate, too much of the wrong sort of investment leads to a boom, then a bust.
As interest rates rise, renewable energy can’t compete without carbon pricing–economists’ magic bullet to solve global warming. Therein lies the biggest cause of despair at Katowice. Thanks to French President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon-tax folly, politicians of all stripes are likely to treat carbon pricing like the plague.

For the full commentary, see:
Rupert Darwall. “Defeat in the Air at the Climate Conference. Reality has a way of fighting back. Ask Emmanuel Macron..” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2018): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 18, 2018.)

Bill Gates Says Regulations Keep Innovative Nuclear Technology Out of U.S.

(p. B3) Add Bill Gates to the list of executives whose businesses have been ensnared by the Trump administration’s battle with China over technology and trade.
The tech tycoon and philanthropist said in an essay posted late last week that a nuclear-energy project in China by a company he co-founded called TerraPower LLC is now unlikely to proceed because of recent changes in U.S. policy toward China. That leaves TerraPower, which had been working on the China project for more than three years, scrambling for a new partner and uncertain where it might be able to run a pilot of the nuclear reactor it has been developing, according to company officials.
. . .
Mr. Gates, in a year-end essay posted on his personal website on Saturday [December 29, 2018], said TerraPower might be able to build its nuclear-reactor pilot project in the U.S., but only if there are changes to regulation. The Microsoft Corp. co-founder said he intends to advocate for those changes in 2019 because he sees nuclear power as “the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day.”
“The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change,” he wrote. “Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade U.S. leaders to get into the game.”

For the full story, see:
Greene, Jay. “Bill Gates Project Hit by Trade Fight.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019): B3.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 1, 2019, and has the title “Trump’s Tech Battle With China Roils Bill Gates Nuclear Venture.”)

Entrepreneurial Farmers Benefit from Global Warming

(p. A1) LA CRETE, Alberta–The farm belt is marching northward.
Upper Alberta is bitter cold much of the year, and remote. Not much grows other than the spruce and poplar that spread out a hundred miles around Highway 88 north toward La Crete. Signs warn drivers to watch for moose and make sure their gas tanks are filled. Farms have produced mostly wheat, canola and barley. Summers were so short farmer Dicky Driedger used to tease his wife about wasting garden space growing corn.
Today, Mr. Driedger is the one growing corn. So are many other northern-Alberta farmers who are plowing up forests to create fields, which lets them grow still more of it. The new prospect of warmer-weather crops is helping lift farmland prices, with an acre near La Crete selling for nearly five times what it fetched 10 years ago.
One reason is the warming planet and longer growing seasons. Temperatures around La Crete are 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average annually than in 1950, Canadian federal climate records show, and the growing season is nearly two weeks longer.
“A few degrees doesn’t sound like much,” said Mr. Driedger, 56, who has farmed for three decades in the area roughly as far north as Ju-(p. A6)neau, Alaska. “Maybe it doesn’t make such a big difference on wheat or canola, but on corn, it sure does.”
. . .
Agricultural giants such as Bayer AG , Cargill Inc., DowDuPont Inc. and Bunge Ltd. are pushing to develop hardier crops, plan new logistics networks and offer new technologies designed to help farmers adapt. DowDuPont, maker of Pioneer brand seeds, said its scientists are developing crops that mature faster and in drier conditions for farmers in regions growing hotter. It is marketing weather services to help farmers better anticipate storms and weather-driven crop disease.
. . .
“I look for places that don’t yet grow soybeans, that will eventually grow soybeans,” said Joelle Faulkner, chief executive of Area One Farms, a Toronto investment firm that buys land in partnership with farmers.
On Area One land where farmers have planted soybeans, farmers’ profitability has grown 30% over three to five years, boosting the land’s value by roughly the same amount, she said. The spread of warmer-weather crops, she said, represents “the less negative effect of climate.”
. . .
Seed and pesticide giant Bayer, which bought U.S. seed purveyor Monsanto this year, is breeding corn plants to be faster-maturing to produce crops in cooler climates. Those efforts help farmers in borderline areas take advantage of climatic shifts.
A decade ago, Monsanto’s fastest-growing corn needed about 80 days to mature for harvesting, said Dan Wright, who oversees Bayer’s Canadian corn and soybean research from Guelph, Ontario. Next year, he aims to begin selling corn that will mature in 70 days, targeting farmers in places like Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Red Deer, Alberta. For corn and soybeans, the company’s two biggest crops by sales, he said, such areas represent the “edge opportunity.”

For the full story, see:
Jacob Bunge. “Warming Climate Pushes Corn North.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Nov. 25, 2018): A1 & A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 26, 2018, and has the title “A Warming Climate Brings New Crops to Frigid Zones.”)

Scientists Optimistic That Great Barrier Reef Is Resilient to Global Warming

(p. A12) Among the threatened corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world that has been ravaged by global warming, researchers have found a reason for optimism — or at least a reason not to despair completely.
Coral reefs, which by some estimates support a quarter of all ocean life, are harmed by warming oceans. The effects can be seen in the loss of their vibrant colors, a phenomenon known as bleaching. But after ocean temperatures surged in 2016 around the Great Barrier Reef, causing severe damage, researchers found that the corals that survived were more resistant to another period of extreme warmth the following year.
“It’s one enormous natural selection event,” said Terry Hughes, an expert on coral reefs at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a study published Monday [December 7, 2018] in the journal Nature Climate Change. In effect, the 2016 heat wave killed off many of the most heat-sensitive corals and selected for the corals that could handle higher ocean temperatures.
“So when the heat returned in 2017, the susceptible corals had been substantially depleted,” Dr. Hughes said. “The new coral assemblage, if you like, at the beginning of the second heat waves, was made up predominantly of the more heat-tolerant species, the more robust ones.”
. . .
The study provides a measure of hope that coral reefs may be able to survive as oceans warm over the coming decades.

For the full story, see:

Kendra Pierre-Louis. “What Doesn’t Kill Reefs May Make Them Stronger.” The New York Times (Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018): A12.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 10, 2018, and has the title “Scientists Find Some Hope for Coral Reefs: The Strong May Survive.”)

The official citation to the print version of the article mentioned above, is:
Hughes, Terry P., James T. Kerry, Sean R. Connolly, Andrew H. Baird, C. Mark Eakin, Scott F. Heron, Andrew S. Hoey, Mia O. Hoogenboom, Mizue Jacobson, Gang Liu, Morgan S. Pratchett, William Skirving, and Gergely Torda. “Ecological Memory Modifies the Cumulative Impact of Recurrent Climate Extremes.” Nature Climate Change 9, no. 1 (Jan. 2019): 40-43.

U.S. Population Growth Rate Is Slowest in 80 Years

(p. A13) The population of the United States grew at its slowest pace in more than eight decades, the Census Bureau said Wednesday [December 19, 2018], as the number of deaths increased and the number of births declined.
Not since 1937, when the country was in the grips of the Great Depression and birthrates were down substantially, has it grown so slowly, with just a 0.62 percent gain between July 2017 and July 2018. With Americans getting older, fewer babies are being born and more people are dying, demographers said.
The past year saw a particularly high number of deaths — 2.81 million — and relatively few births, 3.86 million.

For the full story, see:
Sabrina Tavernise. “Growth Rate In Population Is at Lowest Since 1937.” The New York Times (Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018): A13.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 19, 2018, and has the title “Fewer Births, More Deaths Result in Lowest U.S. Growth Rate in Generations.”)

Environmentalists Seek to Reduce Cow Burps and Ethanol

(p. A8) . . . a sweeping new study issued Wednesday [December 5, 2018] by the World Resources Institute, an environmental group . . . warns that the world’s agricultural system will need drastic changes in the next few decades in order to feed billions more people without triggering a climate catastrophe.
. . .
. . . the authors are not counting on a major worldwide shift to vegetarianism.
“We wanted to avoid relying on magic asterisks,” said Timothy D. Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and the World Resources Institute and lead author of the report.
. . .
The authors . . . pointed to possible techniques to reduce the climate impact of existing farms. For instance, new chemical compounds could help prevent nitrogen fertilizers from producing nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. And scientists are exploring feed additives that get cows to burp up less methane, another big contributor to global warming.
. . .
But, Mr. Searchinger said, many of the recommendations in the report, such as breeding new, higher-yielding crop varieties or preventing soil erosion, could also help farmers adapt to climate change.
. . .
. . . , the report’s authors call for a limit on the use of bioenergy crops, such as corn grown for ethanol in cars, that compete with food crops for land.

For the full story, see:
Brad Plumer. “Can We Grow More Food On Less Land? We Must.” The New York Times (Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018): A8.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 5, 2018, and has the title “Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? We’ll Have To, a New Study Finds.”)

The report summarized above, is:
Searchinger, Tim, Richard Waite, Craig Hanson, Janet Ranganathan, Patrice Dumas, and Emily Matthews. “Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050.” World Resources Institute, 2018.

Rising Sea Not Due to Global Warming

(p. A17) It is generally thought that sea-level rise accelerates mainly by thermal expansion of sea water, the so-called steric component. But by studying a very short time interval, it is possible to sidestep most of the complications, like “isostatic adjustment” of the shoreline (as continents rise after the overlying ice has melted) and “subsidence” of the shoreline (as ground water and minerals are extracted).
I chose to assess the sea-level trend from 1915-45, when a genuine, independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred. I note particularly that sea-level rise is not affected by the warming; it continues at the same rate, 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. I therefore conclude–contrary to the general wisdom–that the temperature of sea water has no direct effect on sea-level rise. That means neither does the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide.
This conclusion is worth highlighting: It shows that sea-level rise does not depend on the use of fossil fuels. The evidence should allay fear that the release of additional CO2 will increase sea-level rise.
But there is also good data showing sea levels are in fact rising at a constant rate. The trend has been measured by a network of tidal gauges, many of which have been collecting data for over a century.
The cause of the trend is a puzzle. Physics demands that water expand as its temperature increases. But to keep the rate of rise constant, as observed, expansion of sea water evidently must be offset by something else. What could that be? I conclude that it must be ice accumulation, through evaporation of ocean water, and subsequent precipitation turning into ice. Evidence suggests that accumulation of ice on the Antarctic continent has been offsetting the steric effect for at least several centuries.

For the full commentary, see:
Fred Singer. “The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change; There is nothing we can do about it, except to build dikes and sea walls a little bit higher.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, May 16, 2018): A17.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 15, 2018.)

Hurricane Costs Rise Mainly Due to Rising Coastal Population

(p. A6) Counties along the U.S. shoreline that endured hurricane-strength winds from Florence in September experienced a surge in population from 1980 to 2017, with an increase of 95 people per square mile–more than double the density. Overall, Gulf and East Coast shoreline counties, those vulnerable to hurricane strikes, increased by 160 people per square mile, compared with 26 people per square mile in the rest of the mainland, over the same period.
“Coastal population and exposure growth is certainly the predominant driver of increased damage costs associated with hurricanes,” says Steve Bowen, director and meteorologist at consulting firm Aon ‘s Risk Solutions division.

For the full story, see:
Kara Dapena. “‘When Videogames Can Help.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018): A6.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2018, and has the title “The Rising Costs of Hurricanes.” Unlike the print version, the online version was much longer, sometimes had different wording, and listed an author. Where wording differed in the passages quoted above, the online version was used.)

“Plants Remove a Quarter of the Carbon Dioxide We Put in the Atmosphere”

(p. D5) “Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe.
Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution.
. . .
It’s not just strawberries and other crops that are taking in extra carbon dioxide. So are the forests, grasslands and other wild ecosystems of the world.
When scientists take into account both extra photosynthesis and respiration, they estimate that plants remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.
“That’s on par with what China emits,” said Dr. Campbell. “And China is the biggest global polluter.”
Even more remarkably, the plants have been scrubbing the same fraction of carbon dioxide out of the air even as our emissions explode.
“Every year we build more power plants, and every year the plants take out more CO2,” Dr. Campbell said.

For the full story, see:
Zimmer, Carl. “MATTER; Why Global Greening Isn’t as Great as It Sounds.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 31, 2018): D5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 30, 2018, and has the title “MATTER; ‘Global Greening’ Sounds Good. In the Long Run, It’s Terrible.”)

Birds Adapt to Global Warming with “Overlooked Flexibility”

(p. D3) More than a century ago, zoologist Joseph Grinnell launched a pioneering survey of animal life in California, a decades-long quest — at first by Model T or, failing that, mule — to all corners and habitats of the state, from Death Valley to the High Sierra.
. . .
In 2003, museum scientists decided to retrace Grinnell’s steps throughout the state to learn what changes a century had wrought. And that’s why Morgan Tingley, then an ecology graduate student at the university, found himself trekking through the Sierra for four summers.
Dr. Tingley wanted to know how birds had fared since Grinnell last took a census. Years later, the answer turned out to be a bit of a shock.
Of 32,000 birds recorded in California mountain ranges in the old and new surveys — from thumb-sized Calliope hummingbirds to the spectacular pileated woodpecker — Dr. Tingley and his colleagues discovered that most species now nest about a week earlier than they did 70 to 100 years ago.
That slight advance in timing translates into nesting temperatures about two degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the birds would encounter had they not moved up their breeding time — almost exactly counterbalancing the two-degree rise in average temperatures recorded over the last century.
The scientists’ analysis, published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the birds’ temperature-rebalancing act could limit the exposure of eggs and fragile nestlings to dangerous overheating.
. . .
The study of 202 species showed that most of them are adapting to rising temperatures with “overlooked flexibility,” the scientists reported — unexpected hope for wildlife in an uncertain time.
. . .
Ecologists generally believe that birds adapt to rising temperatures by moving to higher elevations or heading north. They shift their nesting time for a different reason: to sync with food availability, like an early appearance of plump caterpillars or swarms of insects.
But in 2012, researchers found that about half of the bird species in certain regions of the Sierra essentially stayed put over the past century, not significantly extending their ranges to cooler elevations even though the climate was warming.
The new study offers a plausible explanation. If the birds lay their eggs earlier, they can stay in their centuries-old range, with no need to migrate to higher altitudes.
“Ecologists have really kept range shifts like migrating upslope separate in their minds from phenological shifts, such as nesting earlier,” said Peter Dunn, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who was not involved in the new analysis.
“The research makes you realize that birds can manipulate all sorts of things, not only spatially by migrating upslope but also temporally — shifting their nesting time in response to rising temperatures.”

For the full story, see:
Wallace Ravven. “Survival of the Shrewdest.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 31, 2018): D3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 30, 2018, and has the title “‘California’s Birds Are Testing New Survival Tactics on a Vast Scale.”)

Floating Nuclear Power Plants May Be Cheaper, Greener, and Safer

(p. B5) MURMANSK, Russia — Along the shore of Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia lie bases for the country’s nuclear submarines and icebreakers. Low, rocky hills descend to an industrial waterfront of docks, cranes and railway tracks. Out on the bay, submarines have for decades stalked the azure waters, traveling between their port and the ocean depths.
Here, Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless.
The country is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant.
Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov rocks gently in the waves. The buoyant facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind.
Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants. Two state-backed companies in China are building such facilities, (p. B5) and American scientists have drawn up plans of their own. Proponents say they are cheaper, greener and, perhaps counterintuitively, safer. They envision a future when nuclear power stations bob off the coasts of major cities around the world.
“They are light-years ahead of us,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the Russian floating power program.
Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear company, has exported nuclear technology for years, selling plants in China, India and a host of developing nations. But smaller reactors effectively placed on floats can be assembled more quickly, be put in a wider range of locations and respond more nimbly to fluctuating supply on power grids that increasingly rely on wind and solar.
The Russian design involves using submarine-style reactors loaded onto vessels, with a hatch near the bow to plug them into local electrical grids. The reactors will generate a combined 70 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 70,000 typical American homes. Rosatom plans to serially produce such floating nuclear plants, and is exploring various business plans, including retaining ownership of the reactors while selling the electricity they generate.

For the full story, see:
Andrew E. Kramer. “Drifting toward the Future.” The New York Times (Monday, Aug. 27, 2018): B1 & B5.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 26, 2018, and has the title “The Nuclear Power Plant of the Future May Be Floating Near Russia.” The online version says that the title of the New York edition version was “Rocking the Nuclear Boat.”)