Category: Global Warming

Technology Increases Time at Home, Reducing Energy Use

(p. A15) A new study in the journal Joule suggests that the spread of technologies enabling Americans to spend more time working remotely, shopping online — and, yes, watching Netflix and chilling — has a side benefit of reducing energy use, and, by extension, greenhouse gas emissions.
. . .
Researchers found that, on average, Americans spent 7.8 more days at home in 2012, compared to 2003. They calculated that this reduced national energy demand by 1,700 trillion BTUs in 2012, or 1.8 percent of the nation’s total energy use.
. . .
“Energy intensity when you’re traveling is actually 20 times per minute than when spent at home,” said Ashok Sekar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author on the story.
One of his co-authors, Eric Williams, an associate professor of sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology, made the point a different way. “This is a little tongue in cheek, but you know in ‘The Matrix’ everyone lives in those little pods? For energy, that’s great,” he said, because living in little pods would be pretty efficient. “In the Jetsons, where everyone is running around in their jet cars, that’s terrible for energy.”
. . .
. . . , the study suggests that workers are spending less time at work because faster and better online services make it easier for us to work from home. As a result, we’re spending less time in office buildings, which use more energy than our homes, and employers are consolidating office space.

For the full story, see:
Kendra Pierre-Louis. “Tech Creates Homebodies, And Energy Use Declines.” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 30, 2018): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date January 29, 2018, and has the title “Americans Are Staying Home More. That’s Saving Energy.”)

The “in press” version of the article mentioned above, is:
Sekar, Ashok, Eric Williams, and Roger Chen. “Changes in Time Use and Their Effect on Energy Consumption in the United States.” Joule (2018).

Taboo Geoengineer Outlaws Could Counter Global Warming

(p. D3) A quarter-century ago, Pinatubo, a volcano in the Philippines, blew its top in a big way: It spewed a cubic mile of rock and ash and 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere. The gas spread around the world and combined with water vapor to make aerosols, tiny droplets that reflected some sunlight away from the Earth. As a result, average global temperatures dropped by about one degree Fahrenheit for several years.
Powerful volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo’s in 1991 are one of the biggest natural influences on climate. So NASA researchers and other scientists are planning a rapid-response program to study the next big one.
But the climate impact of a Pinatubo-size eruption is also a natural analog of an idea that has existed on the fringes of science for years: geoengineering, or intervening in the atmosphere to deliberately cool the planet.
One geoengineering approach would use high-flying jets to spray similar chemicals in the stratosphere. So by studying the next big volcanic eruption, scientists would also gain insights into how such a scheme, known as solar radiation management, or S.R.M., might work.
“This is important if we’re ever going to do geoengineering,” said Alan Robock, a Rutgers University researcher who models the effects of eruptions and who has been involved in discussions about the rapid-response project.
. . .
Geoengineering has long had an outlaw image among much of the scientific community, viewed as risky last-resort measures to solve climate problems that would be better dealt with by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Even discussing geoengineering concepts has long been considered taboo among many scientists.
. . .
But in the past few years, some scientists and policymakers have begun to argue for limited direct research into geoengineering concepts to better understand their potential as well as risks, and be better prepared should global warming reach a point where some kind of emergency action were deemed necessary.
A few scientists have proposed small-scale outdoor experiments to study aspects of solar radiation management, and last month the American Geophysical Union, one of the nation’s largest scientific societies, endorsed the idea of some research into what it called “climate intervention.”

For the full story, see:
Henry Fountain. “A Volcanic Idea for Cooling the Earth.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 6, 2018): D3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 1, 2018, and has the title “The Next Big Volcano Could Briefly Cool Earth. NASA Wants to Be Ready.”)

Extent of Future Global Warming Remains “Stubbornly Uncertain”

(p. A15) . . . , an exemplary French report . . . begins, “But uncertainty about how hot things will get also stems from the inability of scientists to nail down a very simple question: By how much will Earth’s average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?”
“That ‘known unknown’ is called equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), and for the last 25 years the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)–the ultimate authority on climate science–has settled on a range of 1.5 C to 4.5 C.”
The French report describes a new study by climate physicists Peter Cox and Mark Williamson of the University of Exeter and Chris Huntingford of the U.K.’s Center for Ecology and Hydrology. Not only does it narrow the range of expected warming to between 2.2 and 3.4 degrees Celsius, but it rules out the possibility of worrying outcomes higher than 4 degrees.
. . .
. . . , [the IPCC] backpedaled in 2013 to adopt a wider range of uncertainty, and did so entirely in the direction of less warming.
. . .
The IPCC’s new estimate was no more useful or precise than one developed in 1979 by the U.S. National Research Council, when computers and data sets were far more primitive.
This 40-year lack of progress is no less embarrassing for being thoroughly unreported in the mainstream press. The journal Nature, where the new study appears, frankly refers to an “intractable problem.” In an accompanying commentary, a climate scientist says the issue remains “stubbornly uncertain.”

For the full commentary, see:
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. “BUSINESS WORLD; Good Climate News Isn’t Told; Reporting scientific progress would require admitting uncertainties.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018): A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 27, 2018.)

The “new study” in Nature, mentioned above, is:
Cox, Peter M., Chris Huntingford, and Mark S. Williamson. “Emergent Constraint on Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity from Global Temperature Variability.” Nature 553, no. 7688 (Jan. 18, 2018): 319-322.

Weather Channel Entrepreneur Was a Global Warming Skeptic

(p. B1) John S. Coleman, a co-founder of the Weather Channel, the original meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and, later in his career, a vocal climate change skeptic, died on Saturday [January 20, 2018] at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas. He was 83.
. . .
His career took him through broadcast positions in Omaha, Milwaukee and Peoria, Ill. He joined the fledgling “Good Morning America” in 1975 and stayed for seven years.
“He was sort of a weather rock star at the time,” said Joseph D’Aleo, whom Mr. Coleman recruited out of academia to lend a hand at “Good Morning America” and to help him develop his idea for a 24-7 weather channel.
“He was dedicated to everything he did; he’d sometimes take off after the morning shows, get on an airplane, go halfway across the country and meet with venture capitalists to present his idea,” Mr. D’Aleo said in an interview.
But after a year of false starts, Mr. D’Aleo said, Mr. Coleman “felt a little bit like Sancho Panza behind Don Quixote and his impossible dream.”
. . .
The American Meteorological Society named Mr. Coleman broadcast meteorologist of the year in 1983, citing his “many years of service in presenting weather reports of high informational, educational and professional quality.”
. . .
By the time he retired in 2014, he had become a lightning rod for controversy over his views on climate change.
At the top of his personal blog, he wrote: “There is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has not been any in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.”

For the full obituary, see:
TIFFANY Hsu. “John Coleman, 83, TV Weather Pioneer.” The New York Times (Weds., January 24, 2018): B14.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date JAN. 21, 2018, and has the title “John S. Coleman, Weather Channel Co-Founder, Dies at 83.”)

Why People Have Trouble Taking Global Warming Seriously

(p. A15) It was only getting worse here and all across the Northeast in the wake of a “bomb cyclone” that turned Boston streets into an Arctic sea and left three-foot snowdrifts across New England. Weather forecasters were predicting temperature lows that could shatter century-old records in Worcester, Mass., Hartford and elsewhere.
Millions of people from Florida to Maine were left shivering as schools closed and flights were canceled this week. Officials said that seven deaths appeared to be tied to the weather.
Windows splintered. Car batteries died. Along the Maine coastline, the flooding left icebergs in people’s yards. Ice fishermen had to keep their smelt bait close to them for fear it would freeze solid. Even snowmobiles coughed and sputtered and refused to start.
Across this American tundra, people called their heating-oil companies for emergency supplies and sat stranded on the sides of roads as tow-truck companies reported five-hour wait times to jump-start a dead battery or tow away a snowbound car. People slept in winter coats and debated whether wool, cotton or silk made for the best long underwear.

For the full story, see:
JESS BIDGOOD, KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JACK HEALY. “The Big Payoff At the Summit: Frozen Misery.” The New York Times (Sat., January 6, 2018): A1 & A15.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 5, 2018, and has the title “An Eyelash-Freezing ‘Icy Hell’: The One Spot That Could Feel Like Minus 100.”)

Badly Understood Starfish Causes Half of Great Barrier Reef Decline

(p. A9) BYRON BAY, Australia — The Great Barrier Reef is literally being eaten alive.
. . .
One study found that between 1985 and 2012, the reef lost an average of 50 percent of its coral cover. Starfish predation was responsible for almost half that decline, along with tropical cyclones and bleaching.
The cause of the outbreak is unknown. One hypothesis is that currents are bringing nutrient-rich water from the deep sea up into the shelf, which correlates with starfish larvae growth.
. . .
Coral reefs are constantly undergoing change, and they follow a cycle of death and renewal, said Hugh Sweatman, a scientist from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences.

For the full story, see:
ISABELLA KWAI. “A Voracious Starfish Is Destroying the Great Barrier Reef.” The New York Times (Sat., JAN. 6, 2018): A9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JAN. 5, 2018.)

The academic study mentioned above, is:
De’ath, Glenn, Katharina E. Fabricius, Hugh Sweatman, and Marji Puotinen. “The 27-Year Decline of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef and Its Causes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109, no. 44 (Oct. 30, 2012): 17995-99.

“Sea-Level Projections Too High” from Global Warming

(p. A10) In the summer of 2015, two New York Times journalists joined a team of researchers in Greenland that was conducting a unique experiment: directly measuring a river of meltwater runoff on the top of the ice.
Now, the scientists have published the results of that work. A key finding — that not as much meltwater flows immediately through the ice sheet and drains to the ocean as previously estimated — may have implications for sea-level rise, one of the major effects of climate change.
The scientists say it appears that some of the meltwater is retained in porous ice instead of flowing to the bottom of the ice sheet and out to sea.
“It’s always treated as a parking lot, water runs straight off,” said Laurence C. Smith, a geographer at the University of California, Los Angeles who led the field work in 2015. “What we found is that it appears there is water retention.”
“It’s plausible that this is quite an important process, which could render sea-level projections too high,” he added.
There’s still much that remains unknown about the ice sheet, which at roughly 650,000 square miles is more than twice the size of Texas.
. . .
When he first sent the results to modelers, Dr. Smith said, “they couldn’t believe it.” After months of back-and-forth, Dr. Smith and his colleagues concluded that the model estimates were accurate, but there was something else going on with some of the meltwater. “What is missing,” he said, “is a physical process that is not currently considered by the models — water retention in ice.”
. . .
“If there’s a mismatch between observation and model,” Dr. Tedesco said, “that means the model is moving the mass in one way or another and not respecting the way things happen in the real world.”

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN AND DEREK WATKINS . “As Greenland Melts, Where’s the Water Going?” The New York Times (Mon., DEC. 13, 2017): A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 5 [sic], 2017.)

The published article presenting the results briefly mentioned above, is:
Smith, Laurence C., Kang Yang, Lincoln H. Pitcher, Brandon T. Overstreet, Vena W. Chu, Åsa K. Rennermalm, Jonathan C. Ryan, Matthew G. Cooper, Colin J. Gleason, Marco Tedesco, Jeyavinoth Jeyaratnam, Dirk van As, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Willem Jan van de Berg, Brice Noel, Peter L. Langen, Richard I. Cullather, Bin Zhao, Michael J. Willis, Alun Hubbard, Jason E. Box, Brittany A. Jenner, and Alberto E. Behar. “Direct Measurements of Meltwater Runoff on the Greenland Ice Sheet Surface.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114, no. 50 (2017): E10622-E31.

Global Warming Could Be Reduced by Sequestering Carbon in Soil

(p. 7) . . . scientists are documenting how sequestering carbon in soil can produce a double dividend: It reduces climate change by extracting carbon from the atmosphere, and it restores the health of degraded soil and increases agricultural yields.
. . .
Among the advocates of so-called regenerative agriculture is the climate scientist and activist James Hansen, lead author of a paper published in July that calls for the adoption of “steps to improve soil fertility and increase its carbon content” to ward off “deleterious climate impacts.”
Rattan Lal, the director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State, estimates that soil has the potential to sequester carbon at a rate of between 0.9 and 2.6 gigatons per year. That’s a small part of the 10 gigatons a year of current carbon emissions, but it’s still significant. Somewhat reassuringly, some scientists believe the estimate is low.
“Putting the carbon back in soil is not only mitigating climate change, but also improving human health, productivity, food security, nutrition security, water quality, air quality — everything,” Mr. Lal told me over the phone. “It’s a win-win-win option.”

For the full commentary, see:
JACQUES LESLIE. “OPINION; Soil Power! The Dirty Way to a Green Planet.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., DEC. 3, 2017): 7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 2, 2017, and has the title “Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat.”)

The Hansen paper, mentioned above, is:
Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, Karina von Schuckmann, David J. Beerling, Junji Cao, Shaun Marcott, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Michael J. Prather, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeremy Shakun, Pete Smith, Andrew Lacis, Gary Russell, and Reto Ruedy. “Young People’s Burden: Requirement of Negative Co2 Emissions.” Earth System Dynamics 8 (2017): 577-616.

“Renewables Are Not the Answer”

(p.B1) . . . : Global carbon-dioxide emissions have stopped rising. Coal use in China may have peaked. The price of wind turbines and solar panels is plummeting, putting renewable energy within the reach of meager budgets in the developing world.
And yet as climate diplomats gather this week in Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd Conference of the Parties under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, I would like to point their attention to a different, perhaps gloomier statistic: the world’s carbon intensity of energy.
(p. B2) The term refers to a measure of the amount of CO2 spewed into the air for each unit of energy consumed. It offers some bad news: It has not budged since that chilly autumn day in Kyoto 20 years ago. Even among the highly industrialized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the carbon intensity of energy has declined by a paltry 4 percent since then, according to the International Energy Agency.
This statistic, alone, puts a big question mark over the strategies deployed around the world to replace fossil energy. In a nutshell:
. . .
The most worrisome aspect about the all-out push for a future powered by renewables has to do with cost: The price of turbines and solar panels may be falling, but the cost of integrating these intermittent sources of energy — on when the wind blows and the sun shines; off when they don’t — is not. This alone will sharply curtail the climate benefits of renewable power.
Integrating renewable sources requires vast investments in electricity transmission — to move power from intermittently windy and sunny places to places where power is consumed. It requires maintaining a backstop of idle plants that burn fossil fuel, for the times when there is no wind or sun to be had. It requires investing in power-storage systems at a large scale.

For the full commentary, see:
EDUARDO PORTER. “Why Slashing Nuclear Power May Backfire.” The New York Times (Weds., NOV. 8, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date NOV. 7, 2017, and has the title “Wind and Solar Power Advance, but Carbon Refuses to Retreat.”)

Record High Temperatures in London

(p. C6) During London’s long summer of 1858, the sweltering temperatures spawned squalor. With a population of more than 2 million, London had outgrown its medieval waste-removal systems, turning Spenser’s “sweet Thames” into an open sewer. Epidemics such as cholera and diphtheria ravaged the poor and rich alike. The stench, as we now know, was a symptom of a bacterial problem. But at the time it was believed to be, in itself, the cause of disease. The dominant medical notion of miasmas held that “noxious and morbific” contagion was carried through the air.
The heat of 1858 made the problem of London’s effluvia unignorable. At the end of May, Rosemary Ashton notes in “One Hot Summer,” the temperature was 84 degrees in the shade; there followed three months of hot days, with record highs in the 90s for the shade and well over 110 degrees in the sun.
. . .
The Great Stink, as the noisome ordeal came to be called, is a terrific subject for Ms. Ashton, the noted scholar of George Eliot, George Henry Lewes and literary London. She excels at unearthing and explaining the daily distractions of the nose-holding populace over the course of the summer: horse races, art shows, murder and divorce trials, even the breezes that, as Darwin noted, wafted thistle seeds across the English Channel from France. Ms. Ashton also convincingly uses the Great Stink as a backdrop to crisis points in the lives of three great figures of the day whose biographies rarely overlap: Darwin, Disraeli and Charles Dickens.

For the full review, see:

Alexandra Mullen. “The Stink That Sank London; As highs climbed toward 100 degrees, raw sewage roasting on the Thames created the ‘Great Stink’.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug. 20, 2017): C6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 11, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Ashton, Rosemary. One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.

German Energy Consumers Pay Double Due to Ineffective Solar Subsidies

(p. B1) BETZIGAU, Germany — Katharina Zinnecker’s farm in the foothills of the German Alps has been in the family since 1699. But to squeeze a living from it today, she and her husband need to do more than sell the milk from their herd of cows.
So they carpeted the roofs of their farm buildings with solar panels. And thanks to hefty government guarantees, what they earn from selling electricity is “safe money, not like cows,” Ms. Zinnecker said. “Milk prices go up and down.”
The farm has been a beneficiary of “Energiewende,” the German word for energy transition. Over the past two decades, Germany has focused its political will and treasure on a world-leading effort to wean its powerful economy off the traditional energy sources blamed for climate change.
The benefits of the program have not been universally felt, however. A de facto class system has emerged, saddling a group of have-nots with higher electricity bills that help subsidize the installation of solar panels and wind turbines elsewhere.
. . .
(p. B2) . . . renewable energy subsidies are financed through electric bills, meaning that Energiewende is a big part of the reason prices for consumers have doubled since 2000.
These big increases “are absolutely not O.K.,” said Thomas Engelke, team leader for construction and energy at the Federation of German Consumer Organizations, an umbrella organization of consumer groups.
The higher prices have had political consequences.
The far-right party Alternative for Germany, which won enough support in the recent elections to enter Parliament, has called for an “immediate exit” from Energiewende. The party, known by its German initials AfD, sees the program as a “burden” on German households, and many supporters have come into its fold in part because of the program’s mounting costs.
Julian Hermneuwöhner is one such voter. Mr. Hermneuwöhner, a 27-year-old computer science student, said his family paid an additional €800 a year because of Energiewende.
“But it hasn’t brought lower CO2 emissions,” he said. “It’s frustrating that we’re paying so much more, because the country hasn’t gotten anything for it.”
As a clean energy pioneer, Germany has not always seen the results it desired from its heavy spending.
. . .
. . . progress has been undone somewhat by the government’s decision to accelerate its phase out of nuclear power after the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, Japan. That has made the country more reliant on its sizable fleet of coal-fired power stations, which account for the bulk of emissions from electricity generation.
The country has yet to address the transport industry, where emissions have increased as the economy boomed and more cars and trucks hit the road.

For the full story, see:
STANLEY REED. “$222 Billion Shift Hits a Snag.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 7, 2017): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Germany’s Shift to Green Power Stalls, Despite Huge Investments.”)