Sorry, AI won’t “fix” climate change.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman claims AI will deliver an “Intelligence Age,” but tech breakthroughs alone can’t solve global warming.
James Temple, September 28, 2024,
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/28/1104588/sorry-ai-wont-fix-climate-change/
In an essay last week, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, argued that the accelerating capabilities of AI will usher in an idyllic “Intelligence Age,” unleashing “unimaginable” prosperity and “astounding triumphs” like “fixing the climate.”
It’s a promise that no one is in a position to make—and one that, when it comes to the topic of climate change, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the problem.
More maddening, the argument suggests that the technology’s massive consumption of electricity today doesn’t much matter, since it will allow us to generate abundant clean power in the future. That casually waves away growing concerns about a technology that’s already accelerating proposals for natural-gas plants and diverting major tech companies from their corporate climate targets.
By all accounts, AI’s energy demands will only continue to increase, even as the world scrambles to build larger, cleaner power systems to meet the increasing needs of EV charging, green hydrogen production, heat pumps, and other low-carbon technologies. Altman himself reportedly just met with White House officials to make the case for building absolutely massive AI data centers, which could require the equivalent of five dedicated nuclear reactors to run.
It’s a bedrock perspective of MIT Technology Review that technological advances can deliver real benefits and accelerate societal progress in meaningful ways. But for decades researchers and companies have oversold the potential of AI to deliver blockbuster medicines, achieve super intelligence, and free humanity from the need to work. To be fair, there have been significant advances, but nothing on the order of what’s been hyped.
Given that track record, I’d argue you need to develop a tool that does more than plagiarize journalism and help students cheat on homework before you can credibly assert that it will solve humanity’s thorniest problems, whether the target is rampant poverty or global warming.
To be sure, AI may help the world address the rising dangers of climate change. We have begun to see research groups and startups harness the technology to try to manage power grids more effectively, put out wildfires faster, and discover materials that could create cheaper, better batteries or solar panels.
All those advances are still relatively incremental. But let’s say AI does bring about an energy miracle. Perhaps its pattern-recognition prowess will deliver the key insight that finally cracks fusion—a technology that Altman is betting on heavily as an investor.
That would be fantastic. But technological advances are just the start—necessary but far from sufficient to eliminate the world’s climate emissions.
How do I know?
Because between nuclear fission plants, solar farms, wind turbines, and batteries, we already have every technology we need to clean up the power sector. This should be the low-hanging fruit of the energy transition. Yet in the largest economy on Earth, fossil fuels still generate 60% of the electricity. The fact that so much of our power still comes from coal, petroleum, and natural gas is a regulatory failure as much as a technological one.
“As long as we effectively subsidize fossil fuels by allowing them to use the atmosphere as a waste dump, we are not allowing clean energy to compete on a level playing field,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the independent research organization Berkeley Earth, wrote on X in a response to Altman’s post. “We need policy changes, not just tech breakthroughs, to meet our climate goals.”
That’s not to say there aren’t big technical problems we still need to solve. Just look at the continuing struggles to develop clean, cost-competitive ways of fertilizing crops or flying planes. But the fundamental challenges of climate change are sunk costs, development obstacles, and inertia.
We’ve built and paid for a global economy that spews out planet-warming gases, investing trillions of dollars in power plants, steel mills, factories, jets, boilers, water heaters, stoves, and SUVs that run on fossil fuels. And few people or companies will happily write off those investments so long as those products and plants still work. AI can’t remedy all that just by generating better ideas.
To raze and replace the machinery of every industry around the world at the speed now required, we will need increasingly aggressive climate policies that incentivize or force everyone to switch to cleaner plants, products, and practices.
But with every proposal for a stricter law or some big new wind or solar farm, forces will push back, because the plan will hit someone’s wallet, block someone’s views, or threaten the areas or traditions someone cherishes. Climate change is an infrastructure problem, and building infrastructure is a messy human endeavor.
Tech advances can ease some of these issues. Cheaper, better alternatives to legacy industries make hard choices more politically palatable. But there are no improvements to AI algorithms or underlying data sets that solve the challenge of NIMBYism, the conflict between human interests, or the desire to breathe the fresh air in an unsullied wilderness.
To assert that a single technology—that just happens to be the one your company develops—can miraculously untangle these intractable conflicts of human society is at best self-serving, if not a little naïve. And it’s a troubling idea to proclaim at a point when the growth of that very technology is threatening to undermine the meager progress the world has begun to make on climate change.
As it is, the one thing we can state confidently about generative AI is that it’s making the hardest problem we’ve ever had to solve that much harder to solve.
Huge Arctic wildfires release 100m tonnes of greenhouse gas in a year
Scientists are alarmed at how extreme the blazes have become as the climate
changes, and 2024 ranks as the fourth worst year for emissions from Arctic
fires. Huge wildfires have blazed across the Arctic this summer, releasing
almost as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the petrostate Kuwait
emits annually.
Fires in the carbon-rich frozen soils in the north of
Russia, Canada and other countries occur naturally as a result of lightning
strikes. Sometimes they spread south into the ring of boreal forests.
Scientists are alarmed at how extreme the blazes have become in recent
years as the climate changes. The Arctic’s worst year on record was 2020,
followed by 2019 and 2004.
Times 30th Sept 2024, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/huge-arctic-wildfires-release-100m-tonnes-of-greenhouse-gas-in-a-year-ncb8cmdfq
Hurricane Helene Floods Closed Duke Nuclear Plant in Florida
By Ari Natter, September 28, 2024 , https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/investing/2024/09/28/hurricane-helene-floods-retired-duke-nuclear-plant-in-florida/
(Bloomberg) — Floodwaters from Hurricane Helene have swamped a retired Duke Energy Corp. nuclear power plant, according to a filing with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, though an escape of contaminated fuel appears unlikely.
The Crystal River plant, which has been shuttered since 2013, experienced a storm surge of as much as 12 feet, according to the filing, which was posted online.
“The whole site was flooded, including buildings, sumps, and lift stations. Industrial Wastewater Pond #5 was observed overflowing to the ground due to the surge,” according to the report, which was filed Friday, the day after Helene roared ashore.
“We are still in the process of obtaining access and assessing the damage, but due to the nature of this event we anticipate difficulty with estimating the total discharge amount of wastewater, and impacts are unknown at this time,” the report said.
The used nuclear fuel at the site remains secure, Duke Energy said in a statement Sunday. “All radioactive material has been segmented and permanently packaged in shielded containers impervious to the effects of extreme weather,” the company said.
The facility, just south of Cedar Key, is still in the process of being dismantled. It’s likely that the spent fuel, which is kept onsite in dry storage, is safe, Edwin Lyman, a nuclear specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an email before Duke Energy commented.
“There is probably still quite a bit of low-level radioactive waste awaiting shipment, and it’s likely the site wastewater has low levels of radioactive contamination,” Lyman said in an email. “Although anything is possible, based on the Fukushima experience, if the storage area were immersed in water for a short period of time, there is unlikely to be significant damage or leakage from the canisters.”
The site also flooded in 2023 after Hurricane Idalia made landfall, according to a report in Newsweek, that said spent fuel was scheduled to remain on site until 2037.
–With assistance from Tony Czuczka.
Green campaigners lambast UN climate summit hosts for clinging to fossil fuels
Hello from New York, where I spent yesterday evening at a lively
gathering hosted by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative,
the campaign founded by Canadian activist Tzeporah Berman.
Among the speakers over dinner was Susana Muhamad, environment minister of Colombia,
which is one of 14 countries to have backed the drive for a legally binding
international treaty restricting fossil fuel extraction.
In the absence of such constraints, many countries are increasing their fossil fuel
production — including the hosts of last year’s, this year’s, and next
year’s UN climate COP summits, as our first item today highlights.
Yesterday, New York hosted a meeting of the COP “troika”, with
representatives of the host of last year’s UN climate summit (the United
Arab Emirates), this year’s (Azerbaijan) and next year’s (Brazil).
Cue a volley of criticism from environmental non-profit organisations, which
lambasted the three nations — all major oil and gas producers — over
their climate commitments.
FT 28th Sept 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/a48ad5b1-2175-4062-9caa-697b6541ff56
Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse?
Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than official tally
Guardian, Isabel O’Brien, 16 Sept 24
Big tech has made some big claims about greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. But as the rise of artificial intelligence creates ever bigger energy demands, it’s getting hard for the industry to hide the true costs of the data centers powering the tech revolution.
According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the “in-house” or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are likely about 662% – or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported.
Amazon is the largest emitter of the big five tech companies by a mile – the emissions of the second-largest emitter, Apple, were less than half of Amazon’s in 2022. However, Amazon has been kept out of the calculation above because its differing business model makes it difficult to isolate data center-specific emissions figures for the company.
As energy demands for these data centers grow, many are worried that carbon emissions will, too. The International Energy Agency stated that data centers already accounted for 1% to 1.5% of global electricity consumption in 2022 – and that was before the AI boom began with ChatGPT’s launch at the end of that year.
AI is far more energy-intensive on data centers than typical cloud-based applications. According to Goldman Sachs, a ChatGPT query needs nearly 10 times as much electricity to process as a Google search, and data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. Goldman competitor Morgan Stanley’s research has made similar findings, projecting data center emissions globally to accumulate to 2.5bn metric tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.
In the meantime, all five tech companies have claimed carbon neutrality, though Google dropped the label last year as it stepped up its carbon accounting standards. Amazon is the most recent company to do so, claiming in July that it met its goal seven years early, and that it had implemented a gross emissions cut of 3%.
“It’s down to creative accounting,” explained a representative from Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an advocacy group composed of current Amazon employees who are dissatisfied with their employer’s action on climate. “Amazon – despite all the PR and propaganda that you’re seeing about their solar farms, about their electric vans – is expanding its fossil fuel use, whether it’s in data centers or whether it’s in diesel trucks.”
A misguided metric
The most important tools in this “creative accounting” when it comes to data centers are renewable energy certificates, or Recs. These are certificates that a company purchases to show it is buying renewable energy-generated electricity to match a portion of its electricity consumption – the catch, though, is that the renewable energy in question doesn’t need to be consumed by a company’s facilities. Rather, the site of production can be anywhere from one town over to an ocean away………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
2025 and beyond
Even though big tech hides these emissions, they are due to keep rising. Data centers’ electricity demand is projected to double by 2030 due to the additional load that artificial intelligence poses, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.
Google and Microsoft both blamed AI for their recent upticks in market-based emissions…………………………………………..
Whether today’s power grids can withstand the growing energy demands of AI is uncertain. One industry leader – Marc Ganzi, the CEO of DigitalBridge, a private equity firm that owns two of the world’s largest third-party data center operators – has gone as far as to say that the data center sector may run out of power within the next two years.
And as grid interconnection backlogs continue to pile up worldwide, it may be nearly impossible for even the most well intentioned of companies to get new renewable energy production capacity online in time to meet that demand. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech
US Militarism Is a Leading Cause of the Climate Catastrophe
US military interventions are not just wars on people — they’re also wars on the climate.
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, September 10, 2024
This week marks 23 years since George W. Bush declared a U.S.-led “war on terror” and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are still suffering its consequences.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq, an estimated half a million Iraqis were killed and at least 9.2 million were displaced. From 2003-2011, more than 4.7 million Iraqis suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. Over 243,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan war zone since 2001, more than 70,000 of them civilians. Between 4.5 and 4.6 million people have died in the post-9/11 wars.
The U.S.’s “war on terror” also escalated the climate catastrophe, resulting in local water shortages and extreme weather crises that are only getting worse. In 2022, Afghanistan had its worst drought in 30 years and it is facing a third consecutive year of drought. “The war has exacerbated climate change impacts,” Noor Ahmad Akhundzadah, a professor of hydrology at Kabul University, told the New York Times.
Meanwhile in the current moment, U.S. military assistance to Israel’s genocidal campaign is also intensifying the climate crisis.
As we look back across more than two decades of the “war on terror,” it is clear that many lives will be saved if we can bring a halt to U.S. military interventions throughout the world and simultaneously target the U.S. military’s catastrophic contributions to the climate crisis that threaten us all.
“The U.S. military is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world,” Taylor Smith-Hams, U.S. senior organizer at 350.org, a global climate justice organization, said at a workshop on the Impact of Current Wars on Climate Crisis at the Veterans For Peace (VFP) Convention on August 17. “Militarism and war are key drivers of the climate crisis,” she added, citing fighter jets, warships and the U.S.’s massive constellation of military bases throughout the world.
Climate Effects of the “War on Terror”
On September 11, 2001, 19 men committed suicide and took roughly 3,000 people with them by flying two airliners into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one into a field in Pennsylvania. None of the hijackers hailed from Afghanistan or Iraq; 15 came from Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, the Bush administration illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and overthrew their governments, then killed, injured and tortured nearly three-quarters of a million of their people.
Beyond the terrible death tolls in both countries, a lesser known consequence of the “war on terror” was the exacerbation of the climate catastrophe, both in the countries targeted by the war and globally.
Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol excluded military emissions from the counting of national emissions figures, U.S. military emissions are significantly undercounted. Although militaries are a significant source of carbon emissions, little is understood about their carbon footprint.
Beyond the terrible death tolls … a lesser known consequence of the “war on terror” was the exacerbation of the climate catastrophe, both in the countries targeted by the war and globally.
One of the first studies to expose direct and indirect military emissions as a result of combat was conducted by Benjamin Neimark, Oliver Belcher, Kirsti Ashworth and Reuben Larbi. They examined the use of concrete “blast walls” by U.S. forces in Baghdad, Iraq, from 2003-2008, the first five years of Bush’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” to measure the carbon footprint of the war. Concrete walls and barriers were also used in U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Kandahar and Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2008-2012 during “Operation Enduring Freedom.” (Although these two wars did not bring freedom, their effects on the climate crisis are enduring.)
While occupying Baghdad, the U.S. military erected hundreds of miles of blast walls in order to control the urban population pursuant to its counterinsurgency strategy. “Effective weaponisation of concrete has an extraordinary carbon footprint,” Neimark, Belcher, Ashworth and Larbi wrote. “The large carbon footprint comes mainly from the amount of heat and energy in cement production, the main ingredient in concrete.”
The logistical movement of troops, convoys, weapons, supplies and equipment, as well as firepower itself, carry a direct carbon cost. Jet propulsion fuel for fighter jets is a major culprit. U.S. military fuel use is “one of the largest single institutional carbon polluters in modern history,” the researchers wrote. But the indirect emissions in blast walls that result from the concrete supply chains that furnish the U.S. military are also substantial, Neimark and his coauthors argue.
“Parts of Afghanistan have warmed twice as much as the global average” New York Times international climate reporter Somini Sengupta wrote in 2021, and the war has intensified the impact of climate change.
Afghanistan ranks in the top 10 countries undergoing extreme weather conditions, including droughts, storms and avalanches, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported a year ago. Afghanistan ranks fourth among countries with the highest risk of a crisis and eighth on the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index of nations most vulnerable and least prepared to deal with climate change.
The story of what happened in Afghanistan provides a chilling example of the long-term consequences of war on climate change. Decades from now, Gaza, which was already vulnerable to the climate crisis before October 7, 2023, will invariably suffer increased climate effects from Israel’s current genocidal campaign. “Climate consequences including sea level rise, drought and extreme heat were already threatening water supplies and food security in Palestine,” Nina Lakhani wrote in a January article in The Guardian. “The environmental situation in Gaza is now catastrophic.”
Emissions From U.S.-Aided Israeli Genocide Have “Immense” Effect on Climate Crisis
Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestinian people, and likely many more. During the first two months of Israel’s genocidal campaign, emissions that warmed the planet exceeded the annual carbon footprint of over 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, according to a study by Benjamin Neimark, Patrick Bigger, Frederick Otu-Larbi and Reuben Larbi. Roughly 281,000 metric tons of war-related carbon dioxide were emitted in the first two months of the war following October 7, 2023. More than 99 percent of these emissions resulted from Israel’s bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza and U.S. supply flights to Israel. The climate cost was equivalent to the burning of at least 150,000 tons of coal. Almost half of the emissions were caused by U.S. cargo planes flying military supplies to Israel. Hamas rockets fired into Israel accounted for the equivalent of 300 tons of coal, an indicator of the asymmetry of Israel’s war on Palestine.
“The role of the US in the human and environmental destruction of Gaza cannot be overstated,” said Patrick Bigger, coauthor of the study and research director at the thinktank Climate + Community Project (CCP). During the VFP workshop, Bigger called it an “environmental Nakba.”
The story of what happened in Afghanistan provides a chilling example of the long-term consequences of war on climate change.
David Boyd, UN special rapporteur for human rights and the environment, said, “This research helps us understand the immense magnitude of military emissions — from preparing for war, carrying out war and rebuilding after war. Armed conflict pushes humanity even closer to the precipice of climate catastrophe, and is an idiotic way to spend our shrinking carbon budget.”
“From an ecological perspective, there is no such thing as an ‘effective’ or ‘green’ technology or military,” Neimark, Belcher, Ashworth and Larbi, coauthors of the concrete blast wall study, found. While Israel touts itself as a global leader in climate change adaptation and mitigation, it is actually engaged in “greenwashing” — misleading marketing practices to make policies appear more environmentally friendly. Indeed, “Israel’s green technologies are fundamentally structured by the Zionist project of appropriating Palestinian lands,” Sara Salazar Hughes, Stepha Velednitsky and Amelia Arden Green argue in their 2022 article, “Greenwashing in Palestine/Israel: Settler colonialism and environmental injustice in the age of climate catastrophe.”
Israel’s systems of waste management, renewable energy and agricultural technologies (“agritech”) are actually mechanisms for appropriation and dispossession of Palestinian territory, according to Hughes, Velednitsky and Green. Although Israel promotes itself as a responsible steward of Palestinian lands, “Israeli sustainability sustains settler colonialism.”
“Climate crisis in Palestine cannot be detached from the Israeli occupation. The brutal and extensively documented apartheid regime that Israel imposes and maintains over Palestinians is fundamentally incompatible with the tenets of climate justice,” Patrick Bigger, Batul Hassan, Salma Elmallah, Seth J. Prins, J. Mijin Cha, Malini Ranganathan, Thomas M. Hanna, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Johanna Bozuwa wrote for the think tank CCP.
Bigger and his coauthors cite Israel’s settler-colonial campaign to replace native olive groves with nonnative plants that reduce biodiversity, increase susceptibility to fire and put unsustainable pressure on natural resources. Palestinians, they write, are much more vulnerable than Israelis to the effects of climate change. “While Palestinians are displaced to support Israel’s renewable energy industry, Palestinian solar projects are destroyed as ‘illegal constructions,’ having failed to secure permits from Israeli authorities.”
As the largest provider of military hardware to the Israeli regime, the U.S. government is “directly complicit” in Israel’s genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. “An immediate, permanent ceasefire and the end of US funding for Israeli apartheid and occupation is needed to halt the ongoing violence and address the driving forces of climate breakdown in Palestine,” Bigger and coauthors wrote.
About 20 percent of the U.S. military’s annual operational emissions is devoted to protecting fossil fuel interests in the Gulf, which is warming twice as rapidly as the rest of the world, according to Neta Crawford, author of The Pentagon, Climate Change and War. Nevertheless, the U.S. and other NATO countries are largely concerned with climate change as a national security threat. They don’t focus on their contributions to it.
“Here in the U.S., our government continues to dump enormous amounts of money into death and destruction at home and around the world, while cutting social programs and refusing to adequately contribute to international climate finance commitments, always with the excuse that there isn’t enough money,” Smith-Hams said at the VFP workshop.
Our anti-militarism work should target the U.S. military’s devastating contributions to the climate crisis. Our future depends on it.
For more information, see the Climate Crisis & Militarism Project of Veterans For Peace.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
Blackwater – a land in transition
4 September 2024, https://www.banng.info/news/regional-life/blackwater-in-transition/
The Blackwater is a land where earth, water and sky intermingle in an eternal process of transition and transformation. In our time Climate Change and the Energy Transition are creating fundamental changes in the relationship between land, sea and air that will utterly transform our environment in the years to come.
The Blackwater is not an iconic landscape, unlike, say, Constables Country, with its charms set in a romantic afterglow and its appeal as the idealised English landscape. The Blackwater is more a concept with specific meanings and specific environments for farmers, sailors, fishermen, holidaymakers, birders and residents enjoying its waters, marshes, seaside, farmland and settlements. It is a precious region with many national and international conservation designations. Some of its landscapes are ecological treasure chests, especially the dwindling marshes taken from the sea by progressive dyking and draining to produce the so-called ‘meadows of the sea’.
Today, a reversal is in train as coastal squeeze erodes the fragile waterlands in a battle that only the sea can win. Gradually, though inexorably, the land yields as seal levels rise and storm surges, flooding and erosion intensify with global warming.
Global warming is already at critical levels and further increases in temperatures are already baked in. We will have to adapt to inevitable consequences while trying to prevent runaway Climate Change by making a rapid shift from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy – in other words to achieve an Energy Transition.
While this is a global challenge it must be achieved through local measures already under way and impacting on our landscape. Out to sea in vast arrays of turbines are turning contributing to the UK’s 30GW of offshore wind power capacity. Onshore the windmills on the Dengie represent a tiny part of the 15GW onshore wind, two-thirds comes from Scotland. The government has committed to increasing wind capacity by 2030, to 30GW onshore and 60GW offshore.
This is a herculean ambition and major constraints lie in the way. One of these is transmission as the National Grid confronts local communities with its planned Norwich to Tilbury Great Grid Upgrade. The line of tall pylons will not impact the Blackwater landscape and a landfall at Bradwell is unlikely.
Even more unlikely is the possibility of new nuclear at Bradwell. Climate Change will put paid to the idea of building on a floodable coast today and a vanishing one in the far future. For the present there remains the forlorn hulk of the former Bradwell nuclear power station, once at the forefront of an energy transition now an isolated relic of a bygone age.
Summer 2024 was world’s hottest on record
Summer 2024 was the Earth’s warmest on record, according to the Copernicus
Climate Change Service. It was also the warmest across Europe at 1.54C
above the 1991-2020 long term average, exceeding the previous record from
2022.
August was also the 13th month in a 14-month period where the global
average temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. Despite the
UK having its coolest summer since 2015, much of Europe experienced a
hotter than average summer.
BBC 6th Sept 2024
‘Dangerously hot’ weather roasts US west as brutal summer continues
California, Nevada and Arizona swelter in what could be the most intense heatwave of an already blazing season.
. Excessive heat warnings were in effect across parts of southern
California, Arizona and Nevada, affecting tens of millions of people. The
harsh weather was predicted to peak beginning on Wednesday and lasting into
the weekend. The city of Los Angeles could see temperatures approaching
100F (37.7C), with locations further inland hitting nearly 110F (43.3C) or
higher, according to a forecast from the National Weather Service (NWS).
Guardian 4th Sept 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/04/us-west-heatwave-summer
African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP per year with climate change, a new report says
By MONIKA PRONCZUK, September 3, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/africa-climate-change-flooding-droughts-af5beebf70f414098ad2a4a73a19b76c
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — African nations are losing up to 5% of their GDP every year as they bear a heavier burden than the rest of the world from climate change, a new report said Monday after one of the continent’s hottest years on record.
The World Meteorological Organization said many African nations are spending up to 9% of their budgets for climate adaptation policies.
“Over the past 60 years, Africa has observed a warming trend that has become more rapid than the global average,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, warning that it is affecting everything from food security to public health to peace.
Africa is responsible for less than 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is the most vulnerable region to extreme weather events including droughts, floods and heatwaves, the WMO said.
The new report focuses on 2023, one of Africa’s three hottest years on record. It urged African governments to invest in early warning systems as well as meteorological services. If adequate measures are not put in place, up to 118 million Africans will be exposed to droughts, floods and extreme heat by 2030, the report warned.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the costs of adapting to extreme weather could be $30-50 billion per year over the next decade, the report estimated.
The effects of climate change have been harrowing. Between September and October 2023, approximately 300,000 people across West Africa were affected by floods, the report said. Zambia experienced the worst drought in 40 years, affecting nearly 6 million people.
The pattern of extreme weather events in Africa continues in 2024, experts said.
In the Sahel region south of the Sahara, flooding has affected over 716,000 people this year, according to the United Nations. In Mali, authorities last week declared a national disaster over floods which have affected 47,000 people since the beginning of the rainy season.
West Africa experienced an unprecedented heat wave earlier this year that led to a surge in deaths.
Developing a plan B for nuclear power in Washington, to cope with global heating
Modern Power Systems Tracey Honney September 3, 2024
elieving that waterways used as cooling sources for nuclear power plants could get warmer due to climate change, climate scientists and nuclear engineering specialists at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are joining forces to develop a plan B for nuclear power in Richland, Washington.
The plan is to use Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) funding from DOE to work with Energy Northwest to inform the design and selection of future nuclear reactor cooling systems and assess their impacts on electricity cost………………………………….
Vilim notes that the most economic and best source of cooling is a local, flowing waterway, such as a lake or a river, used to provide “wet” cooling. That’s the approach employed at Washington’s nuclear power plant, the Columbia generating station in Richland. The Columbia generating station provides roughly 8% of the state’s electricity. It relies on a steady, cool flow of water from the Columbia River.
However, when considering construction of future nuclear power plants, Energy Northwest thought it prudent to develop a contingency plan if the river conditions change. Despite the relatively wet climate of its most populous city, Seattle, Washington state is quite temperate and arid east of the Cascade mountain range. There, Washington state is characterised by hot summers and cool winters. If changing climate models indicate that hotter, drier days lie ahead, more aridity will affect the volume, flow and temperature of the Columbia River.
………………………………….“One of the biggest changes in the USA is going to be how precipitation like rain, snow and other precipitation events happen,” Kotamarthi said. “We may have really intense events with large amounts of rainfall in a very short time, followed by periods of no rain. These flash floods and flash droughts will make managing water a completely different task.” https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/developing-a-plan-b-for-nuclear-power-in-washington/
Surging seas are coming for us all, warns UN chief
Katy Watson, 26 Aug 24
The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said that big
polluters have a clear responsibility to cut emissions – or risk a
worldwide catastrophe.
“The Pacific is today the most vulnerable area of
the world,” he told the BBC at the Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting
in Tonga. “There is an enormous injustice in relation to the Pacific and
it’s the reason I am here.” “The small islands don’t contribute to
climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is
multiplied here.”
But eventually the “surging seas are coming for us
all,” he warned in a speech at the forum, as the UN releases two separate
reports on rising sea levels and how they threaten Pacific island nations.
The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in the South
West Pacific, external report says this region faces a triple whammy of an
accelerating rise in the sea level, a warming of the ocean and
acidification – a rise in the sea’s acidity because it’s absorbing
more and more carbon dioxide.
“The reason is clear: greenhouse gases –
overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our
planet,” Mr Guterres said in a speech at the forum. “The sea is taking
the heat – literally.”
BBC 27th Aug 2024
Why the big push for nuclear power as “green”?
Why is it so difficult to recognise that – as is normal with technologies – nuclear energy is obsolescing?
nuclear affections are a military romance. Powerful defence interests – with characteristic secrecy and highly active PR – are mostly driving the dogged persistence.
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/08/25/why-the-big-push-for-nuclear-power-as-green/
Heavy lobbying by France and a “military romance” provide some answers, write Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone
Whatever one’s view of nuclear issues, an open mind is crucial. Massive vested interests and noisy media clamour require efforts to view a bigger picture. A case in point arises around the European Commission’s much criticised proposal – and the European Parliament’s strongly opposed decision – to last year accredit nuclear power as a ‘green’ energy source.
In a series of legal challenges, the European Commission and NGOs including Greenpeace are tussling over what kind and level of ’sustainability’ nuclear power might be held to offer.
To understand how an earlier more sceptical EC position on nuclear was overturned, deeper questions are needed about a broader context. Recent moves in Brussels follow years of wrangling. Journalists reported intense lobbying – especially by the EU’s only nuclear-armed nation: France. At stake is whether inclusion of nuclear power in the controversial ‘green taxonomy’ will open the door to major financial support for ‘sustainable’ nuclear power.
Notions of sustainability were (like climate concerns) pioneered in environmentalism long before being picked up in mainstream policy. And – even when its comparative disadvantages were less evident – criticism of nuclear was always central to green activism. So, it might be understood why current efforts from outside environmentalism to rehabilitate nuclear as ‘sustainable’ are open to accusations of ‘greenwash’ and ‘doublespeak’.
In deciding such questions, the internationally-agreed ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ are a key guide. These address various issues associated with all energy options – including costs and wellbeing, health effects, accident risks, pollution and wastes, landscape impacts and disarmament issues. So, do such comparative pros and cons of nuclear power warrant classification alongside wind, solar and efficiency?
On some aspects, the picture is relatively open. All energy investments yield employment and development benefits, largely in proportion to funding. On all sides, simply counting jobs or cash flowing through favoured options and forgetting alternatives leads to circular arguments. If (despite being highlighted in the Ukraine War), unique vulnerabilities of nuclear power to attack are set aside, then the otherwise largely ‘domestic’ nature of both nuclear and renewables can be claimed to be comparable.
Orderings are more stark on economics and environment. Despite room for many views, it is difficult to deny that history raises especially grave queries about nuclear power. Nuclear costs have long been acknowledged to be far less competitive than renewables. Multiple nuclear accidents have occurred of kinds initially claimed to have ‘negligible’ likelihood. Nuclear waste “solutions” are still largely undeveloped. New questions continually arise about assumptions underpinning ‘safe levels’ of ionising radiation. Build times far exceeding those promised have helped cause nuclear bankruptcy and fraud. Growth rates of renewables surpass what government officials even quite recently claimed to be physically possible. Associated trends nearly all favour renewables.
But what of climate urgency? Does this not justify nuclear proponents’ calls to “do everything” to “keep the nuclear option open” (as if this were an end in itself)? Again: deeper thought might expose this as special pleading. Precisely because climate action is so imperative, isn’t it more rational to prioritise whatever is most substantial, cost effective and rapid?
A more reasoned approach might ask about long-neglected kinds of statistical analysis, which show that national carbon emission reductions tend to associate less with nuclear than with renewable uptake. Key reasons here include that nuclear contributions to climate targets are smaller, slower and more expensive than are offered by renewables. So other evidence that nuclear and renewable energy strategies also tend to conflict further queries the ‘sustainable’ status of nuclear power.
What then of claimed needs for ‘baseload’ power – to manage variable outputs from some renewables? Surprisingly given its public profile, this notion is long abandoned by the electricity industry as “outdated”. Nuclear power is itself inflexible in its own way. Myriad system innovations, grid improvements, demand measures and new storage technologies are all available to better address variable renewables over different timescales. Even in relatively pro-nuclear UK, it is authoritatively documented how a 100% renewable system outperforms any level of nuclear contribution. Even the UK Government now admits that adding these costs still leaves renewables outcompeting nuclear. In less nuclear-committed European countries, the picture is even more stark.
So, as this picture has unfolded, nuclear ‘sustainability’ arguments have retreated through successively undermined claims – that nuclear is “necessary”; brooks “no alternative”; is “more competitive”; uniquely offers to “keep the lights on”; or is just a way to “do everything” (as if this was ever a sensible response to any challenge, especially one as urgent and existential as climate disruption).
Whatever position one starts from, then, a final question arises: why all the fuss? Why should it be now after all these years (just as its comparative performance becomes so much less favourable) that European efforts become so newly energetic to redefine nuclear as ‘sustainable’? Why is it so difficult to recognise that – as is normal with technologies – nuclear energy is obsolescing?
Here, the answer is surprisingly obvious. It is officially repeatedly confirmed in countries working hardest to revive nuclear power – atomic weapons states like the US, France, the UK, Russia and China. Oddly neglected in mainstream energy policy and the media, the picture is especially evident on the defence side. Although skewed public debates leave many unaware, nuclear affections are a military romance. Powerful defence interests – with characteristic secrecy and highly active PR – are mostly driving the dogged persistence.
The result is clear. Dubiously justified in climate terms, elevated consumer prices, government funding and public risk underwriting all help maintain a joint civil/military ‘nuclear industrial base’. In nuclear armed countries like the UK and France, this helps fund – outside defence budgets, off the public books and away from due scrutiny – expensive specialist nuclear skills, supply chains, research facilities, navy recruitment, wider infrastructures. In particular, the building and operating of nuclear propelled submarines would be unaffordable without these concealed cross-subsidies. Without nuclear power, it would become much harder to guarantee the later careers that are so essential in recruiting nuclear-trained officers.
As President Macron recently said “without civilian nuclear, no military nuclear, without military nuclear, no civilian nuclear”. This is the main reason why France is pressing so hard for nuclear to be supported by the European Union as ‘sustainable’. This is why non-nuclear-armed Germany has been more open to grasping nuclear realities. This is why France and Germany find themselves at such loggerheads on this issue. This is why the UK Government so opposes this – and is so fixated on support for general nuclear skills. This is why other nuclear-armed states in general, are so resolutely fixated by the slow, small and costly nuclear response to the climate emergency.
A decision has yet to be reached on whether the inclusion of nuclear by the European Commission in their Green Taxonomy is unlawful. Yet it is clear that nuclear compares poorly to other low carbon technologies when considered in terms of sustainability. What is especially concerning is that the military rationales that are influencing renewed enthusiasm for nuclear are largely unaddressed in policy and wider media coverage. That associated issues are so little discussed, raises grave concerns not just for energy and climate policy, but for European democracy as a whole.
Andy Stirling is Professor of Science & Technology Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex. Philip Johnstone is Research Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex.
Climate scientist says 2/3rds of the world is under an effective ‘death sentence’ because of global warming
Dr. Deborah Brosnan, a climate and ocean scientist, predicts that Earth could eventually become uninhabitable for humans given the grave state of the planet.
She said about two thirds
of the 8.2billion people who live on this planet are under an effective
“death sentence” as natural disasters will continue to grow more deadly in
the years to come unless human behaviors change. “The point is that climate
change is happening to everyone and in every region of the world,” she
said.
Mirror 19th Aug 2024
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/climate-scientist-says-23rds-world-644615
Meeting 1.5C warming limit hinges on governments more than technology, study says
The ability of governments to implement climate policies effectively is the “most important” factor in the feasibility of limiting global warming to 1.5C, a new study says.
The future warming pathways used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that holding warming to 1.5C is unlikely, but still possible, when considering the technological feasibility and project-level economic costs of reaching net-zero emissions.
However, the new study, published in Nature Climate Change, warns that adding in political and institutional constraints on mitigation make limiting warming to 1.5C even more challenging.
They find that the most ambitious climate mitigation trajectories give the world a 50% chance of limiting peak global warming to below 1.6C above pre-industrial temperatures. However, adding ”feasibility constraints” – particularly those involving the effectiveness of governments – reduces this likelihood to 5-45%.
The study shows that, thanks to advances such as solar, wind or electric vehicles, “the technological feasibility of climate-neutrality is no longer the most crucial issue”, according to an author on the study.
Instead, he says, “it is much more about how fast climate policy ambition can be ramped up by governments”.
Emissions scenarios
In 2015, almost every country in the world signed the Paris Agreement – with the aim to limit global warming to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, with a preference for keeping warming below 1.5C.
Since then, most countries have set net-zero targets and many are making progress towards achieving them. However, as the planet continues to warm, some scientists are questioning whether it is still possible to limit warming to 1.5C, the new study says.
The IPCC’s special report on 1.5C, published in 2018, included a cross chapter box on the “feasibility” of this temperature limit. The report says there are six components of feasibility that could inhibit the world’s ability to limit warming to 1.5C, as shown in the image below.
The IPCC’s working group three report from its sixth assessment cycle explores thousands of different future warming scenarios. These scenarios are mainly generated by integrated assessment models (IAMs) that examine the energy technologies, energy use choices, land-use changes and societal trends that cause – or prevent – greenhouse gas emissions.
Fewer than 100 of these scenarios result in warming of below 1.5C with limited or no overshoot, defined as more than a 50% chance of seeing a peak temperature below 1.6C. These are known as the “C1 scenarios”. However, these scenarios do not consider all of the feasibility constraints outlined by the IPCC.
(Furthermore, these scenarios – which run from 2019 – assume that rapid decarbonisation began almost immediately. However, in reality, emissions have continued to rise since 2020, eating into the remaining “carbon budget” for warming to be limited to 1.5C more quickly than the models assume.)
The new study investigates five constraints. The first two – geophysical and technological – focus on the constraints presented by technologies, such as the growth of carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and solar generation, and the Earth’s total geological carbon storage capacity.
For sociocultural constraints, the study explores behavioural changes that can accelerate decarbonisation, such as reduced energy demand. The authors refer to these as “enablers”. And the “economic constraint” focuses on carbon prices.
However, the authors say the “key innovation” of their study is the inclusion of “institutional constraints”, which measure a government’s ability to “effectively implement climate mitigation policies”.
Policy constraints
All countries have different “institutional capabilities” to enforce policies. Some countries are able to quickly and successfully implement policies, such as taxation changes or environmental regulation. Other countries – which are often less wealthy – have lower levels of governance, making it harder to implement these measures.
Dr Christoph Bertram – an associate research professor at the University of Maryland and guest researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) – is the lead author of the study. He tells Carbon Brief that the paper uses a metric called the “governance indicator” to show how fast countries are expected to decarbonise.
The indicator is based on the speed and success with which they have achieved their past “environmental goals” – for example, reductions in the sulphur emissions of power plants – he explains. Countries that were successful in achieving these targets in the past are given higher governance scores.
Dr Marina Andrijevic, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), led the study introducing these governance indicators, but was not involved in the new paper.
She tells Carbon Brief that the indicator is originally from the Worldwide Governance Indicators published by the World Bank. (See more on the indicators in the guest post Andrijevic and her co-authors wrote for Carbon Brief.)
The graph below [0n original] , taken from the new study, shows how governance is expected to improve over the 21st century for countries with a population of more than 25 million in 2020, according to this indicator. Each colour indicates a different world region. The grey lines indicate a “pessimistic” scenario in which governance remains frozen at 2020 levels.
The authors use global average carbon prices as a “proxy” for the overall strength of a country’s climate policy, assuming that countries with higher levels of governance will implement higher carbon prices.
They develop a range of scenarios. In their optimistic scenario, carbon prices vary, but this does not explicitly constrain emissions reductions. In the “default” scenario, both carbon prices and emissions reductions are constrained.
In the pessimistic scenario, governance indicator values are “frozen” at their 2020 levels, meaning that governments’ ability to implement new climate mitigation policies does not improve over the 21st century.
Bertram tells Carbon Brief that the measure is “not perfect”, but says that it gives a good approximation of “how fast decarbonisation can happen in different countries”.
Is 1.5C ‘feasible’?
The authors used existing literature to quantify how much each of the five constraints might affect the world’s ability to limit global warming. They then produced a set of different “feasibility scenarios” and assessed their future CO2 emissions using eight IAMs.
The plot below shows the minimum total global CO2 emissions that could be produced between 2023 and the date that net-zero CO2 is reached for these scenarios. In the panel “a”, on the left, each dot indicates a model result.
The column on the far left is a “pessimistic” institutional feasibility scenario, in which governance indicators do not improve beyond 2020 levels. Cumulative global CO2 emissions before net-zero here are the highest of any scenario explored.
The next column is the “default” assumption of carbon prices and emissions-reduction quantities, under four different combinations of constraints.
From left to right within this column, the combinations cover technological and institutional constraints, only institutional constraints, technological and institutional constraints with enablers and then institutional constraints with enablers.
The enablers include measures such as reduced energy demand in high income countries and increased electrification. This helps to “create more flexibility on the supply side and thus further improve the feasibility of implementation”, according to the paper.
The final column shows “optimistic” scenarios, divided between a scenario with technological constraints (left) and a “cost-effective” scenario, as used in the IPCC (right).
Panel “b” shows the likelihood, based on the 14 feasibility scenarios in panel a, of staying below 1.5C, 1.6C, 1.8C and 2.0C peak temperatures. Each bar indicates a different peak temperature. Red indicates a high likelihood of meeting the temperature target, given the level of emissions, and purple indicates a low likelihood.
In scenarios without any institutional constraints, nearly all models are able to produce scenarios which line up with the IPCC’s C1 scenarios, which have more than a 50% chance of seeing a peak temperature below 1.6C.
However, adding institutional constraints reduces this likelihood to 5-45%.
(A peak temperature of 1.6C would not necessarily breach the long-term goal of the Paris agreement, as long as temperatures were brought back down below the 1.5C threshold by the end of the century. However, there are risks associated with overshoot – such as crossing tipping points – and it relies more heavily on large-scale implementation of negative emissions technologies.)
Under the “pessimistic” institutional constraints, the ability of countries to cut emissions is “sharply curtailed”, the authors say, resulting in only a 30-50% chance of limiting warming even to 2C above pre-industrial levels.
The study shows that “technological constraints are not a crucial impediment to a fast transition to net-zero anymore,” Bertran tells Carbon Brief.
“Thanks to the latest advances in low-carbon technology deployment, such as solar, wind or electric vehicles, the technological feasibility of climate-neutrality is no longer the most crucial issue,” Prof Gunnar Luderer – a study author and lead of the energy systems group at the PIK – added in a press release.
Instead, he said, “it is much more about how fast climate policy ambition can be ramped up by governments”.
Future warming
The findings of this study have implications for meeting the Paris Agreement 1.5C limit. “Our study does not imply that the 1.5C target needs to be abandoned,” the study says. However, it adds:
“The world needs to be prepared for the possibility of an overshoot of the 1.5C limit by at least one and probably multiple tenths of a degree even under the highest possible ambition.”
“The 1.5C target was always something that, while theoretically possible, was very unlikely given the real-world technical, institutional, economic and political setting that determines climate policy,” says Prof Frances Moore from the department of environmental science and policy at UC Davis, who was not involved in the study.
However, she tells Carbon Brief, the finding that humanity could still limit warming to 2C is “a signal of the progress countries have made in committing to climate action”.
Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner – a science advisor to Climate Analytics and honorary professor at Humboldt University Berlin – tells Carbon Brief that the paper is “an important contribution to the literature”.
However, he says the results “need to be interpreted very cautiously”. For example, he notes that the study only considers CO2 emissions and not other greenhouse gases, such as methane.
In addition, he notes that “institutional capacities affect climate action in a myriad of different ways that are not easily representable in the modelling world”. As a result, the study authors had to “settle” on an approach that “may only be partly representative of ‘real world’ dynamics and is very sensitive to modelling assumptions”.
Moore says this is a “valuable initial study”, but makes a similar point, noting that the “implementation of institutional constraints and demand-side effects is somewhat arbitrary and ad-hoc”, such as using carbon prices as a governance indicator.
Dr William Lamb is a researcher at the Mercator Research Institute and was also not involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief that the study results are “sobering” and says that “we need to start focusing research, policy and advocacy on the underlying institutions and politics that shape climate action”.
He adds that there are other aspects of feasibility that could be considered:
“We know that incumbent fossil fuel interests are politically powerful in many countries and are able to obstruct the implementation of climate policies, or even reverse those that are already in place. In other words, some governments may be capable, but do not want to implement ambitious climate action.”
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
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