By 2018 world must shift to zero carbon, to avoid extra dangerous global warming
Shift to zero-carbon power must start by 2018 to avoid extra warming: study http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/shift-to-zerocarbon-power-must-start-by-2018-to-avoid-extra-warming-study-20160331-gnuy7x.html April 1, 2016 Peter Hannam Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald The world must begin the shift to zero-carbon sources of electricity as soon as 2018 to avoid adding new fossil-fuel power plants that will lock in dangerous climate change, according to a team of Oxford University researchers.
Taking the average operating life of coal or gas-fired plants as 40 years, the world’s fleet of carbon-emitting power stations had already committed by 2014 a total of 87 per cent of the emissions required to ensure a 50-50 chance of reaching two degrees of warming compared with pre-industrial levels.
By 2017, the remaining stock of potential emissions will have been locked in, necessitating a transition to renewable or zero-emissions electricity from then on. Alternatively, radical technologies will be needed to sequester carbon dioxide or extract it from the atmosphere, the researchers including Australian Cameron Hepburn wrote in a paper published in Applied Energy journal.
“For policymakers who think of climate change as a long-term future issue, this should be a wake-up call,” the authors said in a statement. “Whether we succeed or fail in containing warming to 2 degrees is being determined by actions we are taking right now.”
The papers come in a week when environmental groups warned as many as 1500 coal-fired power plants are being planned or being built worldwide, scientists found coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef to be worse than first thought, and Antarctic ice sheets were declared to be melting faster than expected.
Electricity generation accounts for about one quarter of man-made greenhouse gas emissions and about one third of Australia’s total. The researchers assumed other emission sources, such as transport and agriculture, would track towards a 2-degree warming limit, an assumption “which may well be optimistic”, the paper notes.
Australia was one of almost 200 nations to sign up to limiting warming to a 1.5-2 degree range at the Paris climate summit late last year.
The lower end of that target has been well exceeded, the researchers argue: “Meeting a 1.5-degree target without [carbon capture and storage] or asset stranding would have required all additions to the electricity sector were zero carbon from 2006 onwards, at the latest”.
Malte Meinshausen, director of Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College, said the research confirmed work by the International Energy Agency and others “that we now have enough fossil fuel infrastructure globally in place to emit a detrimental amount of carbon”.
“With the correct market signals in place – such as a price on carbon emissions – it will be more economical even for the utilities to abandon fossil fuel [plants] and switch to renewable investments instead,” Associate Professor Meinshausen said. “If the time for halting investments into new fossil fuel infrastructure is 2017 for the world, that time has been 10 years ago for Australia – the highest per-capita emitter in the developed world.”
As it happens, the combination of Australia’s flat or declining demand for grid-supplied electricity and the need to meet the mandated 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) means there is little likelihood of new coal or gas-fired power plants being built in this country for at least the next decade, said Dylan McConnell, a research fellow at Melbourne University’s Melbourne Energy Institute.
While there are several proposed gas projects and one black coal project in NSW at AGL’s Bayswater site, renewable energy ventures are likely to meet any near-term need for additional large-scale capacity, Mr McConnell said.
Some 14,000 megawatts (MW) of wind or solar plants are seeking approval, a tally that is “certainly much more than needed for the RET”, he said. “The cost curve for fossil fuel [plants] is going in the other direction.”
This week, Origin Energy signed up for its first power purchase agreement for large-scale solar, taking output from a 56 MW solar farm in Moree in northern NSW.
“Ten years ago, 15 years ago the prospectors were in Queensland looking for [coal seam gas] resources,” Grant King, Origin’s chief executive, said last year. “I would think the next great round of investment in Queensland will be utility scale solar.”
Origin is among the prospectors, applying to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency for funding to support a 106 MW solar farm of its own to be built on the Darling Downs next to its existing gas-fired plant.
Both Coal and Nuclear Electricity Generation Will Be Severely Affected By Hotter Climate
HOW A HOTTER CLIMATE DESTROYS THERMAL ELECTRICITY GENERATION Earth Techling, BY SUSAN KRAEMER MARCH 30, 2016Both hydropower and conventional thermal combustion electricity is depleted in a hotter new climate.
A new paper published at Nature Climate Change, Power-generation system vulnerability and adaptation to changes in climate and water resources provides a comprehensive look at how two categories of power generation will be impacted by climate change on a global level.
The study looked at both thermal power stations (that depend on the combustion of fossil fuels, biomass or uranium), and also at hydropower systems.
Hydropower relies directly on abundant flow in falling water from mountain snow melt, while each type of thermal energy requires a lot of water to boil to make steam to drive turbines, and water to cool off the boiled water as it is discharged.
Unlike solar PV and wind power, thermal electric power stations are totally dependent on adequate water supplies, at cool water temperatures
The estimates in the study are based on an assumption that 80% of the world’s electricity is generated thermally – coal, gas, nuclear, biomass – with an additional 17% generated using hydropower. (Only 3% of global energy comes from PV and wind, according to the study*.)
(*The figures originated from a 2009 paper from the IEA – so it’s based on 2008 data. The IEA has been fairly notorious for undercounting renewables for some time, as the adoption rate has increased exponentially, so in the future, it is unlikely that 80% will still be thermal.)
As of now, however, of all water taken from rivers and lakes; the percentage used in thermal power generation amounts to about 50% in the UK and about 40% in the US.
With so much electricity generation so dependent on water, the study shows just how vulnerable is the world’s combustion-based energy supply in a hotter, drier world, when water will be warmer and droughts and heat waves longer and more frequent in many regions.
The paper is one of several that look at the impact of a hotter climate on thermal electricity generation, between coal, gas, biomass and nuclear. Two more quantify the effects on electricity costs.
How rising temperatures cause rising cost: droughts reduce cheap hydropower
As Californians have just experienced, hotter temperatures have already begun to result in the droughts long predicted for the entire Southwest US by climate scientists as the 21st century continues to warm.
What California has just seen is that when droughts deepen, mountain reservoirs and lakes and rivers dry up, and hydropower dries up with them………
How thermal power is reduced as water temperatures increase:
The changes that higher temperatures bring not only deplete water flow, impacting hydropower, but also act to warm the water that is needed to cool discharged water from thermal power plants. This warmer water, both in rivers and the ocean, also reduces electricity production.
Because of rules governing environmental degradation, thermal plants that essentially boil water must shut down if the water used for cooling gets too warm.
Discharged water temperature is monitored to ensure that coal and nuclear plants don’t discharge water that is too hot, endangering wildlife in surrounding waterways.
But already in 2007, during a heat wave that contributed to river water reaching an astounding 90 °F, the Tennessee Valley Authority had to shut down a nuclear plant due to hot river water in Kentucky.
During the heat wave in Europe in 2003 and 2006; 17 nuclear plants across Germany, France, Spain and Romania had to idle production or shut down entirely because the waterways normally used to cool down boiled water coming out of the electricity plants was too warm to discharge hot water into.
Shutting down or idling plants reduces generation and raises electricity prices because the lowered output of electricity results in higher prices per unit of generation
Paper assesses global costs of thermal generation in a hotter water future
In a third paper published at Norges Handelshøyskole, Electricity Prices, River Temperatures and Cooling Water Scarcity, a future of higher costs for thermal electricity is predicted as a direct result of the warmer water temperatures caused by climate change. In the longer term, these costs could become unsupportable.
The study co-author Øivind Anti Nilsen estimated that even as little as a one degree rise in average river temperatures will result in almost a 4% percent increase in electricity prices, over the course of a week.
“The analysis shows that higher temperatures lead to reduced production in power plants and hence higher electricity costs. Prices shoot up”, explained Nilsen, a co-author of the paper, and professor at the Department of Economics at Norges Handelshøyskole.
“The higher the temperature, the lower the power plant’s efficiency. Prices therefore rise in line with the temperature,” said Nilsen
“Many people who work on the effects of climate change have overlooked these price effects and their implications,” he said.
These increasing costs of climate change will be felt in the US as much as in Europe, because in the US, the thermal energy industry accounts for as much as 40% of all freshwater withdrawals, according to the US Department of Energy
This effect will only continue to increase in the future, as the world sees more frequent and hotter heat waves. Yet the world continues to build thermal plants that are dependent on a diminishing resource – cool water.
The Arabian Gulf region already has one of the highest ocean temperatures in the world, reaching above 95°F in the summer. Despite this inability to act as a cooling resource, the Arabian Gulf is to provide the cooling for two proposed nuclear plants, a 1 GW nuclear plant from a Russian manufacturer, and another much larger one, comprising four adjoined 1.4 GW units, that is made in Korea.
So, which regions will be most affected?
“In particular the US, southern South America, southern Africa, central and southern Europe, Southeast Asia and southern Australia are vulnerable regions,” said Dr Michelle van Vliet, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and lead author of Power-generation system vulnerability and adaptation to changes in climate and water resources.
“This is because declines in mean annual streamflow are projected combined with strong increases in water temperature under changing climate.”
One more reason to abandon thermal combustion for making electricity. http://earthtechling.com/2016/03/how-a-hotter-climate-destroys-thermal-electricity-generation/
USA and China – joint statement: both will sign Paris climate deal
US and China to sign Paris climate deal http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/us-and-china-to-sign-paris-climate-deal/news-story/94b6ac23151ca2d99645372ed0bf9269
The United States and China have confirmed that they will sign the Paris climate change agreement in New York on April 22, a move that officials hope will help the accord enter into force this year.
The world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters issued a joint presidential statement on Thursday in which they called on other countries to sign the accord next month “with a view to bringing the Paris Agreement into force as early as possible”.
Leaders from nearly 200 countries forged the landmark agreement to transform the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy on December 12 after four years of fraught negotiations.
But the Paris climate agreement needs at least 55 countries, representing at least 55 per cent of global emissions, to formally accede to it before it can enter into force.
Stern has stepped down from his role as the chief US climate negotiator, and will be replaced by his former deputy, Jonathan Pershing, on April 1.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month that he expected 120 or more countries would sign the accord at the April 22 ceremony at its New York headquarters.
“Clean coal” technology is not working
Technology to Make Clean Energy From Coal Is Stumbling in Practice, NYT, By IAN AUSTEN MARCH 29, 2016 OTTAWA — An electrical plant on the Saskatchewan prairie was the great hope for industries that burn coal.
In the first large-scale project of its kind, the plant was equipped with a technology that promised to pluck carbon out of the utility’s exhaust and bury it underground, transforming coal into a cleaner power source. In the months after opening, the utility and the provincial government declared the project an unqualified success.
But the $1.1 billion project is now looking like a green dream.
Known as SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3, the project has been plagued by multiple shutdowns, has fallen way short of its emissions targets, and faces an unresolved problem with its core technology. The costs, too, have soared, requiring tens of millions of dollars in new equipment and repairs.
“At the outset, its economics were dubious,” said Cathy Sproule, a member of Saskatchewan’s legislature who released confidential internal documents about the project. “Now they’re a disaster.”……….http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/business/energy-environment/technology-to-make-clean-energy-from-coal-is-stumbling-in-practice.html?_r=0
State of the Climate – World Meteorological Organization
WMO Press Release 21 March, 2016: State of the Climate: Record Heat and Weather Extremes
The year 2015 made history, with shattered temperature records, intense heatwaves, exceptional rainfall, devastating drought and unusual tropical cyclone activity, according to the World Meteorological Organization. That record-breaking trend has continued in 2016.
The WMO Statement on the Status of the Climate in 2015 gave details of the record land and sea surface temperatures, unabated ocean warming and sea level rise, shrinking sea ice extent, and extreme weather events around the world.
It was released to coincide with World Meteorological Day on 23 March, which has the theme “Hotter, drier, wetter. Face the Future.”
http://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/state-of-climate-record-heat-and-weather-extremes
(The key findings are listed here – and a link is provided to the Press Conference webcast)
WMO Press Release, 23 March 2016: World Meteorological Day. Hotter, Drier, Wetter. Face the Future
“The future is now,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has issued a rallying call on World Meteorological Day for decision-makers and all actors in society to “face the future now” and respond to the challenge of climate change and so avert its worst impacts and “lay the foundations for a world of peace, prosperity and opportunity for all.” …
On 21 March, WMO issued the full report on the Status of the Global Climate in 2015.
It also collaborated with Climate Central to reach out to television weather presenters, highlighting the main findings of the climate report, including with a package of high quality graphics.
http://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/world-meteorological-day-hotter-drier-wetter-face-future
Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2015
March 2016. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is the United Nations system’s authoritative voice on weather, climate and water. For over two decades, WMO has published annual assessments of the state of the global climate in the U.N.’s six official languages to inform governments about global climate trends and extreme and notable events at the national and regional levels. These assessments integrate and analyze information provided by leading climate data centers and by the world’s National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs).
http://www.climatecentral.org/wmo-state-of-the-climate
(Read the Report Summary here – and note links provided to related videos, interactives, maps, images & other resources. The full 28-page report ‘WMO Statement on the status of the global climate in 2015’ can be downloaded here:http://library.wmo.int/pmb_ged/wmo_1167_en.pdf)
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Marshall Shepherd: 96% of American Meteorological Society members think climate change is happening.
March 24, 2016. You may have seen them. Media reports a few years ago claiming that a survey of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) refutes the consensus position regarding climate change. When I saw how that survey and the results were being twisted and distorted, I realized that people read things with an eye for what they want to believe, so-called confirmation bias. AMS Executive Director Dr. Keith Seitter even wrote on the AMS website clarifying the results andcondemning rampant distortion that was being spread. A full statement of the survey authors’ response to the horrific distortion of their findings can be found at this link. With such a mischaracterized response, the AMS felt that a new survey was needed. The preliminary results of that new report were released this week.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2016/03/24/96-of-american-meteorological-society-members-think-climate-change-is-happening-says-new-report/#34f13dd13935 & http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/t/5863920798415471994
Rockefeller to ditch oil, gas, holdings on ethical and economic grounds: criticises Exxon Mobil
Rockefeller Dumps Oil, Exxon Mobil Charity linked to the founder of Exxon Mobil’s precursor says it will ditch its oil and gas holdings. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/in-a-changing-climate-rockefeller-fund-dumps-oil-exxon-mobil-holdings Alan NeuhauserMarch 24, 2016,Citing “morally reprehensible conduct on the part of Exxon Mobil,” the Rockefeller Family Foundation – whose namesake, John D. Rockefeller, founded Exxon’s precursor, Standard Oil – will dump its holdings in America’s largest oil conglomerate, plus coal and tar sands companies, the charity announced Wednesday.
The nonprofit pointed to both economics and ethics: Amid a huge surplus of oil and sluggish global demand, oil prices are in the middle of a 19-month slump, spurring hundreds of thousands of layoffsfrom the energy sector worldwide. Climate change, meanwhile, has created a moral imperative to decrease the planet’s reliance on fossil fuels like oil, the fund said.
“While the global community works to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, it makes little sense—financially or ethically—to continue holding investments in these companies,” the charity said in a statement. “We must keep most of the already discovered reserves in the ground if there is any hope for human and natural ecosystems to survive and thrive in the decades ahead.”
Exxon was the only company the charity singled-out by name. Last year, award-winning investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times reported that Exxon had known about global warming as early as 1977 and accounted for it in its financials, even as it emphasized to lawmakers and the public that the science was in doubt.
The New York Attorney General’s Office is investigating whether Exxon lied to investors, and the hashtag #ExxonKnew has become a mainstay on social media.
“The company worked since the 1980s to confuse the public about climate change’s march, while simultaneously spending millions to fortify its own infrastructure against climate change’s destructive consequences and track new exploration opportunities as the Arctic’s ice receded,” the fund said of Exxon. “As a matter of good governance, we cannot be associated with a company exhibiting such apparent contempt for the public interest.”
[ALSO: Exxon Mobil Under Investigation for Climate Change Denial]
There are also financial imperatives, especially in the firm’s decision to turn away from coal and the tar sands: While coal-fired electricity is the nation’s greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions, the sector has also been stricken by a rash of bankruptcies as power producers have switched from coal to cheap and cleaner-burning natural gas. Last week, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal producer, indicated it was on the brink of going under.
Likewise, extracting crude from the tar-sands – largely concentrated in western Canada – emits far more heat-trapping carbon than conventional oil and gas drilling. But the process is also far more expensive, and with both low oil prices and the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline’s northern stretch last year, companies have pulled out from the sector.
The Family Foundation’s announcement comes a year and a half after another Rockefeller charity, theRockefeller Brothers Fund, revealed it would eliminate $860 million it held in oil, coal and other fossil fuels.
“History moves on, as it must,” the Family Foundation said.
Highest in 666 million years – today’s carbon emissions
Carbon emissions rate ‘highest in 66 million years’ ABC News, 22 Mar 16 ABC Science The rate of carbon emissions is higher than at any time in fossil records stretching back 66 million years to the end of the age of the dinosaurs, according to a new study that sounds an alarm about risks to nature from anthropogenic warming.
Key points
- During Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55.8 million years ago temperatures rose 5 degrees C
- Scientists analysed marine fossils to determine rate of carbon emissions at this time
- Rate of carbon emissions was 10 times slower than current emissions
The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) event — which drove temperatures up by an estimated 5 degrees Celsius and damaged marine life by making the oceans acidic — is often seen as a parallel to the risks from the current build-up of carbon in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
On present trajectories, greenhouse gas emissions will heat up Earth 3 to 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.
“Of all the changes we have seen in 66 million years, this event is the one that most looks like anthropogenic, or man-made, warming,” said study co-author Professor Andy Ridgwell, a paleo-climatologist at the University of Bristol.
Aside from the huge impact that killed the dinosaurs, what we are seeing now is the fastest rate of climate change in 66 million years.
Professor Andy Ridgwell
The parallels are striking: massive carbon emissions, followed by rapid global warming and major loss of species.
Fifty-six million years ago, those extinctions took place mainly in the ocean. Today the so-called “sixth great extinction” is underway both in the sea and on land………http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-22/carbon-emissions-‘highest-in-66-million-years’/7266032
World losing the battle against climate change: record-breaking heat
Record-breaking heat shows world ‘losing battle’ against climate change, ABC News 15 Mar 16 Alan Finkel tells Q&A Australia’s chief scientist has warned the planet is “losing the battle” against climate change, after new data showed February set a “completely unprecedented” record for the hottest month since global records began.
Meteorologist Dr Jeff Masters said although the absolute hottest month on record was July 2015, July and August tend to be 4C hotter than January and February because the large land mass in the Northern Hemisphere cools the planet during the northern winter.
Writing on the Weather Underground blog, Dr Masters and his co-author Bob Henson said February was exceptional because it was 1.35C hotter than the long-term average, while July was only 0.75C hotter than average.
“Perhaps even more remarkable is that February 2015 crushed the previous February record [set during the peak of the 1997-98 El Nino] by a massive 0.47C,” they wrote…….http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-14/february-smashed-all-time-global-heat-record/7246356
Sea levels could rise to mind-boggling levels
This mind-boggling study shows just how massive sea level rise really is, WP. By Chris Mooney March 10 As our planet continues to warm, coastlines worldwide will retreat inland — in the long run, maybe by a lot. That means some coastal cities, in places like Florida — where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated precisely this topic on Wednesday night — stand to lose quite a lot of land where people currently live and own property.
It seems doubtful that we can defend all of the many coastal zones that will be at risk. So is there any other way to head off sea level rise?
It may sound ridiculous to even contemplate. But in a new study just out in the open access journal Earth System Dynamics, scientists have actually published an idea for doing that and provided some calculations regarding the scale of what it would take. That scale turns out to be simply massive, ultimately rendering the idea about as unfathomable as the oceans themselves.
But then, that’s kind of the point.
Antarctic ice sheets melting: when will the tipping point be reached?
Tipping point: how we predict when Antarctica’s melting ice sheets will flood the seas https://theconversation.com/tipping-point-how-we-predict-when-antarcticas-melting-ice-sheets-will-flood-the-seas-56125 March 14, 2016 Antarctica is already feeling the heat of climate change, with rapid melting and retreat of glaciers over recent decades.
Ice mass loss from Antarctica and Greenland contributes about 20% to the current rate of global sea level rise. This ice loss is projected to increase over the coming century.
A recent article on The Conversation raised the concept of “climate tipping points”: thresholds in the climate system that, once breached, lead to substantial and irreversible change.
Such a climate tipping point may occur as a result of the increasingly rapid decline of the Antarctic ice sheets, leading to a rapid rise in sea levels. But what is this threshold? And when will we reach it?
What does the tipping point look like? The Antarctic ice sheet is a large mass of ice, up to 4 km thick in some places, and is grounded on bedrock. Ice generally flows from the interior of the continent towards the margins, speeding up as it goes.
Where the ice sheet meets the ocean, large sections of connected ice – ice shelves – begin to float. These eventually melt from the base or calve off as icebergs. The whole sheet is replenished by accumulating snowfall.
Floating ice shelves act like a cork in a wine bottle, slowing down the ice sheet as it flows towards the oceans. If ice shelves are removed from the system, the ice sheet will rapidly accelerate towards the ocean, bringing about further ice mass loss.
A tipping point occurs if too much of the ice shelf is lost. In some glaciers, this may spark irreversible retreat.
Where is the tipping point?
One way to identify a tipping point involves figuring out how much shelf ice Antarctica can lose, and from where, without changing the overall ice flow substantially.
A recent study found that 13.4% of Antarctic shelf ice – distributed regionally across the continent – does not play an active role in ice flow. But if this “safety band” were removed, it would result in significant acceleration of the ice sheet.
Antarctic ice shelves have been thinning at an overall rate of about 300 cubic km per year between 2003 and 2012 and are projected to thin even further over the 21st century. This thinning will move Antarctic ice shelves towards a tipping point, where irreversible collapse of the ice shelf and increase in sea levels may follow.
How do we predict when will it happen?
Some areas of West Antarctica may be already close to the tipping point. For example, ice shelves along the coast of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas are the most rapidly thinning and have the smallest “safety bands” of all Antarctic ice shelves.
To predict when the “safety band” of ice might be lost, we need to project changes into the future. This requires better understanding of processes that remove ice from the ice sheet, such as melting at the base of ice shelves and iceberg calving.
Melting beneath ice shelves is the main source of Antarctic ice loss. It is driven by contact between warmer sea waters and the underside of ice shelves.
To figure out how much ice will be lost in the future requires knowledge of how quickly the oceans are warming, where these warmer waters will flow, and the role of the atmosphere in modulating these interactions. That’s a complex task that requires computer modelling.
Predicting how quickly ice shelves break up and form icebergs is less well understood and is currently one of the biggest uncertainties in future Antarctic mass loss. Much of the ice lost when icebergs calve occurs in the sporadic release of extremely large icebergs, which can be tens or even hundreds of kilometres across.
It is difficult to predict precisely when and how often large icebergs will break off. Models that can reproduce this behaviour are still being developed.
Scientists are actively researching these areas by developing models of ice sheets and oceans, as well as studying the processes that drive mass loss from Antarctica. These investigations need to combine long-term observations with models: model simulations can then be evaluated and improved, making the science stronger.
The link between ice sheets, oceans, sea ice and atmosphere is one of the least understood, but most important factors in Antarctica’s tipping point. Understanding it better will help us project how much sea levels will rise, and ultimately how we can adapt.
Exxon’s scandalous dishonesty about climate change
Scandal! Exxon knew about climate change, boosted denialism, misled shareholders, went carbon heavy, Ecologist Bill McKibben 9th March 2016 One of the world’s biggest energy companies has been caught out in what may be the biggest ever climate scandal, writes Bill McKibben. Way back in the 1980s ExxonMobil knew of the ‘potentially catastrophic’ and ‘irreversible’ effects of increasing fossil fuel consumption, but chose to cover up the findings, spread misinformation on climate change, and go for high carbon energy sources……….
Exxon twisted the facts to further its own agenda
So here’s what happened. Exxon used its knowledge of climate change to plan its own future. The company, for instance, leased large tracts of the Arctic for oil exploration, territory where, as a company scientist pointed out in 1990, “potential global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs.”
Not only that but, “from the North Sea to the Canadian Arctic,” Exxon and its affiliates set about “raising the decks of offshore platforms, protecting pipelines from increasing coastal erosion, and designing helipads, pipelines, and roads in a warming and buckling Arctic.”In other words, the company started climate-proofing its facilities to head off a future its own scientists knew was inevitable.
But in public? There, Exxon didn’t own up to any of this. In fact, it did precisely the opposite. In the 1990s, it started to put money and muscle into obscuring the science around climate change. It funded think tanks that spread climate denial and even recruited lobbying talent from the tobacco industry.
It also followed the tobacco playbook when it came to the defence of cigarettes by highlighting ‘uncertainty’ about the science of global warming. And it spent lavishly to back political candidates who were ready to downplay global warming.
Its CEO, Lee Raymond, even travelled to China in 1997 and urged government leaders there to go full steam ahead in developing a fossil fuel economy. The globe was cooling, not warming, he insisted, while his engineers were raising drilling platforms to compensate for rising seas.
“It is highly unlikely”, he said, “that the temperature in the middle of the next century will be significantly affected whether policies are enacted now or 20 years from now.” This wasn’t just wrong, but completely and overwhelmingly wrong – as wrong as a man could be.
Sins of omission
In fact, Exxon’s deceit – its ability to discourage regulations for 20 years – may turn out to be absolutely crucial in the planet’s geological history. It’s in those two decades that greenhouse gas emissions soared; as did global temperatures until, in the twenty-first century, ‘hottest year ever recorded’ has become a tired cliché.
And here’s the bottom line: had Exxon told the truth about what it knew back in 1990, we might not have wasted a quarter of a century in a phony debate about the science of climate change, nor would anyone have accused Exxon of being ‘alarmist.’ We would simply have gotten to work.
But Exxon didn’t tell the truth. A Yale study published last fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that money from Exxon and the Koch Brothers played a key role in polarizing the climate debate in this country.
The company’s sins – of omission and commission – may even turn out to be criminal. Whether the company ‘lied to the public’ is the question that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman decided to investigate last fall in a case that could make him the great lawman of our era if his investigation doesn’t languish.
There are various consumer fraud statutes that Exxon might have violated and it might have failed to disclose relevant information to investors, which is the main kind of lying that’s illegal in this country of ours. Now, Schneiderman’s got back up from California Attorney General Kamala Harris, and maybe – if activists continue to apply pressure – from the Department of Justice as well, though it’s highly publicized unwillingness to go after the big banks does not inspire confidence.
Here’s the thing: all that was bad back then, but Exxon and many of its Big Energy peers are behaving at least as badly now when the pace of warming is accelerating. And it’s all legal – dangerous, stupid, and immoral, but legal.
Exxon finally admits global warming is occurring – but there’s no big problem………
The carbon tax and the political stonewall
In other words, we’re no longer talking about outright denial, just a denial that much really needs to be done. And even when the company has proposed doing something, its proposals have been strikingly ethereal. Exxon’s PR team, for instance, has discussedsupporting a price on carbon, which is only what economists left, right, and centre have been recommending since the 1980s.
But the minimal price they recommend – somewhere in the range of $40 to $60 a ton – wouldn’t do much to slow down their business. After all, they insist that all their reserves are still recoverable in the context of such a price increase, which would serve mainly to make life harder for the already terminal coal industry.
But say you think it’s a great idea to put a price on carbon – which, in fact, it is, since every signal helps sway investment decisions. In that case, Exxon’s done its best to make sure that what they pretend to support in theory will never happen in practice…….
Now the cover ups are being investigated – could Exxon be liable?
As with the tobacco companies in the decades when they were covering up the dangers of cigarettes, there’s a good chance that the Big Energy companies were in this together through their trade associations and other front groups.
In fact, just before Christmas, Inside Climate News published some revealing new documents about the role that Texaco, Shell, and other majors played in an American Petroleum Institute study of climate change back in the early 1980s. A trial would be a transformative event – a reckoning for the crime of the millennium.
But while we’re waiting for the various investigations to play out, there’s lots of organizing going at the state and local level when it comes to Exxon, climate change, and fossil fuels – everything from politely asking more states to join the legal process to politely shutting down gas stations for a few hours to pointing out to New York and California that they might not want to hold millions of dollars of stock in a company they’re investigating. It may even be starting to work.
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, for instance, singled Exxon out in his state of the state address last month. He called on the legislature to divest the state of its holdings in the company because of its deceptions:
“This is a page right out of Big Tobacco, which for decades denied the health risks of their product as they were killing people. Owning ExxonMobil stock is not a business Vermont should be in.”
The question is: Why on God’s not so green Earth any more would anyone want to be Exxon’s partner?
Action: BreakFree2016, May 4-15 – a global wave of mass actions will target the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects, in order tokeep coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerate the just transition to 100% renewable energy. Across the world, people are showing the courage toconfront polluters where they are most powerful – from the halls of power to the wells and mines themselves. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987359/epic_scandal_how_exxon_boosted_climate_change_denial_infiltrated_politics_misled_shareholders.html
World is warming faster than expected – Australian study
Dangerous global warming will happen sooner than thought – study, Guardian, Joshua Robertson, 10 Mar 16 Australian researchers say a global tracker monitoring energy use per person points to 2C warming by 2030. The world is on track to reach dangerous levels of global warming much sooner than expected, according to new Australian research that highlights the alarming implications of rising energy demand.
University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers have developed a “global energy tracker” which predicts average world temperatures could climb 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2020.
That forecast, based on new modelling using long-term average projections on economic growth, population growth and energy use per person, points to a 2C rise by 2030.
The UN conference on climate change in Paris last year agreed to a 1.5C rise as the preferred limit to protect vulnerable island states, and a 2C rise as the absolute limit.
The new modelling is the brainchild of Ben Hankamer from UQ’s institute for molecular bioscience and Liam Wagner from Griffith University’s department of accounting, finance and economics, whose work was published in the journal Plos One on Thursday.
It is the first model to include energy use per person – which has more than doubled since 1950 – alongside economic and population growth as a way of predicting carbon emissions and corresponding temperature increases.
The researchers said the earlier than expected advance of global warming revealed by their modelling added a newfound urgency to the switch from fossil fuels to renewables.
Hankamer said: “The more the economy grows, the more energy you use … the conclusion really is that economists and environmentalists are on the same side and have both come to the same conclusion: we’ve got to act now and we don’t have much time.”……..
The researchers suggested switching $500bn in subsidies for fossil fuels worldwide to renewables as a “cost neutral” way to fast-track the energy transition.
Wagner said pulling the rug from out under the fossil fuels industry was a move of “creative destruction” and “more a political issue rather than an economic issue”…….http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/10/dangerous-global-warming-will-happen-sooner-than-thought-study
Even more serious than we thought – climate chnage and sea level rise
Sea level rise threatens larger number of people than earlier estimated, Science Daily, March 8, 2016
Source:
- Aalto University
- Summary:
- More people live close to sea coast than earlier estimated, researchers have concluded after a new study. These people are the most vulnerable to the rise of the sea level, increased number of floods and intensified storms. By using recent increased resolution datasets, researchers estimate that 1.9 billion inhabitants, 28% of the world’s total population, live closer than 100 km from the coast in areas less than 100 meters above the present sea level.
-
- By 2050 the amount of people in that zone is predicted to increase to 2.4 billion, while population living lower than 5 meters will reach 500 million people. Many of these people need to adapt their livelihoods to changing climate, say Assistant Professor Matti Kummu from Aalto University.The study found that while population and wealth concentrate by the sea, food must be grown further and further away from where people live. Highlands and mountain areas are increasingly important from food production point of view, but also very vulnerable to changes in climate.
- Over the past century there has been a clear tendency that cropland and pasture areas have grown most in areas outside the population hotspots, and decreased in coastal areas. This will most probably only continue in the future, summarises Professor Olli Varis from Aalto University…….http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160308105053.htm
Nuclear power protects the climate? Quite the opposite
Climate protection through nuclear power plants? Hardly. http://thebulletin.org/commentary/climate-protection-through-nuclear-power-plants-hardly9170 18 FEBRUARY 2016 Lutz Mez Berlin Centre for Caspian Region Studies Freie Universität Berlin
The electrical power production sector accounts for about 28 percent of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and constitutes by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. That is why supposedly carbon dioxide-free nuclear power plants have frequently been praised as a panacea for addressing climate change. However, in 2013 nuclear electricity contributed just 10.6 percent of global electricity generation, and because electricity represents only 18 percent of total global final energy consumption, the nuclear share is just 1.7 percent of global final energy consumption. Even if generation in nuclear power plants could be increased significantly, nuclear power will remain a marginal energy source. Therefore, the turnaround in energy systems has to prioritize energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy technologies and cogeneration plants, which do not cause any more carbon dioxide emissions than nuclear power plants.
From a systemic perspective, nuclear power plants are by no means free of carbon dioxide emissions. Today, they produce up to one third of the greenhouse gases that large modern gas power plants produce. Carbon dioxide emissions connected to production of nuclear energy amounts to (depending on where the uranium used in a reactor is mined and enriched) between 7 and 126 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour, according to an analysis by International Institute for Sustainability Analysis and Strategy co-founder Uwe Fritsche. For a typical nuclear power plant in Germany, the specific emission estimate of 28 grams has been calculated. An initial estimate of global carbon dioxide emissions through the generation of nuclear electricity in 2014 registered at about 110,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—or roughly as much as the carbon dioxide emissions of a country like the Czech Republic. And this data does not even include the emissions caused by storage of nuclear waste.
In the coming decades, indirect carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear power plants will increase considerably, because high-grade resources of uranium are exhausted and much more fossil energy will have to be used to mine uranium. In view of this trend, nuclear power plants will no longer have an emissions advantage over modern gas-fired power plants, let alone in comparison to the advantages offered by increased energy efficiency or greater use of renewable energies.
Nuclear power plants may also contribute to climate change by emitting radioactive isotopes such as tritium or carbon 14 and the radioactive noble gas krypton 85. Krypton 85 is produced in nuclear power plants and released on a massive scale in the reprocessing of spent fuel. The concentration of krypton 85 in Earth’s atmosphere has soared over the last few years as a result of nuclear fission, reaching a new record. Krypton 85 increases the natural, radiation-induced ionization of the air. Thus the electrical balance of the Earth’s atmosphere changes, which poses a significant threat to weather patterns and climate. Even though krypton 85 is “one of the most toxic agents for climate,” according to German physicist and political figure Klaus Buchner, these emissions have not received any attention in international climate-protection negotiations down to the present.
As for the assertion that nuclear power is needed to promote climate protection, exactly the opposite would appear to be the case: Nuclear power plants must be closed down quickly to exert pressure on operators and the power plant industry to redouble efforts at innovation in the development of sustainable and socially compatible energy technologies and especially the use of smart energy services.
New Report Ties “Hottest Year on Record” to Human Toll of Disasters
Natural disasters made 2015 a miserable year for many people around the world. According to the United Nations’ Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the statistics were brutal. At least 98.6 million people were affected by natural disasters ranging from droughts to floods, and the economic damage could have been as high as $66.5 billion. Using the data available from the Belgian non-profit Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), the UN reports that almost 23,000 people died from the 346 natural disasters reported across the world.
1 This Month
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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