Weak outcome of UN climate change talks in Madrid

December 16, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

UN climate talks not getting very far on climate action

UN talks struggle to stave off climate chaos,   https://www.sbs.com.au/news/un-talks-struggle-to-stave-off-climate-chaos 13 Dec 19, Observers and delegates at the UN’s COP25 climate summit said negotiators had largely failed to live up to the conference’s motto: Time for Action.

United Nations climate negotiations in Madrid were set to wrap up with even the best-case outcome likely to fall well short of what science says is needed to avert a future ravaged by global warming.

The COP25 summit comes on the heels of climate-related disasters across the planet, including unprecedented cyclones, deadly droughts and record-setting heatwaves.

As pressure inside and outside the talks mounts, old splits dividing rich polluters and developing nations – over who should slash greenhouse gas emissions by how much, and how to pay the trillions needed to live in a climate-addled world — have reemerged.

Newer fissures, meanwhile, between poor, climate vulnerable nations and emerging giants such as China and India – the world’s No.1 and No.4 emitters – may further stymie progress.

To not lose time, the 12-day meet was moved at the last minute from original host Chile due to social unrest.

Not even appearances from wunderkind campaigner Greta Thunberg – named Time Person of the Year Wednesday, much to the chagrin of Donald Trump — could spur countries to boost carbon-cutting pledges that are, taken together, woefully inadequate.

“We are appalled at the state of negotiations,” said Carlos Fuller, lead negotiator for the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), many of whose members face an existential threat due to rising sea levels.

Shifting alliances

The narrow aim of the Madrid negotiations is to finalise the rulebook for the 2015 climate accord, which enjoins nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius.

Earth has already warmed 1C, and is on track to heat up another two or three degrees by 2100.

But “raising ambition” on emissions remains the overarching goal in Madrid.

There are two very clear visions,” Spain’s minister for energy and climate change Teresa Ribera told reporters.

“There are those that want to move quicker and those that want to hide behind things which aren’t working, so as not to advance.”

The deadline under the Paris treaty for revisiting carbon cutting commitments – known as NDCs, or nationally determined contributions – is 2020, ahead of the next climate summit in Glasgow.

But Madrid was seen as a crucial launch pad where countries could show their good intentions. Nearly 80 countries have said they intend to do more, but they only represent 10 percent of global emissions.

Conspicuously absent are China, India and Brazil, all of whom have indicated they will not follow suit, insisting that first-world emitters step up.

Fantasy land’

But some countries historically aligned with the emerging giants over the course of the 25-year talks broke rank Thursday.

“The failure of major emitters — including Australia, the United States, Canada, Russia, India, China, Brazil – ‘to commit to submitting revised NDCs suitable for achieving a 1.5C world shows a lack of ambition that also undermines ours,” AOSIS said in a statement.

The talks received a meagre shot in the arm Friday after the EU pledged to make the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050.

The much-heralded decision was immediately undermined however by the refusal of Poland – a major emitter – to sign on.

The UN said this month that in order for the world to limit warming to 1.5C, emissions would need to drop over seven percent annually to 2030, requiring nothing less than a restructuring of the global economy.

In fact, they are currently rising year-on-year, and have grown four percent since the Paris deal was signed.

“It’s basically like what’s happening in the real world and in the streets, the protesters, doesn’t exist,” Alden Meyer from the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP.

“We are in a fantasy land here.”

Without strong commitments from big emitters to up their own contributions to the climate fight, Meyer said the talks would have failed to fulfil their purpose.

“Countries need to be on a track to be 1.5C compatible, that’s the bottom line.”

December 14, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | 1 Comment

Nuclear power useless as a technology to counter global heating

The Tantalizing Nuclear Mirage, Many see nuclear power as a necessary part of any carbon-neutral mix. The reality isn’t so simple. The American Prospect, BY ALEXANDER SAMMON DECEMBER 5, 2019 “………..

If it’s going to take 10 to 15 years to see a plant through to completion, even with massive financial backing, that’s seemingly impossible to square with the 11 years to decarbonize. At the very least, we’d need hundreds, if not thousands of plants already under construction just to make a dent. Booker, Yang, and other advocates are betting that R&D might accelerate that process, but in a real sense it’s already too late.

So if new construction can’t be counted on, and the window for adding new nuclear to the fleet has already shut, what about the reactors we currently have? Has their environmental potential gotten short shrift?

While nuclear fission emits far less carbon dioxide than energy production by oil and gas, the process of getting to that energy generation complicates nuclear’s claim to zero-carbon status. Uranium mining, processing, and transport are all carbon-intensive procedures done by diesel-powered heavy machinery. Instead of carbon, the plants themselves emit heat, often in great quantities, which can warm nearby air and water dramatically, killing fish and wildlife and afflicting neighboring habitats.

And while nuclear may maintain a cleaner sheet than fossil fuels when it comes to CO2, its record on H2O is less rosy. An American nuclear plant can require between 19 million and 1.4 billion gallons of water a day, just for purposes of cooling. Because of that implacable thirst, it’s imperative that nuclear plants are constructed near major water sources.

Thus, nuclear plants dot our rivers and coastline, each of which carries with it its own climate-specific challenges. Plants built near abundant freshwater—rivers and lakes—have been forced to contend with the twin challenges of too much water and not enough. In recent years, nuclear reactors, like those on the Great Lakes, have been forced to shut down when droughts have plagued rivers and lakes, reducing water levels to perilous lows. Meanwhile, in places like Nebraska, flood risks have necessitated shutdowns. And in France, which sports one of the most robust nuclear programs in the world, heat waves have caused water temperatures to surge to the point of shutdowns multiple summers in a row.

In fact, a 2012 study published in Nature Climate Change forecasted a decrease in thermoelectric power generating capacity of up to 19 percent in Europe and 16 percent in the United States for the period 2031-2060, just due to lack of cooling water. Extant nuclear plants may not accelerate a rapidly warming climate, but it remains to be seen if they can functionally exist in one.

Coastal plants face climate-induced challenges of their own. Hurricane Sandy, which laid siege to the Atlantic coast in 2012, forced seven nuclear plant shutdowns due to flooding, storm debris, and wind damage. Earlier this year, Bloomberg Businessweek identified 19 U.S. nuclear plants under threat from rising seas, and 54 facilities (out of a national total of 60) that “weren’t designed to handle the flood risk they face.” And that was before a November report found nearly four times as many people as previously thought are living on land that is likely to flood at least once a year on average by mid-century. Large-scale retreat from low-lying coastal cities is going to be a reality, and nuclear power plants can’t move with a shifting coastline. Even if they could, plants that draw on saltwater for cooling would suffer similarly diminished capacity as global ocean temperatures rise, as well.

Those rising sea levels are also a problem for the ever-perplexing, still unresolved issue of waste disposal. Beyond the controversial Yucca Mountain disposal site in Nevada, which has failed to get off the ground, much nuclear waste is simply stored on site. At the now-decommissioned San Onofre plant in Southern California and the Pilgrim plant in Cape Cod, the waste is buried beneath the sand at the water’s edge. “Four decades of radioactive waste being stored right there on the water line,” says Kate Brown, a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. “It’s a short-term solution for a long-term problem.”

That also means that sea-level rise threatens waste disposal, and with no way to check for leaks, the impact of rising seas on that waste remains largely unknown. But in the Marshall Islands, the site of one of the largest American nuclear waste disposal venues, known as the Runit Dome, the effect of sea-level rise is certain: The concrete encasement is now at risk of collapsing as rising seas encroach.

If nuclear is too costly to factor in long-term, and too unstable to subsist in the present, the question remains of when to begin the transition away from it. The concern that an immediate shutdown of existing nuclear plants would lead to accelerating carbon emissions from either coal or natural gas as a substitute has led certain countries, like Sweden, to favor a slow phaseout of its nuclear fleet. France, too, despite heavy reliance on nuclear, has been discussing a slow, partial phaseout, in accordance with that rationale.

This was the fear when Germany, not long after the Fukushima meltdown, announced it would quickly shutter its entire nuclear power program. Initially, those concerns seemed vindicated. Carbon emissions spiked, as reliance on coal production increased. The country was quickly branded as a cautionary tale. But just a few short years after this campaign was waged, that analysis has changed dramatically. “Today renewables account for 40 percent of German energy production; 15 years ago it was in the single digits,” says Greg Jaczko, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Obama. Not only have renewables taken over the energy share once produced by nuclear, “they’ve done enough of a build that they’re going to eat into coal.”

It’s the same story in Japan, where emissions spiked briefly after Fukushima caused a wide-scale shutdown. Even today, only a couple of the country’s nuclear reactors have been brought back online. But thanks to an aggressive build-out of renewables, emissions are below where they were with a fully operating nuclear fleet. Countries that have chosen to decommission slowly have seen their renewable build-outs stymied accordingly; dependence on nuclear has decelerated an inevitable process. Sweden’s reliance on nuclear has been an impediment to renewable development, which is part of the reason the deadline for decommissioning keeps getting pushed. Bridge fuels have a way of making themselves permanent………….https://prospect.org/greennewdeal/the-tantalizing-nuclear-mirage/

December 7, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment