Climate Climate & Energy

Climate change doing a number on U.S. West, says USDA report

Climate change is having “profound impacts” on the U.S. West and will continue to do so in coming decades, says a new report spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Titled “The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity,” the report focuses on Western rangelands, arid lands, forests, and fisheries. […]

Melting Antarctic glaciers may be releasing DDT, says study

Adélie penguins in the Antarctic are as chock-full of pesticide DDT as they were in the 1970s, even though global DDT use has dropped 80 percent in the past three decades, says new research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers speculate that climate change is at fault — honestly, is there anything […]

One of permaculture’s founder envisions possible futures

An important new site from David Holmgren, one of the fathers of permaculture: Future Scenarios.

He writes, "The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other."

Holmgren uses a scenario planning framework to bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural and economic implications of peak oil and climate change.

"Scenario planning allows us to use stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail or be transformed," says Holmgren.

Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Scenarios range from the relatively benign Green Tech to the near catastrophic Lifeboats scenario.

(h/t to Adam at Energy Bulletin)

Somebody forgot to tell Rockport that coal is cheap

How much would your town pay to stabilize the electric bills of every home and business in it for the next 25 years?

Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine

Every now and then, one hears complaints about solar energy: "But it takes too much land!" "An entire Idaho!" "Three Californias!"

Nevada Solar One takes up about 400 acres, mostly for mirrors and heat engines. You would have to mine about 5,300 acres to feed a coal-fired powered plant producing the same amount of electricity. Even acre for acre, I'll take Solar One's pleasant campus over a coal mine.

Math below the fold.

Wind energy ad wins Cannes award

I think I’ve posted this before, but a quick search didn’t turn it up. Anyway, this video, an ad for Epuron energy company created by the Nordpol+Hamburg agency, won the “Golden Lion” in Cannes. Check it out:

Geothermal power: a core climate solution

While wind and solar get the media attention of a sexy starlet, good old geothermal power is treated like an aging character actor.

But geothermal energy is, in fact, sizzling hot these days. Big-time investors from Warren Buffet to Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley to Google have begun investing:

In 2007, private equity firms invested more than $400 million in geothermal energy, which is derived from hot water under the Earth's surface and can be used for space heating or generating electricity.

Why the interest in a form of energy that President Bush repeatedly tried to zero out of the Department of Energy Budget? One reason is the soaring cost of conventional power like coal and nuclear. Another is the growing awareness of just how much is zero-carbon electricity will need in coming decades.

CO2 released from disappearing permafrost must be factored into climate projections

What is the point of no return for the climate -- the level of CO2 concentrations beyond which catastrophic outcomes are virtually unstoppable?

No one knows for sure, but my vote goes for the point at which we start to lose a substantial fraction of the tundra's carbon to the atmosphere -- substantial being 0.1 percent per year! As we saw in my last post, frozen away in the permafrost is more carbon than the atmosphere currently contains (and much of that is in the form of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide).

What is the point of no return for the tundra? A major 2005 study ($ub. req'd) led by NCAR climate researcher David Lawrence found that virtually the entire top 11 feet of permafrost around the globe could disappear by the end of this century.

Stop the presses!

A report put together by the National Coal Council finds that coal is essential and it’s not going anywhere and reducing coal use would mean the widespread death of puppies and cute children but the full-scale use of all available coal will lead to a country infused by pony spirits!

A video on the great coal myth

The new but already-going-gangbusters Washington Independent has teamed up with the also new and also gangbusters American News Project to put together a video called "How clean is clean coal?" Good stuff: