Climate Climate & Energy

Climate change is about equality among nations and fundamental human rights

((equity_include)) This is a guest essay by Dr. Wolfgang Sachs, author and research director at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy. Sachs (together with Timan Santarius et al) has just published a collection of essays called Fair Future: Resource Conflicts, Security, and Global Justice. This is part of a series on climate equity. […]

Your chance to get in on the hydrogen action

Treehugger reports on a public bet I have made with Greg Blencoe, CEO of Hydrogen Discoveries:

Greg Blencoe wins if hydrogen fuel cell vehicles hit 1% of new sales of the typically-defined car and light truck market in the U.S. during 2015 or any year before. Joseph Romm wins if it is 2016 or any year after.

At stake is $1000, plus a certain amount of pride (if I lose, I must be photographed wearing a t-shirt saying "I was wrong about hydrogen.")

I am certainly prepared to make that bet with pretty much anyone -- though I might have to reconsider in the (very) unlikely event I get too many takers. Reasons why you shouldn't take the bet are below:

World’s oceans sequestering less CO2 than expected

The world’s oceans appear to be sequestering far less carbon dioxide than one would hope, says a new study. CO2 soakage by the north Atlantic Ocean has lessened dramatically in the last decade. “The speed and size of the change show that we cannot take for granted the ocean sink for the carbon dioxide,” says […]

The fight against coal makes for strange bedfellows out West

The fight against coal is spilling out of the "environmental" box the coal industry wants to keep it in: An increasingly vocal, potent and widespread anti-coal movement is developing [across the West]. Environmental groups that have long opposed new power plants are being joined by ranchers, farmers, retired homeowners, ski resort operators and even religious […]

October is Energy Awareness Month

October is Energy Awareness Month. What's more, October first got this designation from the first President Bush in 1991.

Why do I know this? Because the only people I have ever met who know about Energy Awareness Month are people who have worked at the Department of Energy. I'm going to change all that with this blog post, which will probably double the number of people aware of Energy Awareness Month. Don't worry, though, the DOE has made it easy to take action:

To help you customize your energy awareness program, You Have the Power campaign artwork is available for you to download from the images [on this website].

This is my favorite downloadable poster. Click on the image for animation -- I could watch it for hours. And yes, since you ask, the energy savings from walking one or two flights of stairs instead of using an elevator is humongous -- easily equal to those cancelled Kansas coal plants. Easily! (Although if there are other people waiting for the elevator, then it was going to run anyway, but don't go all techno-nerd on me -- it is the thought that counts!)

Even the greenest suburbs can’t touch low urban emission rates

Last Sunday, the Washington Post published a piece by Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres which sought to debunk the ideas that dense urban areas are greener than their suburban counterparts and that encouraging dense growth might play a significant role in reducing America’s carbon output. The piece was wrong or misleading on practically every point, […]

George Will’s latest column tests the limits of self parody

George Will pulls off a real triple axel of hackery in his latest column, taking the Stepford flimflam of Bjorn Lomborg and ladling on a glutinous serving of his own pinkie-raised pomposity. Rarely has such a poor grasp of the facts been presented with such preening self-regard … at least since the last George Will […]

Methane from Vermont dairy farms to provide electricity for utility customers

Central Vermont Public Service is laying claim to one of the fastest-growing renewable energy programs in the country: its customers can now choose to receive all, half, or a quarter of their electrical energy through the Cow Power program, which digests cow manure at participating dairy farms, captures the methane, and uses that to power generators. CVPS customers pay a premium of 4 cents per KWh, delivering another revenue stream for farmers, who are paid 95 percent of the market price for all of the energy sold to CVPS.

From denying climate disruption to denying a coal plant permit application

Who knew Kansas and Oklahoma could be so far apart? Worlds apart.

From an interview with Inhofe:

[Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.)] also co-authored an article for the Energy Law Journal on "Energy and the Environment: The Future of Natural Gas in America."

In the interview, this self-described "one-man Truth Squad" provides a frank and candid account of the evolution of his position on global warming, from believing that manmade gases are the cause of climate change to advocating against the reduction of man-made gases at great costs.

Inhofe also provides in the interview four points in rebuttal to the global warming issue as presented in what he described as Vice President Al Gore's "science fiction movie.".

Against this: Kansas denies a coal plant's permit application -- because of CO2 concerns!

Climate change mitigation strategy could actually damage the planet

Earl Killian sends me this WSJ op-ed: "Thinking Big on Global Warming" (subs. req'd.). He sees some good news in it -- the WSJ "published a non-denier [opinion] piece."

Yes, but geo-engineering is one of the delayers' sexiest strategies -- holding out the promise of a pure techno-fix that doesn't require all those annoying regulations needed to completely change our energy system. The conservative (duh!) authors of the WSJ piece embrace trying to "develop capabilities for increasing the fraction of sunlight that is reflected outward by the upper atmosphere back into space." They claim: "We know it would work because it happens naturally all the time."

Yes, volcanoes spew out aerosols that cool the Earth, but I have previously debunked aerosol geo-engineering. The authors seem unaware of a major study that finds "doing so would cause problems of its own, including potentially catastrophic drought."

And, of course, this strategy allows unfettered ocean acidification, and as noted recently, "when CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans."

So we might temporarily stave off superheating the planet, but still bring ruinous climate change and destroyed the ocean ecosystem! The authors claim:

Do not try to sell climate geo-engineering to committed enemies of fossil fuels. Although several geo-engineering options appear to be highly cost-effective, ideological opposition to them is often fierce. Fashionable blogs are replete with conspiracy theories and misinformed attacks.

Who are these enemies of fossil fuels? I don't know such people. I know enemies of greenhouse gases. I am one of those. But we tend to like natural gas, and many of us would be okay with coal if you added permanent carbon capture and storage. Greenhouse-gas mitigation avoids catastrophic global warming with high confidence and few negative side effects (and, indeed, many positive side effects). No one has proposed a geoengineering plan that meets either of those two tests.