Climate Climate & Energy

Level of GHG emissions may be much higher than predicted

There are those who argue that it's irresponsible or alarmist to argue that there will be any climate change effects beyond those cited by the IPCC. I wonder what they'll make of this:

Notable quotable

"People use fossil fuels because the good Lord put them on earth for us to use." — Fred Palmer, senior VP of PR for coal giant Peabody Energy

Evaluating U.S. and EU policies

The last couple of months I've been busy preparing two major reports on government support for biofuels, both for the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). These reports follow on from our October 2006 report on support for biofuels in the United States, which we commissioned from Doug Koplow of Earth Track, and which has been cited numerous times on these pages.

Last month, we issued what we call our "Synthesis Report," our overview of government support for biofuels in selected OECD countries. Coming out right on the heels of the so-called "OECD Paper" (actually, a discussion document for a meeting of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, to which I contributed), "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in Selected OECD Countries" hasn't yet attracted much attention in the press. It is rather dense in parts, I'll admit. But it contains some crunchy numbers.

For example, we estimate that total support to biofuels in OECD countries was at least $11 billion in 2006, with most of that provided by the U.S. and the EU. Expressed in terms of dollars per greenhouse-gas emissions avoided, the levels vary widely, but in almost all countries, whether for ethanol and biodiesel, they exceed $250 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. That is several multiples of the highest price of a CO2-equivalent offset yet achieved on the European Climate Exchange.

Then, last week, we released our long-awaited report on "Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the European Union" ...

Boosting crops for fuel will hurt water supplies, says report

Increased production of corn and other crops to fulfill America’s biofuel gluttony could threaten both availability and quality of water supplies, according to a report released today by the National Research Council. Fulfilling President Bush’s stated goal of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017 “would mean a lot more fertilizers and pesticides” […]

Climate change will bring more humidity and heat-related deaths

Climate change is increasing global humidity, according to a new study in Nature. If the globe heats as projected, air stickiness could increase globally by up to 24 percent by 2100. Says study coauthor Katharine Willett, “Although it might not be a lethal kind of thing, it’s going to increase human discomfort.” For a lethal […]

Nuclear still on the verge of its comeback

If the nuclear industry “primes” for its long-rumored comeback much longer, the country’s going to get a collective case of blue balls. Meanwhile, this short excerpt pretty much contains the entire history of the nuclear debate in a nutshell: [Nuke company] NRG Energy chief executive David W. Crane proclaimed “a new day for energy in […]

Sorry, glacial thinning does not equal glacial growth

On Sunday, Bjørn Lomborg wrote:

And while the delegations first fly into Kangerlussuaq, about 100 miles to the south, they all change planes to go straight to Ilulissat -- perhaps because the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing.

But is it? I questioned this claim -- and asked readers for the relevant citation, which they provided. The key article from which he is drawing this claim is "Rapid Changes in Ice Discharge from Greenland Outlet Glaciers" from Science in March of this year. The article begins by noting ominously:

The recent, marked increase in ice discharge from many of Greenland's large outlet glaciers has upended the conventional view that variations in ice-sheet mass balance are dominated on short time scales by variations in surface balance, rather than ice dynamics. Beginning in the late 1990s and continuing through the past several years, the ice-flow speed of many tidewater outlet glaciers south of 72° North increased by up to 100%, increasing the ice sheet's contribution to sea-level rise by more than 0.25 mm/year. The synchronous and multiregional scale of this change and the recent increase in Arctic air and ocean temperatures suggest that these changes are linked to climate warming.

What the ozone hole tells us about the science of climate change

The atmospheric sciences community is excitedly discussing new results that potentially cast doubt on our understanding of the chemistry of the Antarctic ozone hole. The ozone hole is formed when two molecules of chlorine monoxide react with each other to form what is known as the chlorine dimer, ClOOCl, and that molecule is subsequently blasted apart by sunlight to release the chlorine atoms. New results suggest that this reaction is actually much slower than previously suggested. If this is true, it suggests that there is some important chemical process destroying ozone in the Antarctic stratosphere that we do not know about.

In reaction to this unexpected scientific result, stratospheric chemists are attacking the problem, trying to think up potential mechanisms that reconcile these new measurements with everything else we know about the chemistry of the stratosphere. As a former stratospheric chemist, I can say that I have not seen this level of excitement in the stratospheric chemistry community in at least 10 or 15 years.

So what does this tell us about the science of climate change? It tells us that many of the criticisms of climate science coming from the skeptics are dead wrong.

Walt Patterson argues that electricity cost comparisons are political, not economic

Comparisons of electricity generation costs from various sources are a ubiquitous feature of energy discussions. Virtually everyone accepts as fact that coal is the cheapest source of electricity, that natural gas is the next cheapest, that solar PV is the most expensive, that wind is competitive in some states and not others, etc. Sometimes the […]

Rocky rocks against coal

Consider the following: Rocky Anderson, maverick mayor of Salt Lake City, is awesome. The Beatles are awesome. Coal is the enemy of the human race. Consider, further, whether this might be the greatest story you’ve ever read in your entire life.