Climate Climate & Energy

Existential threats are a bummer

Following the letters to Grist complaining about a declining humor quotient and the posts wondering if we're just focusing too darn much on the climate crisis, it occurred to me that there's precedent for what we're going through.

Just like people in the USA and USSR had to get used to the idea of annihilation -- and still go about their daily lives -- we are watching people struggle with the problem of living their lives while knowing that the chances that their kids will be able to live nearly as well are declining rapidly.

Thus, the paradox: knowledge is no longer power. Instead, the better informed you are, the more likely you are to feel existential despair.

Bovines aren’t the only ones to blame

Thought cows were the only gassy animals belching up a climate change storm? Apparently the Scandinavian moose is also quite the methane machine: Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive [about 8,000 miles] in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a […]

Umbra on replacing a boiler

Dear Umbra, When changing boilers for heating a house for the next 30 to 40 years, should we choose gas or electric? We have gas now and want to go from 80 percent efficient to 95 percent efficient. About 60 percent of our electricity comes from Missouri River hydro and 40 percent from coal. We […]

A simple video about CFLs

Natalie Portman, Chloe Sevigny, and Kyra Sedgwick in a National Geographic Green video about CFLs:

Feds look into space solar

Perhaps in the future, all of our stuff will be powered by space solar. Wacky.

Read on

A study by Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab, to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), has the deniers and doubters delighted.

"Overturning the 'Consensus' in One Fell Swoop" gloats Planet Gore, which says the study "concludes that the Earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes" and so we "should expect about a 0.6°C additional increase in temperature between now and 2070″ [0.1°C per decade] if CO2 concentrations hit 550 parts per million, double preindustrial levels.

Is this possible? Aren't we already warming up 0.2°C per decade -- a rate that is expected to rise? Has future global warming been wildly overestimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consensus?

Or, as I argue in my book, has future global warming been underestimated by the IPCC? This is perhaps the central issue in the climate change debate, so this will be a long post. To cut to the chase, it is not possible for one study to overturn the consensus, and in any case this inadequately researched, overly simplistic, and mistake-riddled study certainly doesn't.

Climate sensitivity expert James Annan points out key mistakes that rip the guts out of Schwartz's analysis. That is strike one. Now I'll offer my two cents.

BLM offers yet another plan for drilling on Alaska’s sensitive North Slope

In 1923, President Warren G. Harding designated 23 million acres on Alaska's North Slope as a national petroleum reserve. The ecologically sensitive northeast corner of the reserve -- which includes pristine Lake Teshekpuk and is vital habitat for breeding caribou, migrating birds, and Inupiat Eskimos -- was closed to energy development by the Reagan, Bush Elder, and Clinton administrations. But damned if the current administration won't pull out all the stops trying to access it! The Bushies tried in 2005. They tried in 2006 -- twice. Last fall, a judge blocked the administration from its quest, saying it had failed to consider environmental impacts of drilling in the area, and ordered the Bureau of Land Management to develop a new plan. Yesterday, the agency obliged, offering a vague proposal which suggests various options for development. The BLM will offer final recommendations after a two-month public-input period, which starts Friday. So get thee to inputting!

sources: Reuters, Associated Press, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

comment on the plan: Bureau of Land Management website

From the Boston Globe, the dirty truth about ‘alternative energy’

Referring to high oil prices, the billionaire airline magnate Richard Branson recently declared, "Thank God it’s happened … A high oil price is what we needed to actually wake up the world" to the reality of climate change. (This from a man who openly pines for a techno fix that will allow us to burn […]

Sea levels may rise much faster and higher than predicted

Popular Science has published a terrific article, "Konrad Steffen: The Global Warming Prophet," about one of the world's leading climatologists. Steffen has spent "18 consecutive springs on the Greenland ice cap, personally building and installing the weather stations that help the world's scientists understand what's happening up there." The article notes:

Water from the melting ice sheet is gushing into the North Atlantic much faster than scientists had previously thought possible. The upshot of the news out of Swiss Camp is that sea levels may rise much higher and much sooner than even the most pessimistic climate forecasts predicted.

What is going on in Greenland? Steffen explains what he and NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally figured out from their study of fissures in the ice sheet (called moulins -- see figures above and below):

Cool Runnings

Effluent would be used to cool power plants in an innovative Maryland project Charles County, Md., is poised to be the first area in the U.S. to use treated sewage to cool down power-plant towers. A proverbial “win-win” scheme, the proposal would conserve groundwater, which is usually used for power-plant cooling, and would cut down […]