Climate Climate & Energy

No, but we still know enough to start taking action

A few weeks ago, I was perusing Grist when I ran across an ad for A Convenient Fiction, a slideshow rebuttal of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. The author was none other than Steve Hayward, who you might remember from the AEI-$10,000-payola scandal.

I had actually seen this slideshow discussed in the New York Times, and was interested to see it. In my previous communications with Hayward, he was at great pains to describe himself as someone who believed the science as described by the IPCC. I wanted to see if the slideshow bore that out.

Measure Twice, Cut One of These Days

Coalition of 31 states creates greenhouse-gas emissions registry Flipping the feds the collective bird, 31 U.S. states have created a registry to track industrial greenhouse-gas emissions. The states — joined by British Columbia, Manitoba, and a Native American nation in California — represent some 70 percent of the U.S. population and all (er, both?) sides […]

Trends on an ever-shrinking planet

I was at Coop Power's excellent annual renewable energy summit in western Massachusetts recently. Richard Heinberg was there as a presenter. He discussed his well-regarded peak oil projections, and he then put that curve next to his peak uranium and peak coal projections. That visual drew gasps from the crowd -- especially the peak coal bit.

Sure we've got lots of coal, but its quality ain't what it used to be, and won't go as far. Check his data. This got me thinking of all the indexes we might put forward to track important trends on this ever-shrinking planet.

The next one I'd promote, given our perilous reliance on the mobile hives that are driven from farm to farm to pollinate our crops, plus this winter's mysterious honeybee population crash, would have to be peak bees. And how about peak freshwater. What would you propose?

A story from Tanzania

Interesting story on a Michigan State University project to help test and improve locally made solar cookers in Tanzania:

Current Events

Wind power is controversial but should keep on keeping on, says report U.S. wind-power capacity has quadrupled in the past six years and could eventually produce up to 7 percent of the nation’s electricity. Easy-breezy? Not quite: Wind-industry growth lacks “any truly coordinated planning,” says a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Developers and […]

Summaries of a summary — the new black?

Finally, below is the first half of my summary of the IPCC summary (PDF):

In 2030 macro-economic costs for multi-gas mitigation, consistent with emissions trajectories towards stabilization between 445 and 710 ppm CO2-eq, are estimated at between a 3% decrease of global GDP and a small increase, compared to the baseline. However, regional costs may differ significantly from global averages (high agreement, medium evidence).

In 2050 global average macro-economic costs for multi-gas mitigation towards stabilization between 710 and 445 ppm CO2-eq, are between a 1% gain to a 5.5% decrease of global GDP. For specific countries and sectors, costs vary considerably from the global average (high agreement, medium evidence).

Reece on MTR mining

Erik Reese has an op-ed in the NYT about mountaintop-removal mining and a new program that shows promise in helping landscapes recover from it. Here’s the nut: Appalachia’s land is dying. Its fractured communities show the typical symptoms of hopelessness, including OxyContin abuse rates higher than anywhere in the country. Meanwhile, 22 states power houses […]

Charcoal carbon sequestration — birth of a new CO2 removal wedge?

I would love to hear Graham Nash and David Crosby rerecord their old "Carry Me" song about agrichar and removing carbon from the atmosphere while revitalizing soils:

"Bury me, buuuu-reee me, bury me, across the world ..."

This is sounding so good it's scary -- like I am being set up to have my bubble burst when it turns out to violate one or more basic physical laws, or only be net negative by ignoring some huge emissions somewhere in the process, or whatever. But for today, I'm going to feel a little better:

Faster and more dramatic than previously expected

... are manifesting very quickly and will change the landscape in pretty big ways.

Man, that’s the worst headline ever

Here’s a short but fascinating BBC story about a ginormous (11MW, with plans for expansion) concentrated-solar power plant in Seville, Spain — the first commercial concentrated-solar plant in Europe. Hundreds of mirrors reflect sunlight at a single point at the top of a tower, where the heat boils water for stream that drives a generator. […]