Climate Change, Pollution, Clean Energy, and the Environment

[LFC]

Sept 24, 2021 19:52:06 GMT goldenvalley said:

Flood risks discovered by a group other than FEMA show more areas to be flood prone than FEMA thinks. 

Across much of the United States, the flood risk is far greater than government estimates show, new calculations suggest, exposing millions of people to a hidden threat — and one that will only grow as climate change worsens.

That new calculation, which takes into account sea-level rise, rainfall and flooding along smaller creeks not mapped federally, estimates that 14.6 million properties are at risk from what experts call a 100-year flood, far more than the 8.7 million properties shown on federal government flood maps. A 100-year flood is one with a 1 percent chance of striking in any given year.

The federal government’s flood maps guide where and how to build, whether homeowners should buy flood insurance, and how much risk mortgage lenders take on. If the new estimates are broadly accurate, it would mean that homeowners, builders, banks, insurers and government officials nationwide have been making decisions with information that understates their true physical and financial risks.

I was happy to see that my county is properly assessed.  But then Sacramento was 2nd only to New Orleans back in the '80' and '90's when we had significant intense rainfall and flooding.  The Army Corps did a lot of work to reinforce levees to improve the situation. 

I've heard that the maps are way out of date for years. My area has managed to rack up a 100 year storm, a 500 year storm, and most recently a 1,000 year storm in the space of about 5 years. Fortunately we're situation such that none of that has remotely come close to our back door.

BTW do you have a link?

[goldenvalley]

Looks like Ford Motor Company is going big into electric vehicles and putting plants in Southern states:

Ford Motor Co. is joining forces with a South Korean energy firm to build massive manufacturing hubs in Tennessee and Kentucky as part of an $11.4 billion push to churn out electric vehicles and their batteries on a large scale.

The Dearborn, Mich.-based company said the project will bring 11,000 jobs to two states once heavily reliant on the coal industry. Ford said its $7 billion share is the largest single U.S. investment in electric vehicles by any automaker. It also said the Tennessee plant, known as Blue Oval City, will be the largest auto-manufacturing site in U.S. history.

The move may help broaden the appeal and accessibility of electric vehicles as the industry continues to pivot from gasoline-powered vehicles in an effort to curb fossil fuel use and combat climate change.

“We are moving now to deliver breakthrough electric vehicles for the many rather than the few,” Ford chief executive Jim Farley said Monday in a news release.

Tennessee is not heavily reliant on the coal industry but I don't expect national media to understand that.  Tennessee has benefited from its anti-union reputation for many years.  I suspect that's the attraction of that state.  

I assume this will lead to a bunch of Damn Yankees moving into those states to take mid level management jobs.  I wonder if that will change the complexion of politics there...though the anti-union strain is strong in those types.

[goldenvalley]

LFC here's the link on the flood risk article.  

And here's some sad news...birds now declared extinct including the ivory billed woodpecker.  Between human behavior and climate change life has been pretty tough.

[LFC]

Sept 29, 2021 15:02:13 GMT goldenvalley said:

LFC here's the link on the flood risk article. 

Thanks for that. I had to get it in an archive but will be reading it later. Those maps really do tell different stories.

Sept 29, 2021 15:02:13 GMT goldenvalley said:

And here's some sad news...birds now declared extinct including the ivory billed woodpecker.  Between human behavior and climate change life has been pretty tough.

AFAIC that bird has been gone for a long time. The "rediscovery" was a travesty of emotional overreaction to staggeringly poor data with good scientific technique being cast asie. I actually know some of the folks involved and I can't believe the announcements they made based upon what they had. Ana at least one of their defenses required forgetting any and all knowledge of how bird wings actually work i.e. not like stiff planks.

[LFC]

Looks like more and more the alphabet is a limiting factor in naming storms.

It has been another record-setting hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, with a total of 19 named storms so far. It has been so busy that, with still more than two months to go until the season's end, the National Hurricane Season is probably going to run out of names for the second year in a row.

Currently in the Atlantic, Hurricane Sam is rampaging across open waters. Fortunately this major hurricane is unlikely to threaten any landmasses. Behind Sam, it's possible that Victor and Wanda will form during the next few days. Neither of these storms, either, poses any immediate threat to land.

If they do form, these two storms would exhaust the allotment of "official" names the National Hurricane Season uses for tropical storms and hurricanes. (Because the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not commonly used for names, they don't appear on the list of Atlantic names). In years past, the Miami-based hurricane center would then start assigning Greek letters for excess named storms.

The hurricane center has only ever had to do this twice, during the 2005 and 2020 seasons. Last year's season was so fierce late in the game that two of the storms with Greek names, Eta and Iota, had to be retired after they both struck the coast of Nicaragua.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 30, 2021 18:50:21 GMT LFC said:

Looks like more and more the alphabet is a limiting factor in naming storms.

It has been another record-setting hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, with a total of 19 named storms so far. It has been so busy that, with still more than two months to go until the season's end, the National Hurricane Season is probably going to run out of names for the second year in a row.

Currently in the Atlantic, Hurricane Sam is rampaging across open waters. Fortunately this major hurricane is unlikely to threaten any landmasses. Behind Sam, it's possible that Victor and Wanda will form during the next few days. Neither of these storms, either, poses any immediate threat to land.

If they do form, these two storms would exhaust the allotment of "official" names the National Hurricane Season uses for tropical storms and hurricanes. (Because the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not commonly used for names, they don't appear on the list of Atlantic names). In years past, the Miami-based hurricane center would then start assigning Greek letters for excess named storms.

The hurricane center has only ever had to do this twice, during the 2005 and 2020 seasons. Last year's season was so fierce late in the game that two of the storms with Greek names, Eta and Iota, had to be retired after they both struck the coast of Nicaragua.

And then the hurricanes will be confused with COVID variants...

[AnBr]

Sept 30, 2021 18:50:21 GMT LFC said:

Looks like more and more the alphabet is a limiting factor in naming storms.

excess named storms

The term alone boggles the mind.

[goldenvalley]

General Motors expects to get all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025.  

If it meets its goal for its United States operations, GM will join a growing list of American firms that already get all their power from renewable sources. Among them are Microsoft and Intel, which both use more electricity than GM does domestically. The largest manufacturer on the 100 percent list is Proctor & Gamble, the consumer products company, which in 2020 used slightly less power than GM.

GM’s rival, the Ford Motor Co., has said it will meet the same goal for all its operations, domestic and international, by 2035.

[LFC]

Google is saying "no" to climate denial ads.

Late Thursday, Google announced that it is demonetizing content that makes misleading or false claims about climate change. As a result, content that calls into question or denies the scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change will not have Google advertising alongside it. In addition, Google will no longer run any advertising that "contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change."

[LFC]

Outdoor lawn and garden equipment is moving more and more towards batteries but this is a nice nudge.

Gas-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers will soon be a thing of the past in California. Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that will ban the sale of small internal combustion engines predominately used in lawn and garden equipment, starting as soon as 2024.

The new law, authored by Assemblyman Marc Berman from Menlo Park, will offer rebates for consumers to purchase electric replacements, and it builds on previous rulemaking already underway at the state’s air regulator, the California Air Resources Board, better known as CARB. The phaseout will begin as soon as is feasible or by January 1, 2024, whichever comes later.

“Currently, there are zero-emission equivalents to all [small off-road engine] equipment regulated by the State Air Resources Board,” the law points out. “The battery technology required for commercial-grade zero-emission equipment is available and many users, both commercial and residential, have already begun to transition to zero-emission equipment.”

Lawn mowers and leaf blowers are exceptional polluters. Their small engines spew outsize amounts of smog-forming NOx, cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, and lung-damaging particulate matter. Operating a gas-powered leaf blower for one hour produces as much volatile organic compounds and NOx as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry from New York City to Orlando, Florida, state officials say.

And it's not just the byproducts of combustion that cause problems.

The new law calls out not just exhaust emissions but also those from fuel tanks, where evaporating gasoline can release large amounts of benzene and other hazardous compounds. Together, evaporative emissions account for around 35 percent of pollution from small engines. Since many lawn mowers and other equipment are stored inside garages, evaporated pollutants can seep into homes.

I posted a piece earlier that noted the electric versions of things like leaf blowers and weed whackers are significantly quieter so cause less neighborhood noise pollution. Expect the MAGAts to start a run on archaic gas powered tools in 3, 2, ...

[andydp]

I bought battery powered lawn mower, leaf blower, and weed whacked a year ago. Never regretted or looked back.

[LFC]

Oct 11, 2021 20:09:33 GMT andydp said:

I bought battery powered lawn mower, leaf blower, and weed whacked a year ago. Never regretted or looked back.

I've got a battery powered chainsaw, pole saw, small leaf blower, and even a stick vacuum all on the same batteries (Makita's 18V/36V LXT system). I do need a heavier duty leaf blower. The nice thing is that all of our power tools like drill drivers, circular saw, jigsaw, etc. use the same batteries so no need to juggle two systems. Smaller tools use one battery (18V) and larger ones use two (36V).

[LFC]

Climate scientists should pay more attention to fish poop. Really.

Fish poop transforms ocean chemistry and can store carbon for centuries.

[LFC]

China is finding that solar is now price competitive with coal.

The incredible plunge in the price of photovoltaic systems has made solar power an affordable option for much of the world. And, as long as solar is providing a small fraction of the power on a given grid, there's little holding back the addition of new photovoltaic facilities. But as the fraction of solar power grows, managing the fact that it only generates electricity intermittently becomes a significant grid-management challenge.

At that point, factors other than price become significant in determining how much solar energy makes sense. And those factors can vary from country to country. This means that understanding solar's potential requires a country-specific analysis. This week, researchers in China released an analysis of their country, indicating that solar has now reached a point where it's cost-competitive with coal. The report also states that solar (when coupled with storage) could handle nearly half of China's needs by midcentury.

[jackd]

Storage is key and not just for China.

[LFC]

Oct 13, 2021 19:57:15 GMT jackd said:

Storage is key and not just for China.

I've read so much about storage by pumping water up above dams, by heating liquid salts, and even pushing generator train cars up a hill but I still haven't seen much come of any of these systems. I wonder if they're just too experimental or if they have other flaws when they face reality.

[AnBr]

Oct 13, 2021 20:04:19 GMT LFC said:

Oct 13, 2021 19:57:15 GMT jackd said:

Storage is key and not just for China.

I've read so much about storage by pumping water up above dams, by heating liquid salts, and even pushing generator train cars up a hill but I still haven't seen much come of any of these systems. I wonder if they're just too experimental or if they have other flaws when they face reality.

Some of those are tried and true methods for decades, used to use off peak hours to supplement needs during speak hour demands.

[LFC]

The pandemic didn't stop the increase in greenhouse gases. Bolsenaro's war on the Amazonian rainforest is taking its toll.

Despite a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 thanks to lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere still reached record highs that same year, the World Meteorological Organization reported Monday.

Early in the pandemic, there were hopes that a halt in normal activities (like transportation) could help curb greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide emissions, in fact, did fall by about 6.4 percent, or 2.5 billion tons, in 2020. The U.S. itself saw its emissions dip by 13 percent.

But emissions didn’t decline nearly as much as hoped, thanks in great part to the fact that many sources normally responsible for sequestering carbon dioxide are now big producers, like the Amazon rainforest.

Trees play a huge role in absorbing carbon dioxide, but huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they are absorbing. Part of this is due to deforestation activities, but higher temperatures also lead to less precipitation, which stresses out trees and causes them to die off sooner. Even in the absence of human activities like air travel, these natural settings no longer absorb emissions the way they once did.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide are now 149 percent higher than they were before 1750, when human industry took off. Other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide are 262 percent and 123 percent above pre-industrial levels, respectively.

The findings will serve as a backdrop to the United Nation’s climate change conference next week, known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland.

“At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “We are way off track.”

[LFC]

Manchin to coal: "Why can't I quit you???!!!"

Centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, not unlike former President Donald Trump, has been unwavering in his support of fossil fuels — which he obviously believes plays well with West Virginia voters. But the coal industry isn't as profitable in that Appalachian state as it once was. And journalist Ella Nilsen, in an article published by CNN's website on October 21, emphasizes that coal is becoming increasingly expensive in West Virginia.

Some liberals, including economist/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, have been arguing that green energy would be great for West Virginia residents if Manchin and other politicians in the deep red state would give it a chance. Nilsen, similarly, points out that West Virginia's reliance on coal is becoming more and more of a hardship for residents like Charleston, West Virginia homeowner Felisha Chase — who pays more for electricity during the winter months than she spends on her mortgage.

"Coal has become more expensive than renewables or natural gas, the prices of which have fallen rapidly — and in West Virginia, the ratepayers are footing the bill," Nilsen reports. "With three of the state's major coal-fired power plants in need of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of mandatory upgrades, costs for ratepayers like Chase will continue to go up. Coal may be a dying industry in the U.S., but Joe Manchin, a key Democratic swing vote in the Senate, isn't interested in hastening its demise."

The only way coal works economically anymore is by externalizing the costs of burning it but that doesn't stop the likes of Joe Manchin, a man with quite the personal vested interest in keeping it burning.

[LFC]

When large forests stop acting as carbon sinks then hold onto your hats. Or cast them aside because it's too warm to wear them.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites are the planet’s most iconic places and include sites from the natural and built world. But a new report from the group shows that a small but vital number of forests that have received a UNESCO designation are being irrevocably altered by human activities.

The degradation means that they’ve turned from carbon sinks into carbon sources, throwing the planet’s climate budget out of balance. The report, released on Thursday ahead of major United Nations climate talks that begin next week in Glasgow, highlights the role forests play in protecting the climate. The 257 UNESCO World Heritage Sites contain 170 million acres of forest cover, an area the report notes is twice the size of Germany.

Together, these areas pull 190 million tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere every year, which helps mitigate the excess carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels. But the report is a warning; just because the natural world is doing us a huge favor doesn’t mean it will continue to do so.

While 166 UNESCO World Heritage Sites are still storing away carbon and another 81 are basically neutral locations that neither emit nor store carbon, the report shows 10 sites have turned into emitters over the past decade. The reason? Humans are messing them up, whether because climate change is contributing to more intense fires or deforestation is weakening ecosystems.

That's 35% of these reserves that are no longer carbon sinks. And really strap in when the ocean becomes saturated.

[LFC]

I understand the sensitivity of the comparison but with people already dying all over the globe, particularly in very poor nations, from the outcomes of man-made climate change I'm having a hard time seeing an argument against the actual factual basis of what he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby apologized on Monday for suggesting that the impact of climate change would be worse than Nazi genocide.

Welby, the most senior cleric in the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, made the comments in an interview with the BBC at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

He said that national leaders will be "cursed" if they do not achieve the goal of the United Nations summit of urgently finding concrete ways to stabilize global heating.

Politicians who fail at this task will be spoken of by future generations "in far stronger terms than we speak today of the politicians of the (19)30s, of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany," he said.

He added that this was because climate change "will kill people all around the world for generations" and "allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale" that will "come back to us or to our children and grandchildren".
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Welby, a former oil executive before becoming a man of the cloth, later apologized for offending Jewish people with the Holocaust analogy.

"I unequivocally apologise for the words I used when trying to emphasize the gravity of the situation facing us at COP26," he tweeted.

"It's never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis, and I'm sorry for the offense caused to Jews by these words," he added.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 1, 2021 21:14:05 GMT LFC said:

I understand the sensitivity of the comparison but with people already dying all over the globe, particularly in very poor nations, from the outcomes of man-made climate change I'm having a hard time seeing an argument against the actual factual basis of what he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby apologized on Monday for suggesting that the impact of climate change would be worse than Nazi genocide.

Welby, the most senior cleric in the Church of England and leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, made the comments in an interview with the BBC at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

He said that national leaders will be "cursed" if they do not achieve the goal of the United Nations summit of urgently finding concrete ways to stabilize global heating.

Politicians who fail at this task will be spoken of by future generations "in far stronger terms than we speak today of the politicians of the (19)30s, of the politicians who ignored what was happening in Nazi Germany," he said.

He added that this was because climate change "will kill people all around the world for generations" and "allow a genocide on an infinitely greater scale" that will "come back to us or to our children and grandchildren".
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Welby, a former oil executive before becoming a man of the cloth, later apologized for offending Jewish people with the Holocaust analogy.

"I unequivocally apologise for the words I used when trying to emphasize the gravity of the situation facing us at COP26," he tweeted.

"It's never right to make comparisons with the atrocities brought by the Nazis, and I'm sorry for the offense caused to Jews by these words," he added.

This is one of those situations where I think folks are being overly censorious.  Analogies to the Holocaust can be offensive (see for example the use of it by anti Covid vaxers) but I think this guy was reaching for the most horrible thing in his knowledge base.  

[LFC]

Biden and his EPA are trying to get ahold of the methane leakage problem.

President Joe Biden targeted planet-warming methane emissions on Tuesday from the UN climate summit, announcing strong new US regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and launching a Global Methane Pledge, in partnership with the European Union, that has been signed by around 100 countries.

At the center of Biden's US methane strategy is a rule from the EPA that would push oil and gas companies to more accurately detect, monitor and repair methane leaks from new and existing wells, pipelines and other equipment. The agency estimates the rule would cut 41 million tons of methane emissions from 2023 to 2035 -- more greenhouse gas than all the carbon dioxide emitted by all US passenger cars and commercial planes in 2019.

Trump and his utterly corrupt EPA actually loosened the rules up so that drillers had much less responsibility to control their methane leaks. I guess Trump didn't want his puckered orange pie hole to be the only thing spewing methane continually.

[LFC]

There are enormous long-term cost benefits to turning to renewable energy. Health benefits measured in dollars are a big part of it.

For the climate benefits alone, the avoided costs are substantial: compared to a higher-emissions scenario, reaching a 2.0º C trajectory saves us about $400 billion by 2050 and $6 trillion by the end of the century. That alone would seem to justify paying upfront for significant emissions cuts, assuming that the rest of the world makes a similar commitment.

But remember that well over half of the benefits of the pollution cuts will accrue even if the rest of the world does nothing. And those primarily result in health impacts, which are far and away the most expensive. At the high end of the estimates, a 2.0º C trajectory will save $163 trillion by the end of the century.

The team also looked at this in terms of estimates of the costs of getting our carbon emissions in line with keeping within 2.0º C above preindustrial temperatures. The team estimates that, based on temperatures alone, the benefits and costs would reach parity by 2050. But if you add in the benefits of pollution reduction, the benefits would be between five and 25 times the cost of reducing fossil fuels as soon as 2030.

That's a ridiculously short payback time for a large investment, and an impressive return. The problem society faces is that the costs are very obvious: funding large power projects and paying for increased efficiency. The benefits, in contrast, are rather diffuse, involving lower average health costs, greater productivity throughout the economy, and avoided premature deaths. The numbers may add up. But one side of the equation is much more difficult to perceive.

If you'd like to try out various scenarios, the team has set up an online tool that lets you twiddle all the control knobs their analysis involved.

Unfortunately these numbers are nearly meaningless to those with a vested interest in not changing. First, the payback isn't seen within the next few quarters so that's too long term. Second, they don't get to collect all that money or even most of it so it's worthless to them. Welcome to poorly regulated capitalism.

[AnBr]

Nov 1, 2021 22:30:53 GMT goldenvalley said:

This is one of those situations where I think folks are being overly censorious.  Analogies to the Holocaust can be offensive (see for example the use of it by anti Covid vaxers) but I think this guy was reaching for the most horrible thing in his knowledge base.  

A bit Like Godwin noting that some Nazi comparisons don’t break his rule.