17 December 2015, GRIST, No, lettuce is not worse for the climate than bacon. Is bacon back? The recent news that your favorite breakfast meat can cause cancer sent self-righteous vegans cackling, but they were shushed this week after the publication of a study alleging that meat actually has a lower carbon footprint than vegetables. At least, that’s what you might think if you’d read this article fromScientific American or this one from The Telegraph or this one from The Christian Science Monitor or a multitude of others proclaiming that bacon is better for the climate than salads. Carnegie Mellon University News reports: According to new research from Carnegie Mellon University, following the USDA recommendations to consume more fruits, vegetables, dairy and seafood is more harmful to the environment because those foods have relatively high resource uses and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per calorie. Published in Environment Systems and Decisions, the study measured the changes in energy use, blue water footprint and GHG emissions associated with U.S. food consumption patterns. “Eating lettuce is over three times worse in greenhouse gas emissions than eating bacon,” said Paul Fischbeck, professor of social and decisions sciences and engineering and public policy. “Lots of common vegetables require more resources per calorie than you would think. Eggplant, celery and cucumbers look particularly bad when compared to pork or chicken.” So romaine is worse for the planet than pork belly? Really? Does this mean we can all take the lettuce out of our BLTs, add another layer of bacon, and feel just great about it? Actually, no. Researchers compared the foods calorie-for-calorie, which can be misleading. “It is absurd to compare the environmental impacts between bacon and lettuce when you’re using calories as the denominator,” Brent Kim of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future’s Food Production and Public Health Program told ThinkProgress. “A serving of lettuce has fewer calories than a stick of gum.” In other words, you’d have to eat a huge number of salads to equal the same number of calories you get from a few pieces of bacon. Just how many salads? We made this handy chart to illustrate. Read more here
Monthly Archives: December 2015
17 December 2015, The Guardian, There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet. After the signing of a historic climate pact in Paris, we might now hope that the merchants of doubt – who for two decades have denied the science and dismissed the threat – are officially irrelevant. But not so fast. There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs. Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power. More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world. That would have troubling consequences for climate change if it were true, but it is not. Numerous high quality studies, including one recently published by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, show that this isn’t so. We can transition to a decarbonized economy without expanded nuclear power, by focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency and demand management. In fact, our best studies show that we can do it faster, and more cheaply. Read more here
17 December 2015, Renew Economy, Tasmania switches gas fired generator back on as hydro runs low. Hydro Tasmania has announced that it will re-assemble and restart its Tamar Valley gas-fired generators for the first time in 18 months in response to the driest spring in the state ever recorded. The state-owned company, which powers the local grid mostly with hydro and wind energy, and exports some of that to the mainland, says hydro levels have sunk to around 25 per cent after the driest September to November period on record, although better inflows have been received in recent weeks. It says that restarting the Tamar Valley gas generators, which operate as a combined cycle gas turbine (broadly equivalent to base load rather than peaking) makes “good commercial sense”. Presumably because it allows the limited hydro to be conserved for higher pricing peaking events. The fall in hydro reservoirs is not just a problem in Tasmania. Earlier this year, Snowy Hydro decided to pay $234 million for the Colongra gas-fired power plant in NSW. Even though the plant had only operated for a total of 300 hours in 5 years, and rising gas prices basically priced it out of the market, Snowy Hydro bought the gas peaking plant as an insurance against the risk of declining water levels. Its gas plants in Victoria performed a similar role in the last drought in that state. Read more here
17 December 2015, The Hindu, Climate change warming world’s lakes at alarming rate. The study spanned six continents. A total of 236 lakes, representing more than half of the world’s freshwater supply, were monitored for at least 25 years. Climate change is warming lakes around the world at an alarming rate, threatening freshwater supplies and ecosystems, says the largest study of its kind led by an Indian-origin researcher. For the study spanning six continents, a total of 236 lakes, representing more than half of the world’s freshwater supply, were monitored for at least 25 years. “We found that lakes are warming at an average of 0.34 degrees Celsius each decade all around the world, threatening freshwater supplies and ecosystems,” said study lead author Sapna Sharma from York University in Toronto, Canada. “This can have profound effects on drinking water and the habitat of fish and other animals,” Sharma said. At the current rate, algal blooms, which can ultimately rob water of oxygen, will increase 20 per cent in lakes over the next century, the study said. Algal blooms that are toxic to fish and animals would increase by five per cent. These rates also imply that emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, will increase four per cent over the next decade. “We found that ice-covered lakes, including Canadian lakes, are warming twice as fast as air temperatures and the North American Great Lakes are among the fastest warming lakes in the world,” Sharma noted. Read More here