23 January 2016, Carbon Brief, Arctic and Med face hotspot worries. Uneven heating of the Earth’s surface as a result of climate change could see some regions facing seriously high rises in average temperatures. Forget the notion of a 2˚C global average temperature rise. In parts of the Arctic, regional average warming passed that limit 15 years ago. New research suggests that if the world really does warm to an average of 2˚C, then mean temperatures in the Mediterranean region could be 3.4˚C warmer than in pre-industrial times. And in some parts of the Arctic, 2˚C average warmingcould translate as a 6˚C rise. Sonia Seneviratne, head of the land-climate dynamics group at Switzerland’sInstitute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (ETH Zurich), and colleaguesreport in Nature journal that they have been thinking about the meaning of a 2˚C global average warming. Because it is an average, some regions will inevitably be hotter than this average. So she and her fellow researchers have been trying to calculate what further emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – the exhausts from fossil fuel combustion that drive global warming – will mean for the people who live in specific parts of the planet. Average warming They focused on what climate models could tell them about extremes of temperature and precipitation in selected regions on the global map. The answer is disconcerting: to limit average temperature rises for the Mediterranean to 2˚C, the world will have to sharply reduce its fossil fuel combustion and contain the global average warming to 1.4˚C. Since the planet is already on average 1˚C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, this puts the challenge of climate change in an ever more urgent context. Professor Seneviratne pointed out two years ago that extremes might be more significant in climate change than global averages.” We could potentially see even greater regional variation than these findings show” And she is not the only researcher to look for the significance of local climate change implicit in a shift in planetary averages. A team of oceanographers in 2013 examined much the same pattern of variation and predicted that, for some regions,real and enduring climate change could arrive by 2020. Read More here
Monthly Archives: January 2016
22 January 2016, Climate News Network, Plutonium’s global problems are piling up. Increasing worldwide stockpiles of surplus plutonium are becoming a political embarrassment, a worrying security risk, and a hidden extra cost to the nuclear industry. Two armed ships set off from the northwest of England this week to sail round the world to Japan on a secretive and controversial mission to collect a consignment of plutonium and transport it to the US. The cargo of plutonium, once the most sought-after and valuable substance in the world, is one of a number of ever-growing stockpiles that are becoming an increasing financial and security embarrassment to the countries that own them. So far, there is no commercially viable use for this toxic metal, and there is increasing fear that plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists, or that governments could be tempted to use it to join the nuclear arms race. All the plans to use plutonium for peaceful purposes in fast breeder and commercial reactors have so far failed to keep pace with the amounts of this highly-dangerous radioactive metal being produced by the countries that run nuclear power stations. The small amounts of plutonium that have been used in conventional and fast breeder reactors have produced very little electricity − at startlingly high costs. Read More here
21 January 2016, Reuters, U.S. appeals court declines to block Obama carbon emissions plan. In a big victory for the Obama administration, a U.S. federal court on Thursday rejected a bid by 27 states to block its Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of its strategy to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions from power plants. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a brief order denying an application seeking to stay the rule while litigation continues. The states, led by West Virginia, and several major business groups in October launched the legal challenges seeking to block the Obama administration’s proposal to curb carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. More than a dozen other states and the National League of Cities, which represents more than 19,000 U.S. cities, filed court papers backing the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule. The rule aims to lower carbon emissions from the country’s power plants by 2030 to 32 percent below 2005 levels. It is the main tool for the United States to meet the emissions reduction target it pledged at U.N. climate talks in Paris last month. For President Barack Obama, executing his climate change strategy would be a legacy-defining accomplishment. “We are confident that the plan will reduce carbon pollution and deliver better air quality, improved public health, and jobs across the country,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday. The court action means the regulation remains in place but it is not the final word in the legal fight. The appeals court still has to hear oral arguments on June 2 and decide whether the regulation is lawful. Read More here
21 January 2016, Climate News Network, Carbon capture plans need urgent aid. Call for governments to give financial backing for technology that could help save the world from overheating by preventing CO2 escaping into the atmosphere. Governments may no longer be investing in the capture of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But a new study says that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. It argues that the world just needs to think harder and spend more to make the technology work because, to contain climate change, it may prove the only realistic and affordable way to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. Many governments appear to agree, and include carbon capture and storage in their plans to keep the world from dangerous climate change, But, at the same time, many are abandoning many trials that are needed to make it work. David Reiner, senior lecturer in technology policy at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, argues in the new journal Nature Energy that stopping trials is foolish. Effective answer In a world addicted to fossil fuel energy, but threatened with catastrophic climate change driven by the greenhouse gas emissions from those same fossil fuels, he says that one effective answer would be to capture the carbon dioxide before it gets into the atmosphere, and then store it. He writes that the only way to find out how to do this is to spend billions on a range of possible attempts at carbon capture and storage (CCS), and then choose the best one. “If we are serious about meeting aggressive national or global emissions, the only way to do it affordably is with CCS,” Dr Reiner says. “But, since 2008, we have seen a decline in interest in CCS, which has essentially been in lock step with our declining interest in doing anything serious about climate change.” Just before the UN climate change summit in Paris last December, the UK government cancelled a £1 billion competition to support large-scale demonstration projects. Since 2008, other projects have been cancelled in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Read More here