11 April 2016, Springer Link, Significant implications of permafrost thawing for climate change control. Large amounts of carbon are stored as permafrost within the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. As permafrost thaws due to climate warming, carbon dioxide and methane are released. Recent studies indicate that the pool of carbon susceptible to future thaw is higher than was previously thought and that more carbon could be released by 2100, even under low emission pathways. We use an integrated model of the climate and the economy to study how including these new estimates influence the control of climate change to levels that will likely keep the temperature increase below 2 °C (radiative forcing of 2.6 Wm−2). According to our simulations, the fossil fuel and industrial CO2 emissions need to peak 5–10 years earlier and the carbon budget needs to be reduced by 6–17 % to offset this additional source of warming. The required increase in carbon price implies a 6–21 % higher mitigation cost to society compared to a situation where emissions from permafrost are not considered. Including other positive climate feedbacks, currently not accounted for in integrated assessment models, could further increase these numbers. Read More here
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7 April 2016, Carbon Brief, Analysis: the ‘highly unusual’ behaviour of Arctic sea ice in 2016. The decline of Arctic sea ice is already setting records in 2016, with the winter peak in March clocking in as the lowest since satellite records began, scientists say. A new and fuller summary of this year’s Arctic winter by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) confirms the preliminary announcement last week that sea icereached its annual maximum extent on 24 March this year. Covering an area of 14.52m square kilometers, this year’s peak winter extent is a shade smaller than the previous record low set in 2015. But the new NSIDC report adds a lot more detail about what it calls a “highly unusual” and “most interesting” Arctic winter. With abnormally warm conditions right across the Arctic, some regions experienced temperatures 4-8C higher than average. While this meant slower ice growth in some places, in others it caused a dramatic thinning by 30cm in one week, according to early model results. Reaching a peak Arctic sea ice ebbs and flows with the seasons, reaching a maximum extent for the year in February or March and a minimum in September, at the end of the summer melt period. This year, scientists were still waiting expectantly at the end of March, explains the NSIDC report: “Very early in the month, extent declined, raising anticipation that an early maximum had been reached. However, after a period of little change, extent slowly rose again, reaching the seasonal maximum on March 24.” As late as a week ago, scientists still hadn’t ruled out the possibility of a late season surge. But sea ice extent has dropped off quite a bit since then, suggesting the peak has been and gone. You can see this year’s sea ice behaviour in the graph below from NSIDC, which shows sea ice extent over the 2015/6 winter (blue line) up to 3 April compared to previous years. Read More here
7 April 2016, Energy Post, Wind and solar’s Achilles heel: what the methane meltdown at Porter Ranch means for the energy transition. Utitlity-scale wind and solar power are typically backed up on-site by gas peakers, or backed up indirectly by gas-fired power plants. These gas plants lead to significant greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane. So at what point does a renewable-plus-gas combination become worse for the climate than coal-fired power? Mike Conley and Tim Maloney, long-time members of the Thorium Energy Alliance, have calculated what they call a “Worth-It Treshold” that gives the answer. And they conclude as things stand, natural gas isn’t a bridge to a sustainable future.“We need about 3,000 feet of altitude, we need flat land, we need 300 days of sunlight, and we need to be near a gas pipe. Because for all of these big utility-scale solar plants – whether it’s wind or solar – everybody is looking at gas as the supplementary fuel. The plants that we’re building, the wind plants and the solar plants, are gas plants.” 1– Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Environmental activist, Member of the board of Bright Source, developers of the Ivanpah Solar Station, Nevada, a 392 MW (peak) concentrated solar plant. Part One Natural Gas – the polite term for methane The methane leak in the Los Angeles suburb of Porter Ranch is America’s worst environmental disaster since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But even more troubling is the larger issue of “fugitive” methane, and what it means for our growing reliance on wind and solar energy. Burning methane for energy produces about half the CO2 of coal, which is a good thing. But fugitive methane – the gas that leaks before it can be burned – is a powerful greenhouse gas, with 84X the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. The big idea behind wind and solar farms is to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gases. But since most of a farm’s power is actually generated by gas, the rationale for a massive build-out of utility-scale wind and solar hinges on the issue of fugitive methane. That rationale just had a major meltdown at Porter Ranch. Read More here
5 April 2016, The Conversation, What to do when machines take our jobs? Give everyone free money for doing nothing. It was Groucho Marx who said, “While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” Quite true, but what if there’s no money coming in from work because your job’s been taken over by a machine? Low wage earners appear to be most at risk from automation. In February 2016, the Council of Economic Advisers (an agency within the Executive Office of the US President) issued an alarming report predicting that an 80% or greater chance exists for people on basic incomes of US$20 per hour or less to be made redundant by smart machines in the foreseeable future. After them come the mid-range workers. Clearly, we need strategies to address any job losses arising though increases in automation. Theoretically, just about any job that can be described as a process could be done by a computer-controlled machine. In practice though, many employers will decide that keeping a human in a job is preferable to automating it. These are jobs that involve some degree of empathy. Imagine telling a robot doctor what ails you in response to “please state the nature of your medical emergency”. Free money for all – seriously? But what about those people whose jobs are lost to automation? What if new jobs aren’t created to replace them? What are they to do if they can’t earn a living anymore? This time it’s Karl Marx, not Groucho, who comes to mind with the idea of giving people a universal basic income (UBI). This is raised as a possible remedy to any misery caused by rising unemployment from job automation. Put simply, a UBI is a pump-priming minimum income that is unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without any means test or work requirement. It eliminates the poverty traps that the poor fall into when welfare payments have many conditions and are administered by large and inflexible bureaucracies. Read More here