Search
Close this search box.

Search Results for: harder pollution solved – Page 2

Settled Science?! Trees both cause & solve ‘global warming’?! – GOP climate pandering seeks to plant billions of trees

Tree planting proposal & consequences Round up NYT reveals how Trump administration was duped into promoting planting trees as a climate ‘solution’ – Meanwhile, even UN IPCC and journal Nature ‘find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth’s climate’ – Nature study except: “We find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth’s climate, because the warming carbon-cycle effects of deforestation are overwhelmed by the net cooling associated with changes in albedo and evapotranspiration.“ # GOP climate bill will seek to commit US to planting 3.3 billion trees annually # CEI’s Myron Ebell: “Scientific American in 2015 published results of a new study that estimated there are roughly three trillion trees on Earth, which interestingly is seven times more than the previous estimate of 400 million. Where are one trillion more trees going to be planted? There are major areas of deforestation globally, but quite a bit of that land is now used for farming. Cities occupy other deforested areas. In this country, the problem in our National Forests is far too many thickets of small trees. Scientists have also questioned how much carbon the world’s forests can actually sequester and for how long.” Appeasement backfires as climate campaigners attack planting trees – By James Taylor: “GOP climate appeasers put themselves in a political box with no escape route. After publicly supporting speculative, dubious assertions of a climate crisis, they are accused by the Climate Establishment of proposing half-baked measures that do little to mitigate rising temperatures.” The New Climate Consensus: Let’s Plant Trees: “The world’s business and government leaders may have found a way to fight climate change without having to call global warming by its name or agree on what is causing it.” Germans On Course To Permanently Ruining Remaining Forests – To Protect The Climate # NYT reveals how Trump administration was duped into promoting planting trees as a climate ‘solution’ – Meanwhile, even UN IPCC and journal Nature ‘find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth’s climate’ – Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com: The NYT article and Trillion Tree Initiative are based on the notion that planting trees is some sort of climate “solution.” But readers of JunkScience know that this is false. And you don’t have to take my word for it — take the IPCC’s. Check out this IPCC report from August 2019. The chart below (from Chapter 2) shows that deforestation in the Northern Hemisphere has a net warming effect (due to decreased albedo). That is, trees darken the Earth’s surface so as to absorb more solar UV (vs. lighter surfaces that reflect more UV), resulting in more infrared radiation being re-radiated into the atmosphere to be trapped by greenhouse gases. That’s right… trees cause global warming. This has been known for some time. I first wrote about it in a FOXNews.com column in 2007 based on a study in Nature. (Nature study except: “We find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth’s climate, because the warming carbon-cycle effects of deforestation are overwhelmed by the net cooling associated with changes in albedo and evapotranspiration.“) # Nothing is wrong with planting trees! But selling it as some kind of climate 'solution' is wrong! — Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) February 12, 2020 NYT: To Save the Planet, Don’t Plant Trees – 2014 – Yale Atmospheric chemistry Prof. Nadine Unger: “Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land. That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong…Considering all the interactions, large-scale increases in forest cover can actually make global warming worse…The dark color of trees means that they absorb more of the sun’s energy and raise the planet’s surface temperature…Their conclusion is that planting trees in the tropics would lead to cooling, but in colder regions, it would cause warming…Worse, trees emit reactive volatile gases that contribute to air pollution and are hazardous to human health. These emissions are crucial to trees — to protect themselves from environmental stresses like sweltering heat and bug infestations. In summer, the eastern United States is the world’s major hot spot for volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.s) from trees…The Amazon rain forest is often perceived as the lungs of the planet. In fact, almost all the oxygen the Amazon produces during the day remains there and is reabsorbed by the forest at night. In other words, the Amazon rain forest is a closed system that uses all its own oxygen and carbon dioxide…More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it’s a bad bet.” Climate Depot note: So don’t plant trees? Wait, others claim planting trees will save us from ‘climate change.’ It’s all so confusing!  # CBS News: Planting a trillion trees could be the “most effective solution” to climate change, 2018 study says –  Scientists say planting a trillion trees globally could be the single most effective way to fight climate change. According to a new study in the journal Science, planting billions of trees around the world would be the cheapest and most effective way to tackle the climate crisis. Since trees absorb carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, a worldwide planting initiative could remove a substantial portion of heat-trapping emissions from the atmosphere. BBC: ‘Wrong type of trees’ in Europe increased global warming – 2016 “Researchers found that in Europe, trees grown since 1750 have actually increased global warming. The scientists believe that replacing broadleaved species with conifers is a key reason for the negative climate impact. Conifers like pines and spruce are generally darker and absorb more heat than species such as oak and birch. The authors believe the work has implications for current efforts to limit rising temperatures through mass tree planting.” Christian Science Monitor: Why planting some trees could make global warming worse – 2016 A new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, shows that an expansion of forests towards dark green conifers in Europe has stoked global warming. The findings challenge the widespread view that planting more trees helps human efforts to slow the Earth’s rising temperatures. Apparently, not all trees have the same mitigating effect. “Two and a half centuries of forest management in Europe have not cooled the climate,” a team of scientists led by France’s Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement wrote. Discover Mag: We Can’t Just Plant Billions of Trees to Stop Climate Change – 2019   Live Science: Want to Fight Climate Change? Plant 1 Trillion Trees – 2019 “Want to help save the world from climate change? Then grab some seeds, or some seedlings, and start planting trees like there’s no tomorrow. At least 1 trillion of them, and fast.” AP: Best way to fight climate change? Plant a trillion trees – 2019 By SETH BORENSTEIN – (AP) — The most effective way to fight global warming is to plant lots of trees, a study says. A trillion of them, maybe more. And there’s enough room, Swiss scientists say. Even with existing cities and farmland, there’s enough space for new trees to cover 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers), they reported in Thursday’s journal Science . That area is roughly the size of the United States. Climate News Network: Planting trees will not slow global warming – 2017 2017 – Humans cannot simply plant their way out of trouble: trees cannot absorb the ever-increasing quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If the world’s nations really do intend to contain global warming to within 2°C, there is no alternative to drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study. Global warming may affect the capacity of trees to store carbon, 2011 study finds – “Global warming may affect the capacity of trees to store carbon by altering forest nitrogen cycling, concludes a study led by Jerry Melillo, Distinguished Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Ecosystems Center, and published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Climate change may make trees live fast and die young | May 15, 2019 Scotland chopped down 13.9 million trees from 2000-2019 to erect windmills. Very green.https://t.co/rhChMAgmjJ pic.twitter.com/ziEYiVzWVl — Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) February 11, 2020 # Update: But now we are assured that nasty CO2 kills trees. Maybe makes others grow? Including Pinocchio's nose. pic.twitter.com/GCndNdEaAW — Roger Payne (@rogermarksmen) September 10, 2020 BBC: Climate change: Planting new forests ‘can do more harm than good’ Will millions more trees really stop climate change? ‘A trillion trees to the rescue’ Trees ‘most effective solution’ for climate change Is there any point in planting new trees? NASA: ‘The world is a greener place than it was 20 years ago’ – ‘Thanks to tree planting & agriculture’ # House Republican Leadership Prepares Package of Climate Bills Myron Ebell Axios ran a story on January 20th by Amy Harder based on her exclusive interview with House Republican leaders planning a package of legislation to address climate change. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), ranking minority member on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) talked with Harder after making presentations to a private House Republican caucus event on 16th January. According to the Axios story, the package will include specific proposals grouped into three main areas: “1. capturing carbon dioxide emissions, with a focus on trees; 2. clean-energy innovation and funding; [and] 3. conservation, focusing on plastic.” The good news is that the package reportedly does not include taxes on carbon dioxide emissions or mandates to reduce emissions. Westerman, a professional forester and member of the House Natural Resources Committee, has apparently sold McCarthy and Graves on the idea that forests sequester a lot of carbon and therefore Congress should support international efforts to plant one trillion trees. There are at least two branches of this effort.  Trillion Trees was started by three major international conservation organizations—the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Bird Life International. The other was launched by the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 22nd. The press release noted that President Donald J. Trump in his Davos speech the day before announced that the United States would join One Trillion Trees. I haven’t researched either effort yet, but I wonder whether the organizers have considered the ecological consequences of planting one trillion trees.  Scientific American in 2015 published results of a new study that estimated there are roughly three trillion trees on Earth, which interestingly is seven times more than the previous estimate of 400 million. Where are one trillion more trees going to be planted? There are major areas of deforestation globally, but quite a bit of that land is now used for farming. Cities occupy other deforested areas. In this country, the problem in our National Forests is far too many thickets of small trees. Scientists have also questioned how much carbon the world’s forests can actually sequester and for how long, but I’ll leave that issue to another day. The second basket of Republican proposals includes more taxpayer dollars for research and handouts to special interests. As for the third basket, it’s not clear what plastic has to do with global warming. I’ll only say that pollution of the oceans with plastic refuse is a real environmental problem that can largely by solved by ending the practice in China and other Asian countries of dumping huge amounts of garbage into rivers. Harder’s story concludes with subtle (and appropriate) ridicule from an amusing source: “The Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist D.C.-based think tank, has been working with Republicans on some of these ideas. ‘I think once you become engaged with the solution, then math starts to matter,’ said Jason Grumet, the group’s president.  ‘Sure, you can start with aggressive gardening, but that’s not a complete solution and serious people then recognize that more has to happen.’” # How House Republicans won over conservatives to gain consensus on a climate agenda – “Climate denial is a bad political strategy,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a 37-year-old member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and an ally of President Trump. “At some point, you have to be for something to fix it.” … Outside conservative groups and more liberal GOP members left out of negotiations, however, promise to test House Republicans’ projection of unity. Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, dismissed McCarthy’s effort as a toothless messaging agenda of “wasting taxpayer dollars to pay off special interests and nutty plans to plant a trillion trees.” “I would have to be convinced that global warming is a crisis and that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced before supporting such a package,” Ebell said. # “The big problem I have with this is the carbon capture concept,” says Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, who is a skeptic of catastrophic man-made climate change. “What they’re basically saying is ‘carbon dioxide is some kind of problem.’” # Some in GOP look to counter Green New Deal with three-pronged climate plan – 1) Carbon capture, plant trees 2) Promote ‘clean energy’ 3) Fight plastic waste – Some GOP members of Congress’ 3 part plan: The first is the capturing of carbon dioxide emissions…The plan does not include emissions targets that are favored by Democrats. The second part of the plan is the promotion of clean energy technology The third area of focus is conservation, especially when it comes to plastic. # https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21115862/davos-1-trillion-trees-controversy-world-economic-forum-campaign PLANTING 1 TRILLION TREES MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE A GOOD IDEA Excerpts: Ddozens of scientists have warned that planting all those trees could potentially cause more harm than good…the science behind the campaign, a study that claims 1 trillion trees can significantly reduce greenhouse gases, is disputed. “People are getting caught up in the wrong solution,” says Forrest Fleischman, who teaches natural resources policy at the University of Minnesota and has spent years studying the effects of tree planting in India. … Tree-planting started really trending in 2019, when a study published in the journal Science caused a commotion. It claimed that planting a trillion trees could capture more than a third of all the greenhouse gases humans have released since the industrial revolution. After the initial media blitz rallied excitement for the seemingly simple climate solution, a group of 46 scientists, including Fleischman, responded to the study with their critique. “THOSE HEADLINES WERE WRONG”  – “Headlines around the world declared tree planting to be the best solution to climate change,” lead author of the critique Joseph Veldman said in a statement at the time. “We now know those headlines were wrong.” Veldman argued that planting trees where they don’t belong can harm ecosystems, make wildfires worse, and even exacerbate global warming. His critique made the case that the amount of carbon the study said 1 trillion trees could sequester was about five times too large. The study also considered planting trees on savannas and grasslands, where planting non-native trees could cause problems for local species. Planting trees on snowy terrain that once reflected the sun could even turn those places into dark patches that actually absorb heat. …their skepticism mostly centers around efforts to plant trees in places they weren’t before, or to plant large swaths of a single species to essentially create “tree plantations” instead of real forests… In India, leading environmental groups opposed a project to plant 2 billion trees in the Cauvery river basin supported by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. They claimed in a letter that the campaign threatened to dry up streams and destroy habitats. People who live alongside and depend on the river would be affected too, says Prakash Kashwan, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut. # Rep. Bruce Westerman’s fact sheet on the trillion trees bill: Trillion Trees Act Section-By-Section Section 1 – Short Title; Table of Contents   Section 2 – Sense of Congress Establishes a sense of Congress to support the UN’s TrillionTrees Initiative, and calls on the federal government, corporations, and U.S. citizens to take an active role in reforestation efforts   Section 3 – Definitions   Title I – Carbon Sequestration Through Reforestation Activities   Section 101 – National Wood Growth Targets Directs the Secretary of Agriculture to establish targets for total increased wood growth on our domestic forests for the purpose of capturing and storing carbon The targets, which will be informed by a report for the Natural Reforestation Task Force, will  account for both natural and directed regeneration, and will not negatively impact timber harvest on National Forestland Section 102 – National Reforestation Task Force Establishes the National Reforestation Task Force, which will advise the Secretary in establishing the National Wood Growth Targets and provide oversight on the policies enacted to achieve those targets Section 103 – Timber Survey Update Updates the Forest Service’s Renewable Resource Planning Assessment Timber Survey to  include stored carbon in the assessment Directs Forest Service to conduct at lifecycle analysis to study the carbon sequestration potential associated with active management of the National Forest System Section 104 – Reforestation Programs Increases the authorization for the Reforestation Trust Fund and prioritizes reforestation following adverse events like wildfires or large mortality events Adds reforestation activities to Stewardship Contracting and the Good Neighbor Authority  Section 105 – Carbon Storage Through the Healthy Forest Reserve Program Adds carbon storage to the Healthy Forest Reserve Program, allowing for USDA to assist private landowners in storing carbon through active forest management through easements, 30-year contracts and 10-year cost-share agreements. Section 106 – National Forest Foundation Activities Expands the authority of the National Forest Foundation, allowing the Foundation to accept and encourage private donations for reforestation, carbon storage, and pursuit of the Trillion Tree Initiative Establishes the Pinchot Medal for Forest Restoration, allowing the Foundation to recognize outstanding private contributions of reforestation and forest carbon sequestration Establishes the Fifth Grade Forestry Challenge, directing the Foundation to partner with private companies to create an educational grant program which will provide 5th graders with a seedling to plant and teach the value of active management in storing carbon Section 107 – Global Climate Change Program Adds carbon storage and forest management to the list of technical assistance categories under the Global Climate Change Program    Section 108 – International Forestry Cooperation Adds carbon storage and forest management to the list of technical assistance categories under the International Forestry Cooperation Program  Section 109 – International Engagement Establishes the International Forest Foundation, a nonprofit within U.S.A.I.D., which will encourage and accept private donations to support international reforestation and deforestation prevention   Section 110 – Modifications to Authorities Relating to Tropical Forests Adds carbon storage and forest management to the list of assistance categories under the Tropical Forests section of the Foreign Assistance Act Title II – Carbon Storage Through Improved Forest Management Activities Section 201 – Carbon Storage Through Land use Planning; Supplements to Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements Directs USFS to establish programmatic EIS’s for four project categories: Wildland Urban Interface Projects, Watershed Protection Projects, Critical Infrastructure Projects, and Wildlife Restoration Projects Under the established programmatic EIS, if the secretary determines that a proposed forest management project has been sufficiently analyzed, then no further NEPA review is required Section 202 – Emissions Consideration of Management Injunctions Requires any federal court considering an injunction on a federal forest management project to consider both the potential for decreased carbon storage on federal land due to stand stagnation, and the potential for increased carbon emission from federal land due to wildfire Such consideration will utilize the carbon lifecycle analysis established in Section 103 Section 203 – Storing Carbon On State and Private Forests Adds carbon storage to several state and private forest management programs including the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Program, the State Assessment and Strategies Program, the Forest Stewardship Program, the Forest Legacy Program, the FIREWISE Program, the Communicy Forest and Open Space Conservation Program, and the Urban and Community Forestry Program Section 204 – Carbon Storage Through The Good Neighbor Authority Adds Carbon Storage to the Good Neighbor Authority and makes program permanent Section 205 – Carbon Storage Research Program Adds forest carbon storage, increased carbon storage through wood utilization, and increased carbon storage through active management to the Renewable Research Assessment under the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Research Act   Title III – Market Incentives for Carbon Storage   Section 301 – Sustainable Buildings and Residence Credit Establishes a transferable tax credit to promote the use of building materials which store carbon Directs the Secretary of Energy to develop a sustainability score for both commercial and residential buildings, accounting for the energy required to produce and deliver construction materials, the energy required to operate the building, and the amount of carbon stored in any domestically-produced components of the building Establishes an advisory board to assist the Secretary of Energy in the creation of a sustainability score Directs the Secretary of Energy to establish a carbon storage certificate, which will certify to the taxpayer the amount of carbon stored in a building or residence Section 302 – Utilizing Biomass Energy to Reduce Global Carbon Emissions Adjusts the Clean Air Act to allow for both federal biomass, private non-plantation wood products, wood product residuals, and comingling of feedstocks in the biocrude refinement process   Section 303 – Carbon Neutrality of Sustainable Biomass Directs the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish policies reflecting the carbon neutrality of biomass   Section 304 – Clarification of Research and Development Program for Cellulosic Biochemical and Bioplastics Establishes a competitive grant program to increase research into advanced wood bioproducts including biofuels, biochemicals, and bioplastics   # Related:  Our Greening Planet… German Science Magazine: Satellite Imagery Proves ‘World’s Vegetation Expanding For Decades’   Germans On Course To Permanently Ruining Remaining Forests – To Protect The Climate GOP Appeasement backfires as climate campaigners attack planting trees – By James Taylor: Excerpt: “Other websites allied with the Environmental Left have also been critical of climate plans focused on planting trees. A Vice article is titled, “Planting ‘Billions of Trees’ Isn’t Going to Stop Climate Change” (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgymg/planting-billions-of-trees-isnt-going-to-stop-climate-change). “Trying to Plant a Trillion Trees Won’t Solve Anything,” claims a Wired headline (https://www.wired.com/story/trees-regenerative-agriculture-climate-change/). “Republicans’ Climate Change Plan Is Big Oil’s Climate Change Plan,” claims a New Republic headline (https://newrepublic.com/article/156269/republicans-climate-change-plan-big-oils-climate-change-plan). GOP climate appeasers put themselves in a political box with no escape route. After publicly supporting speculative, dubious assertions of a climate crisis, they are accused by the Climate Establishment of proposing half-baked measures that do little to mitigate rising temperatures. And once they have stated that climate change is a serious problem – indeed a crisis – they will be boxed into supporting virtually anything the Environmental Left proposes. After all, if the GOP joins alarmists asserting climate change is an existential crisis that is the greatest-ever threat to human civilization, the public will demand the most immediate and far-reaching responses. There is no proposal too far-reaching if we are facing a climate apocalypse, and Republicans will be politically destroyed for proposing anything less. Ultimately, Republicans should stand true to the science, which provides overwhelming evidence that we are not facing a climate crisis.” # Wut??? pic.twitter.com/ypbbzHDNMj — 𝔻𝕒𝕨𝕟𝕋𝕁𝟡𝟘™ 🇵🇭💖🇨🇦 Climate of Dawn (@DawnTJ90) May 10, 2022

Time Magazine ‘Hero of the Environment’ Michael Shellenberger exposes wind/solar power: ‘Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet’

https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/   Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” Michael Shellenberger Key excerpts: In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. I was worried that global warming would end up destroying many of the natural environments that people had worked so hard to protect. I thought the solutions were pretty straightforward: solar panels on every roof, electric cars in every driveway, etc. The main obstacles, I believed, were political. And so I helped organize a coalition of America’s largest labor unions and environmental groups. Our proposal was for a $300 billion dollar investment in renewables. … Another challenge was the intermittent nature of solar and wind energies. When the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing, you have to quickly be able to ramp up another source of energy. … Despite what you’ve heard, there is no “battery revolution” on the way, for well-understood technical and economic reasons. As for house cats, they don’t kill big, rare, threatened birds. What house cats kill are small, common birds, like sparrows, robins and jays. What kills big, threatened, and endangered birds—birds that could go extinct—like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors, are wind turbines. In fact, wind turbines are the most serious new threat to important bird species to emerge in decades. The rapidly spinning turbines act like an apex predator which big birds never evolved to deal with. … As we were learning of these impacts, it gradually dawned on me that there was no amount of technological innovation that could solve the fundamental problem with renewables. … I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have to spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural. Dealing with energy sources that are inherently unreliable, and require large amounts of land, comes at a high economic cost. … Solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste. We tend to think of solar panels as clean, but the truth is that there is no plan anywhere to deal with solar panels at the end of their 20 to 25 year lifespan. …   Published on February 27, 2019 Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet written by Michael Shellenberger When I was a boy, my parents would sometimes take my sister and me camping in the desert. A lot of people think deserts are empty, but my parents taught us to see the wildlife all around us, including hawks, eagles, and tortoises. After college, I moved to California to work on environmental campaigns. I helped save the state’s last ancient redwood forest and blocked a proposed radioactive waste repository set for the desert. In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. I was worried that global warming would end up destroying many of the natural environments that people had worked so hard to protect. I thought the solutions were pretty straightforward: solar panels on every roof, electric cars in every driveway, etc. The main obstacles, I believed, were political. And so I helped organize a coalition of America’s largest labor unions and environmental groups. Our proposal was for a $300 billion dollar investment in renewables. We would not only prevent climate change but also create millions of new jobs in a fast-growing high-tech sector. Our efforts paid off in 2007 when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama embraced our vision. Between 2009–15, the U.S. invested $150 billion dollars in renewables and other forms of clean tech. But right away we ran into trouble. The first was around land use. Electricity from solar roofs costs about twice as much as electricity from solar farms, but solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land. That, along with the fact that solar and wind farms require long new transmissions lines, and are opposed by local communities and conservationists trying to preserve wildlife, particularly birds. Another challenge was the intermittent nature of solar and wind energies. When the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing, you have to quickly be able to ramp up another source of energy. Happily, there were a lot of people working on solutions. One solution was to convert California’s dams into big batteries. The idea was that, when the sun was shining and the wind was blowing, you could pump water uphill, store it for later, and then run it over the turbines to make electricity when you needed it. Other problems didn’t seem like such a big deal, on closer examination. For example, after I learned that house cats kill billions of birds every year it put into perspective the nearly one million birds killed by wind turbines. It seemed to me that most, if not all, of the problems from scaling up solar and wind energies could be solved through more technological innovation. But, as the years went by, the problems persisted and in some cases grew worse. For example, California is a world leader when it comes to renewables but we haven’t converted our dams into batteries, partly for geographic reasons. You need the right kind of dam and reservoirs, and even then it’s an expensive retrofit. A bigger problem is that there are many other uses for the water that accumulates behind dams, namely irrigation and cities. And because the water in our rivers and reservoirs is scarce and unreliable, the water from dams for those other purposes is becoming ever-more precious. Without large-scale ways to back-up solar energy California has had to block electricity coming from solar farms when it’s extremely sunny, or pay neighboring states to take it from us so we can avoid blowing-out our grid. Despite what you’ve heard, there is no “battery revolution” on the way, for well-understood technical and economic reasons. As for house cats, they don’t kill big, rare, threatened birds. What house cats kill are small, common birds, like sparrows, robins and jays. What kills big, threatened, and endangered birds—birds that could go extinct—like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors, are wind turbines. In fact, wind turbines are the most serious new threat to important bird species to emerge in decades. The rapidly spinning turbines act like an apex predator which big birds never evolved to deal with. Solar farms have similarly large ecological impacts. Building a solar farm is a lot like building any other kind of farm. You have to clear the whole area of wildlife. In order to build one of the biggest solar farms in California the developers hired biologists to pull threatened desert tortoises from their burrows, put them on the back of pickup trucks, transport them, and cage them in pens where many ended up dying. As we were learning of these impacts, it gradually dawned on me that there was no amount of technological innovation that could solve the fundamental problem with renewables. You can make solar panels cheaper and wind turbines bigger, but you can’t make the sun shine more regularly or the wind blow more reliably. I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have to spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural. Dealing with energy sources that are inherently unreliable, and require large amounts of land, comes at a high economic cost. There’s been a lot of publicity about how solar panels and wind turbines have come down in cost. But those one-time cost savings from making them in big Chinese factories have been outweighed by the high cost of dealing with their unreliability. Consider California. Between 2011–17 the cost of solar panels declined about 75 percent, and yet our electricity prices rose five times more than they did in the rest of the U.S. It’s the same story in Germany, the world leader in solar and wind energy. Its electricity prices increased 50 percent between 2006–17, as it scaled up renewables. I used to think that dealing with climate change was going to be expensive. But I could no longer believe this after looking at Germany and France. Germany’s carbon emissions have been flat since 2009, despite an investment of $580 billion by 2025 in a renewables-heavy electrical grid, a 50 percent rise in electricity cost. Meanwhile, France produces one-tenth the carbon emissions per unit of electricity as Germany and pays little more than half for its electricity. How? Through nuclear power. Then, under pressure from Germany, France spent $33 billion on renewables, over the last decade. What was the result? A rise in the carbon intensity of its electricity supply, and higher electricity prices, too. What about all the headlines about expensive nuclear and cheap solar and wind? They are largely an illusion resulting from the fact that 70 to 80 percent of the costs of building nuclear plants are up-front, whereas the costs given for solar and wind don’t include the high cost of transmission lines, new dams, or other forms of battery. It’s reasonable to ask whether nuclear power is safe, and what happens with its waste. It turns out that scientists have studied the health and safety of different energy sources since the 1960s. Every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity. Strange as it sounds, nuclear power plants are so safe for the same reason nuclear weapons are so dangerous. The uranium used as fuel in power plants and as material for bombs can create one million times more heat per its mass than its fossil fuel and gunpowder equivalents. Quillette@Quillette Danger’s Deliverance | @ShellenbergerMD https://quillette.com/2018/08/23/the-saving-power-in-danger/ … 20 6:30 PM – Aug 23, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy Danger’s Deliverance – Quillette We encounter dangerous things and seek to get rid of them, often for good reason. But what about when doing so makes the world more dangerous? Consider, for example: Parents who refuse to vaccinate… quillette.com See Quillette’s other Tweets It’s not so much about the fuel as the process. We release more energy breaking atoms than breaking chemical bonds. What’s special about uranium atoms is that they are easy to split. Because nuclear plants produce heat without fire, they emit no air pollution in the form of smoke. By contrast, the smoke from burning fossil fuels and biomass results in the premature deaths of seven million people per year, according to the World Health Organization. Even during the worst accidents, nuclear plants release small amounts of radioactive particulate matter from the tiny quantities of uranium atoms split apart to make heat. Over an 80-year lifespan, fewer than 200 people will die from the radiation from the worst nuclear accident, Chernobyl, and zero will die from the small amounts of radiant particulate matter that escaped from Fukushima. As a result, the climate scientist James Hanson and a colleague found that nuclear plants have actually saved nearly two million lives to date that would have been lost to air pollution. Thanks to its energy density, nuclear plants require far less land than renewables. Even in sunny California, a solar farm requires 450 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a nuclear plant. Energy-dense nuclear requires far less in the way of materials, and produces far less in the way of waste compared to energy-dilute solar and wind. A single Coke can’s worth of uranium provides all of the energy that the most gluttonous American or Australian lifestyle requires. At the end of the process, the high-level radioactive waste that nuclear plants produce is the very same Coke can of (used) uranium fuel. The reason nuclear is the best energy from an environmental perspective is because it produces so little waste and none enters the environment as pollution. All of the waste fuel from 45 years of the Swiss nuclear program can fit, in canisters, on a basketball court-like warehouse, where like all spent nuclear fuel, it has never hurt a fly. By contrast, solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste. We tend to think of solar panels as clean, but the truth is that there is no plan anywhere to deal with solar panels at the end of their 20 to 25 year lifespan. Experts fear solar panels will be shipped, along with other forms of electronic waste, to be disassembled—or, more often, smashed with hammers—by poor communities in Africa and Asia, whose residents will be exposed to the dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium. Wherever I travel in the world I ask ordinary people what they think about nuclear and renewable energies. After saying they know next to nothing, they admit that nuclear is strong and renewables are weak. Their intuitions are correct. What most of us get wrong—understandably—is that weak energies are safer. But aren’t renewables safer? The answer is no. Wind turbines, surprisingly,kill more people than nuclear plants. In other words, the energy density of the fuel determines its environmental and health impacts. Spreading more mines and more equipment over larger areas of land is going to have larger environmental and human safety impacts. It’s true that you can stand next to a solar panel without much harm while if you stand next to a nuclear reactor at full power you’ll die. But when it comes to generating power for billions of people, it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike. Our intuitive sense that sunlight is dilute sometimes shows up in films. That’s why nobody was shocked when the recent sequel of the dystopian sci-fi flick, “Blade Runner,” opened with a dystopian scene of California’s deserts paved with solar farms identical to the one that decimated desert tortoises. Over the last several hundred years, human beings have been moving away from matter-dense fuels towards energy-dense ones. First we move from renewable fuels like wood, dung, and windmills, and towards the fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas, and eventually to uranium. Energy progress is overwhelmingly positive for people and nature. As we stop using wood for fuel we allow grasslands and forests to grow back, and the wildlife to return. As we stop burning wood and dung in our homes, we no longer must breathe toxic indoor smoke. And as we move from fossil fuels to uranium we clear the outdoor air of pollution, and reduce how much we’ll heat up the planet. Nuclear plants are thus a revolutionary technology—a grand historical break from fossil fuels as significant as the industrial transition from wood to fossil fuels before it. The problem with nuclear is that it is unpopular, a victim of a 50 year-long concerted effort by fossil fuel, renewable energy, anti-nuclear weapons campaigners, and misanthropic environmentalists to ban the technology. In response, the nuclear industry suffers battered wife syndrome, and constantly apologizes for its best attributes, from its waste to its safety. Lately, the nuclear industry has promoted the idea that, in order to deal with climate change, “we need a mix of clean energy sources,” including solar, wind and nuclear. It was something I used to believe, and say, in part because it’s what people want to hear. The problem is that it’s not true. France shows that moving from mostly nuclear electricity to a mix of nuclear and renewables results in more carbon emissions, due to using more natural gas, and higher prices, to the unreliability of solar and wind. Oil and gas investors know this, which is why they made a political alliance with renewables companies, and why oil and gas companies have been spending millions of dollars on advertisements promoting solar, andfunneling millions of dollars to said environmental groups to provide public relations cover. What is to be done? The most important thing is for scientists and conservationists to start telling the truth about renewables and nuclear, and the relationship between energy density and environmental impact. Bat scientists recently warned that wind turbines are on the verge of making one species, the Hoary bat, a migratory bat species, go extinct. Another scientist who worked to build that gigantic solar farm in the California desert told High Country News, “Everybody knows that translocation of desert tortoises doesn’t work. When you’re walking in front of a bulldozer, crying, and moving animals, and cacti out of the way, it’s hard to think that the project is a good idea.” I think it’s natural that those of us who became active on climate change gravitated toward renewables. They seemed like a way to harmonize human society with the natural world. Collectively, we have been suffering from an appeal-to-nature fallacy no different from the one that leads us to buy products at the supermarket labeled “all natural.” But it’s high time that those of us who appointed ourselves Earth’s guardians should take a second look at the science, and start questioning the impacts of our actions. Now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we really going to stand by and let them destroy it? Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and president of Environmental Progress, an independent research and policy organization. Follow him on Twitter @ShellenbergerMD

Cheers! Trump Likely To ‘Slash And Burn’ Obama’s Climate Policy

Via: http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=0b5620ebdc&e=f4e33fdd1e Trump Likely To Slash And Burn Obama’s Climate Policy Trump’s Climate Contrarian: Myron Ebell Takes On The EPA “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” – Barack Obama, January 14 2014 The problem with President Obama’s strategy for his political and policy legacy is that an “action” that lives by the pen can die by the pen. So it will be, apparently, with his administration’s climate and other environmental policies, which are on the way to being largely undone by Donald Trump’s administration after the property tycoon won the US election last week. US and international climate activists will try to hang on, kicking and screaming, to the various big Obama climate actions. Unfortunately, it would seem to be the case that if a president decides to undo a previous president’s executive orders, or signatures on international agreements, he can do so. So kicking and screaming may describe the limits of the effective response to Mr Trump’s undoing of President Obama’s climate agenda. –John Dizard, Financial Times, 11 November 2016 U.S. EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early. And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory. EPA employees stand to see some of the most drastic changes under the Trump administration, and they may be taking things a bit harder than other government workers. The president-elect has vowed to repeal some of the rules they’ve toiled on for the last eight years during the Obama administration, including the Clean Power Plan rule to cut power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. –Robin Bravender and Kevin Bogardus, E&E News, 11 November 2016 In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell. Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly. –Henry Fountain, The New York Times, 11 November 2016 1) Trump Likely To Slash And Burn Obama’s Climate Policy Financial Times, 11 November 2016 2) Trump’s Climate Contrarian: Myron Ebell Takes On The EPA The New York Times, 11 November 2016 3) Tears, Angst And Retirement Plans As EPA Staff Brace For Trump Takeover E&E News, 11 November 2016 4) Trump Victory: Shock And Disbelief At Marrakech UN Climate Talks The Economic Times of India, 10 November 2016 5) Without Obama’s Climate $$Billions, Paris Agreement Could Fall Apart Reuters, 12 November 2016 6) Neil Collins: The Climate Change Act Must Go, Eventually Financial Times, 11 November 2016 7) Nick Butler: Time For Adaptation To Reality Financial Times, 14 November 2016 8) And Finally: China Announces Massive Rise In Coal Capacity The Wall Street Journal, 8 November 2016 Mr. Ebell grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture. “I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it.” –Henry Fountain, The New York Times, 11 November 2016 Many developing nations’ promises to act under last year’s Paris Agreement set pre-conditions including increasing funds to help them limit greenhouse gas emissions and make their economies more resilient to heat waves, floods, storms and rising seas. Without extra money, they say they won’t be able to do so much. Trump, who has called man-made climate change a hoax, wants to cancel the Paris Agreement and halt any U.S. taxpayer funds for U.N. global warming programs. If he follows through, that will threaten a collective pledge by rich nations in Paris to raise climate finance from both public and private sources from a combined $100 billion a year promised for 2020. “My only worry is the money,” said Tosi Mpanu Mpanu of Democratic Republic of Congo, who heads a group of the 48 least developed nations. —Reuters, 12 November 2016 Only five MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill in September 2008. In an orgy of self-righteousness, parliament voted near-unanimously to cut the UK’s CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, a date which is past the deadline of at least half of the honourable members who supported it. Thus was laid the foundation of Britain’s barmy energy policy. This has given us expensive domestic fuel prices in a time of plenty, prevented the building of gas-fired power stations and culminated in the biggest postdated cheque ever written on the UK taxpayer, in the form of the finance for the Hinkley Point power station. The sceptics at the Global Warming Policy Forum describe the Act as “a one-shot rocket, quite without steering and with precious little provision for deceleration … if a change of pace is not possible, abrupt termination becomes inevitable”. –Neil Collins, Financial Times, 11 November 2016 China’s government said it would raise coal power capacity by as much as 20% by 2020, ensuring a continuing strong role for the commodity in the country’s energy sector despite a pledge to bring down pollution levels. In a new five-year plan for electricity released Monday, the National Energy Administration said it would raise coal-fired power capacity from around 900 gigawatts last year to as high as 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada. –Brian Spegele, The Wall Street Journal, 8 November 2016 1) Trump Likely To Slash And Burn Obama’s Climate Policy Financial Times, 11 November 2016 John Dizard “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.” – Barack Obama, January 14 2014 The problem with President Obama’s strategy for his political and policy legacy is that an “action” that lives by the pen can die by the pen. So it will be, apparently, with his administration’s climate and other environmental policies, which are on the way to being largely undone by Donald Trump’s administration after the property tycoon won the US election last week. US and international climate activists will try to hang on, kicking and screaming, to the various big Obama climate actions. Unfortunately, it would seem to be the case that if a president decides to undo a previous president’s executive orders, or signatures on international agreements, he can do so. So kicking and screaming may describe the limits of the effective response to Mr Trump’s undoing of President Obama’s climate agenda. For the most part, the outgoing president’s climate policy was enacted by decree, rather than laws or treaties ratified by the Senate. This seemed to be a clever idea at the time. After the 2010 elections, climate sceptics among the Republicans and fossil-fuel friendly Democrats were able to block controversial environmental legislation. So the administration’s significant climate actions, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan and the State Department’s negotiations for the Paris agreement, which set out an international action plan to tackle global warming, were taken without Congressional participation. The Paris agreement reached at the UN climate change conference last November was, according to US law, an executive agreement rather than a treaty. Under the US constitution, treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate, which is a major cat-herding problem even at the best of times. The advantage of a treaty is that it has a higher ranking in law than executive actions or legislation passed through Congress or state governments. It is harder to undo. The Paris agreement negotiators thought they had gotten around this problem by including within its terms a cumbersome three-year process that any signatory nation would have to follow to withdraw its assent. So this made the agreement “legally binding”, as everyone who mattered was saying at the time. However, the people who did not matter at the time just elected a new US president, who has made promises to coal miners, mining companies and coal-burning utilities that he would rip up “Paris”. These people have spent the past year figuring out how to make good on Mr Trump’s promise. They took note that the Paris agreement is really a subsidiary agreement of another international accord, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. That has been governing all the annual gatherings on climate change since then. Any signatory, such as a Trump-led America, can withdraw from the UNFCC on one year’s notice. Legal experts from US environmental organisations point out that under “customary international law” the country is bound to respect international executive agreements that are not treaties ratified by the Senate. And they are right. Unfortunately, there is a conflict on this point between customary international law and the US constitution, one that has not really been tested. In the end, a president can probably just withdraw from an executive agreement when he decides to do so. He might be reviled by the international community, Congress and even the public, but he can almost certainly do it. Full post 2) Trump’s Climate Contrarian: Myron Ebell Takes On The E.P.A. The New York Times, 11 November 2016 Henry Fountain In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell. The mug-shot posters, pasted on walls and lampposts around Paris by an activist group during the United Nations climate talks last year, were hardly flattering. They depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.” But in his customary mild-mannered way, Mr. Ebell, who directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group in Washington, brushed it off. “I’ve gotten used to this over the years,” he told an interviewer at the talks. “But I did go out and get my photo taken with my poster, just so I have it as a memento.” In looking for someone to follow through on his campaign vow to dismantle one of the Obama administration’s signature climate change policies, President-elect Donald J. Trump probably could not have found a better candidate for the job than Mr. Ebell. Mr. Ebell, who revels in taking on the scientific consensus on global warming, will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy more broadly. Mr. Ebell, whose organization is financed in part by the coal industry, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the linchpin of that policy, the Clean Power Plan. Developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plan is a far-reaching set of regulations that, by seeking to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation, could result in the closing of many coal-burning power plants, among other effects. Mr. Ebell has said that the plan, which has been tied up in the courts since it was finalized in 2015, is illegal. In the interview in Paris last year, he said he hoped whoever was elected president would “undo the E.P.A. power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy.” As the person Mr. Trump has chosen to lead the transition at the E.P.A., Mr. Ebell, 63, will be in a position to begin to do just that. Mr. Ebell, who did not respond to a request for an interview, grew up on a ranch in Oregon. He got his undergraduate degree at Colorado College and master’s at the London School of Economics, where he studied under the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. He has described himself as “sort of a contrarian by nature and upbringing,” and has said he was very strongly influenced by the “question authority” ethos of 1960s and ’70s counterculture. “I really think that people should be suspicious of authority,” he told an interviewer last year. “The more you’re told that you have to believe something, the more you should question it.” Mr. Ebel leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose-knit group that says it is “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” He has been one of the nation’s most visible climate contrarians, known for dispensing memorable sound bites on cable news shows and at events like the annual conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Mr. Ebell has said that “a lot of third-, fourth- and fifth-rate scientists have gotten a long ways” by embracing climate change. He frequently mocks climate leaders like Al Gore, and has called the movement the “forces of darkness” because “they want to turn off the lights all over the world.” No one, it seems, is immune to his criticism. He called Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, issued in mid-2015, “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.” “It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added. Mr. Ebell cut his teeth in Washington working for Frontiers of Freedom, a research group founded by former Senator Malcolm Wallop, a Wyoming Republican, to advocate for limited government. He also worked for a Republican congressman from Arizona, John Shadegg, on an effort to revamp the Endangered Species Act to make it more respectful of property rights. In interviews and speeches, Mr. Ebell comes off as amiable and calm. But he is hardly shy about lobbing verbal grenades, sometimes directly at scientists and environmentalists. Full post see also : Myron Ebell is perfectly suited to lead the transition to a new EPA 3) Tears, Angst And Retirement Plans As EPA Staff Brace For Trump Takeover E&E News, 11 November 2016 Robin Bravender and Kevin Bogardus There’s been angst and even some tears for federal workers at EPA and other agencies after Donald Trump won the White House. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. U.S. EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early. And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory. “People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed,” said John O’Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, “people were crying,” added O’Grady, who works in EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago. “They were recommending that people take sick leave and go home.” EPA employees stand to see some of the most drastic changes under the Trump administration, and they may be taking things a bit harder than other government workers. The president-elect has vowed to repeal some of the rules they’ve toiled on for the last eight years during the Obama administration, including the Clean Power Plan rule to cut power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions. Trump has even suggested abolishing the agency entirely, although that would be an uphill political climb. Trump has picked a top climate change skeptic to lead his EPA transition team — Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute — and has promised sweeping reforms in the agency that’s long been a target for industry groups and Republicans who say its rules overreach. “If you look at the seven stages of grief, I’m still in denial. I will not look at the news. I will not read the news,” said an EPA career employee. Another EPA staffer said, “I don’t actually know anybody here that was supporting Trump.” That person said people are “worried” that their work over the last eight years will be unraveled. “It’s always a time of uncertainty” when a new administration comes in, the employee said, and there were fears when the George W. Bush administration came into office, too. But “people are more worried this time,” the person added. Silvia Saracco, head of a union chapter that represents EPA employees in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, said, “There is a lot of angst out there, nervousness.” Some DOE employees are feeling glum, too. Full post 4) Trump Victory: Shock And Disbelief At Marrakech UN Climate Talks The Economic Times of India, 10 November 2016 Urmi Goswami MARRAKECH (MOROCCO): Daylight broke in the ochre city with the news of Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the US elections. Trump’s victory came as a shock to most, who were prepared for a tight race with the expectation that Secretary Hillary Clinton would make it to the finish line with a slim margin.  Environmental activist Bethany Hindmarsh, 26, cries during a protest against President-elect Donald Trump at the Climate Conference, known as COP22, in Marrakech, Morocco, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy) Shock and disbelief marked Bab Ighli, the venue of the UN-sponsored climate meet. Even as delegates sought to retain an air of normalcy virtually every conversation turned to Trump, and what the elevation of a climate denier to the White House meant for the global efforts to tackle climate change. Throughout his campaign, Trump repudiated climate change. He described it as a Chinese hoax, denied the science, described climate change funding as wasteful. While candidate Trump has been categorical about his views on climate change, it is unclear if as president he will follow through. Observers from the United States and other countries stressed that it was too soon to say what the Trump Administration would do. This isn’t diplomatic sidestepping of the question. The fact is that it is too early to determine what President-elect Trump will do. He could well follow through on his promise to pull out from the Paris Agreement, but since the treaty is already in force, the United States is locked in for three years, with another year or so for the process of withdrawal from the treaty. Full story 5) Without Obama’s Climate $$Billions, Paris Agreement Could Fall Apart Reuters, 12 November 2016 President-elect Donald Trump’s policies are likely to make it harder for developing nations to obtain the growing finance they need to combat climate change, threatening one pillar of a 2015 international agreement to slow global warming. Many developing nations’ promises to act under last year’s Paris Agreement set pre-conditions including increasing funds to help them limit greenhouse gas emissions and make their economies more resilient to heat waves, floods, storms and rising seas. Without extra money, they say they won’t be able to do so much. Trump, who has called man-made climate change a hoax, wants to cancel the Paris Agreement and halt any U.S. taxpayer funds for U.N. global warming programs. If he follows through, that will threaten a collective pledge by rich nations in Paris to raise climate finance from both public and private sources from a combined $100 billion a year promised for 2020. Since Trump’s win, nations from China to Saudi Arabia have reaffirmed their support for the Paris Agreement’s goal of eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions sometime from 2050 to 2100. But there is widespread unease about finance at the Nov. 7-18 talks on climate change among almost 200 nations being held in Marrakesh, Morocco. “My only worry is the money,” said Tosi Mpanu Mpanu of Democratic Republic of Congo, who heads a group of the 48 least developed nations. “It’s worrying when you know that Trump is a climate change skeptic,” he told Reuters. Full story 6) Neil Collins: The Climate Change Act Must Go, Eventually Financial Times, 11 November 2016 Only five MPs voted against the Climate Change Bill in September 2008. In an orgy of self-righteousness, parliament voted near-unanimously to cut the UK’s CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, a date which is past the deadline of at least half of the honourable members who supported it. Thus was laid the foundation of Britain’s barmy energy policy. This has given us expensive domestic fuel prices in a time of plenty, prevented the building of gas-fired power stations and culminated in the biggest postdated cheque ever written on the UK taxpayer, in the form of the finance for the Hinkley Point power station. With luck, the UK should avoid power cuts this winter, but it will be close, and dirty, as National Grid admits. Now the Court of Appeal has lit a tiny candle in the energy gloom, upholding the state’s right to cancel the exemption from the Climate Change Levy for renewables. This was merely another little bung to the windmill subsidy farmers but Infinis Energy argued that under the Climate Change Act, it could not be removed. The court disagreed. The sceptics at the Global Warming Policy Foundation describe the Act as “a one-shot rocket, quite without steering and with precious little provision for deceleration … if a change of pace is not possible, abrupt termination becomes inevitable”. Repeal of this ill-starred legislation is a long way away but the court has taken a baby-step. Full post 7) Nick Butler: Time For Adaptation To Reality Financial Times, 14 November 2016 Nick Butler The Paris agreement on climate change has been ratified, earlier than most people expected. Some believe that means the issue is on its way to being resolved. That is absolutely not the case. Donald Trump’s election as president is a major setback because it removes any sense of American leadership on the issue. But that is not the only cause for concern. The inconvenient truth is that the use of coal in growing emerging economies continues to outpace anything being achieved elsewhere. The global energy market is changing; oil demand is coming to a peak and renewables are getting cheaper. But that, however important, is as yet having no more than a minor effect on the climate issue. We have to be realistic and prepare accordingly. Climate change was barely mentioned in the US election campaign. More immediate issues — cultural, migration and the pessimism of the forgotten men and women of the middle classes — provide the focus of attention in the US, Europe and Japan. Climate change and the policies to deal with it are seen as just one reason for the deindustrialisation of the US. Mr Trump has been explicit on this and has characterised the concept of climate change as a Chinese fabrication designed to weaken American industry. I doubt that he will bother to take his country out of the Paris agreement but there will be no significant US engagement in its implementation and Supreme Court justices could strike down the regulations designed to tighten emission standards on coal-fired power plants. Cheap gas and technology could continue to reduce US emissions but the government will not be a participant in the international dialogue on climate issues for at least the next four years. But the problem is bigger than that. As the International Energy Agency’s new edition of the World Energy Outlook will remind us this week, hydrocarbons remain the source of three-quarters of world energy supply, and will still provide something close to that by 2040 even on optimistic assumptions about the implementation of the Paris promises. Simply: the distribution of energy demand is shifting to the emerging economies. Gains in efficiency and cuts in emissions achieved in the developed world are liable to be overwhelmed by growth in demand in the east and south where demand remains focused on coal (in India and China in particular) and oil (especially in the Middle East). […] The outlook then is for increased use of hydrocarbons and increased emissions. Paris did not solve climate change. More is needed, and soon. Technology offers grounds for optimism, but progress must be dramatic to make a difference. Given what is happening in the US and Asia it would be foolish to do other than plan on the basis that emissions will rise beyond the targets set. Ten years on from the Stern Report which raised public awareness of climate change we need a new global analysis of the means of adaptation to that prospect. That conclusion may be dismissed by some as fatalistic pessimism but the belief that implies in future changes in America and Asia to me defies credibility. Full post 8) And Finally: China Announces Massive Rise In Coal Capacity The Wall Street Journal, 8 November 2016 Brian Spegele BEIJING—China’s government said it would raise coal power capacity by as much as 20% by 2020, ensuring a continuing strong role for the commodity in the country’s energy sector despite a pledge to bring down pollution levels. In a new five-year plan for electricity released Monday, the National Energy Administration said it would raise coal-fired power capacity from around 900 gigawatts last year to as high as 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. The roughly 200-gigawatt increase alone is more than the total power capacity of Canada. By comparison, the agency said it would increase non-fossil fuel sources from about 12% to 15% of the country’s energy mix over the same period. Coal would still make up about 55% of the electricity mix by 2020, down from around two-thirds in recent years. “This is indeed a disappointing target,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a campaigner at the environmental group Greenpeace. “Given that there is already severe overcapacity and demand for coal-fired power is going down, we would have expected a cap on coal power capacity much closer to the current capacity level.” Greenpeace said China already had some 200 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity under construction, meaning that meeting its 13th Five Year Plan goal would require the government to halt some new projects and retire some existing plants. Officials from the NEA defended the target in a press conference with Chinese journalists Monday, according to a transcript posted on the administration’s website. They said that the government was committed to reducing coal’s dominance in the energy mix and that they reserved the right to slow down coal-project approvals or construction, if necessary. Full story

For more results click below