Daily Briefing |
TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES
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Today's climate and energy headlines:
- Gas and nuclear plants that could power all UK homes 'on hold'
- German regulator approves closure of 5 GW of power capacity
- Merkel's likely coalition ally backs CO2 backloading
- Treaties May Not Be The Key to Global Sustainable Development
- Why is Europe failing to take the energy-water connection seriously?
- Climate change, ecosystems and people
- October set for top ten warmest
- Cosmic rays aren't causing global warming
- A lagged response to the 11-year solar cycle
Climate & energy news:.
Gas and nuclear power plant projects with sufficient capacity to
supply electricity to every UK household are on hold because of
government policy dithering, the energy industry claimed on
Monday.
Germany’s energy regulator said on Monday it has approved the
closure of 12 power generation units that operators applied for in
a market suffering from low prices and competition for grid access
from renewable energy sources.
Germany’s Social Democrats one of the parties in talks with Angela
Merkel’s conservatives to form a coalition government, will back
European Union plans to prop up carbon prices by ‘backloading’
permits, party sources told Reuters. Meanwhile, Reuters
alsoreportsthat officials are
likely to start backloading talks this week.
Climate & energy comment:.
Sweeping international treaties are no longer the key for charting
the planet’s path to sustainable development, according to
international leaders gathered at the “Rio+20 to 2015” conference
last week. Instead, they said, partnerships among governments,
businesses, and NGOs hold the most promise for measurable progress
on sustainability issues, including climate change.
Vast quantities of water are needed for energy systems, from power
plant cooling to fracturing rock to extract shale gas. The US has
woken up to the interdependence of the economy’s water and energy
needs, but Europe appears to still be ignoring the potential
problems, according to this article.
New climate science:.
A special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment looks this month at how the impacts of climate change
affect people and ecosystems, and how best to adapt.
The mean temperature for the UK from the 1st to the 28th October
2013 was 11.6 °C, which is 2.1 °C above the long-term (1981-2010)
average. While a few days of temperature data are yet to be added,
it’s likely that this October was one of the warmest since records
began in 1910.
Analysing of more than 50 years’ worth of data, new research shows
that changes in the number of cosmic rays reaching earth due to
variations in the sun’s activity cannot explain global
warming.
The sun’s activity rises and falls on an approximately 11-year
cycle, leading to regional fluctuations in temperatures. New
research suggests that over Europe and the North Atlantic, sea
surface temperatures lag peaks and troughs in the sun’s activity by
a few years.