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TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES

Briefing date 20.08.2018
UK hit by climate extremes and government must act, poll says

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News.

UK hit by climate extremes and government must act, poll says
Press Association Read Article

A new poll commissioned by the environmental legal charity ClientEarth suggests that, as the Press Association reports, “almost two-thirds of people think the UK is being hit by longer and hotter heatwaves as a result of climate change”. A similar number (62%) thinks that the UK government is not doing enough to tackle climate change. The PA report adds: “Even more, 71%, thought fossil fuel companies, whose products create greenhouse gases that drive rising temperatures, should help pay for extreme weather damage. Some 63% think the UK is getting hotter and longer heatwaves, 61% think flooding is on the increase, 57% think there are more extreme storms and 55% feel more dry spells are affecting the UK as a result of global warming.” BusinessGreen takes a closer look at the YouGov polling and picks out “five key takeaways”, which include that “local renewables are hugely popular”: “However, there were some small surprises. Solar inched out offshore wind as the number one most popular power source, followed – interestingly given the government’s decision to back away from the Swansea Bay project – by tidal/lagoon power, with onshore wind in fourth.” The Guardian focuses on the fact that the polling finds that “more than half of the British public would install solar panels and home batteries to tackle climate change if there was greater assistance from the government”. Meanwhile, the Sun on Sunday has commissioned a new online polling company called Deltapoll to ask for “Brits views on global warming”. The newspaper reports: “Britain’s sizzling summer was not the result of climate change, according to most Brits. Nearly half of adults believe the weather goes in cycles and that heatwaves come around from time to time. Barely a third of voters believe the human race is responsible and that we will have more extreme temperatures unless we act soon.” Separately, the Guardian reports that the author of last week’s high-profile “Hothouse Earth” perspective PNAS paper says that the “world is finally waking up to climate change”. The newspaper says: “Following an unprecedented 270,000 downloads of his study, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, said he had not seen such a surge of interest since 2007, the year the Nobel prize was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Australia waters down commitment to climate accord amid domestic political fight
Reuters Read Article

Reuters reports on the continuing political turmoil in Australia: “Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday stripped requirements for reducing greenhouse emissions from his centerpiece energy policy in the face of political opposition, although the country remains a signatory to the Paris Agreement.” Reuters adds: “The National Energy Guarantee had mandated that greenhouse emissions from its power industry be lowered by 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. With Australia’s east coast in the middle of the worst drought in 60 years, Turnbull said his government would seek to legislate emission reductions in the future. He gave no timetable for revisiting the issue, but said his government is committed to its Paris accord commitments.” Christopher Knaus in the Guardian says the Liberal party “is self-destructing over energy”: “Turnbull’s leadership was under serious threat when MPs and senators flew into Canberra last night.” In an opinion piece for the Guardian, David Spratt and Ian Dunlop write that “yet again the Coalition [is] refusing to face up to the threat of climate change”.

Wildfires may cost far right in Swedish election
The Times Read Article

The Times reports that “the burgeoning far right could be denied victory in the Swedish general election next month by a surge of anxiety about climate change after the country’s hottest month for 260 years”. It adds that the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats have suffered in recent polling: “The populist party’s ratings have begun to wilt over the past fortnight after wildfires tore across more than 60,000 acres (240 sq km) of the Swedish countryside. The sight of villages being evacuated and Stockholm drafting in firefighters and water-bombing aircraft has shocked voters before the election on September 9. The disaster has elevated the environment from a niche political interest to the second most prominent issue on the agenda after immigration. The far right’s loss has been the Green Party’s gain.” Meanwhile, the New York Times says that the US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has laid the bulk of the blame for California’s wildfire on “environmental terrorist groups”. It adds: “Mr Zinke and his boss, President Trump, also dismissed the impact of global warming on the fires. But the secretary later clarified his comments, responding ‘of course’ when asked if he accepted that climate change was part of the problem.”

Carbon emission proposals to boost Trump’s drive to revive coal
Financial Times Read Article

The Financial Times reports that the Trump administration has drawn up proposals to replace Obama-era rules on carbon dioxide emissions with measures to support coal-fired power plants, as President Donald Trump seeks to fulfil his campaign pledge to “put our miners back to work”: “Draft versions of proposed rules on carbon emissions from electricity generation, due to be announced this week, include measures that could push utilities to invest in coal-fired plants to make them more efficient and competitive…Mr Trump will be holding a rally on Tuesday in West Virginia, a heartland of US coal mining, and the administration is expected to announce its plan to coincide with that event.” The New York Times says the Trump administration “plans to formally propose a vast overhaul of climate change regulations that would allow individual states to decide how, or even whether, to curb carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants”. Meanwhile, Associated Press reports that “conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the US, the Trump administration has declared in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for efficient cars and other conservation programmes…The position was outlined in a memo released last month, without fanfare and in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards.”

Comment.

Science Says: Hotter weather turbocharges US West wildfires
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Read Article

AP’s veteran science reporter Seth Borenstein has written a feature setting out a range of scientists views on why “hotter weather turbocharges US West wildfires”: “Experts say the way global warming worsens wildfires comes down to the basic dynamics of fire. Fires need ignition, oxygen and fuel. And what’s really changed is fuel — the trees, brush and other plants that go up in flames. ‘Hotter, drier weather means our fuels are drier, so it’s easier for fires to start and spread and burn more intensely,’ said University of Alberta fire scientist Mike Flannigan. It’s simple, he said: ‘The warmer it is, the more fire we see.’ Federal fire and weather data show higher air temperatures are turbocharging fire season.” Carbon Brief also recently published a factcheck on this topic. James Rainey for NBC News has a related feature on how “global warming can make extreme weather worse” and how “now scientists can say by how much”. Meanwhile, in the Daily Telegraph‘s business section, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, the chairman of Lloyd’s, writes that “the heat is on and we must deal with $1.8bn cost of rising temperatures”.

How to design carbon taxes
Jan Piotrowski, The Economist Read Article

The Economist’s environment correspondent ponders in the weekly’s Free Exchange section on how carbon taxes can be may “palatable”: “Labels help. Behavioural economists have discovered that one way to make taxes acceptable is to rebrand them as ‘fees’ or ‘contributions’. Alberta, in Canada, and Switzerland call their taxes ‘levies’. A more substantive approach is to return the money raised to citizens or affected businesses…Democrat-controlled state legislatures in California and Massachusetts are debating such ‘fee and dividend’ measures. A group of Republican grandees, including two former secretaries of state, are recommending a similar proposal to their climate-change-sceptical party. A new paper co-written by Lord Stern and pointedly entitled ‘Making carbon pricing work for citizens’ singles it out as the best choice in most circumstances.”

Electric cars: the race to replace cobalt
Henry Sanderson, Financial Times Read Article

The Financial Times’s “Big Read” is a feature about how electric carmakers want new batteries that are not dependent on metals from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It speaks to Mike Zimmerman, a professor at Tufts University, whose start-up, Ionic Materials, is looking at how to make batteries safer and use less cobalt: “Since Sony commercialised the lithium-ion technology in 1991 there have been few substantial improvements upon the current technology, Mr Zimmerman says. He believes the battery that powers our world may now have reached its limit.” He is now working to develop solid-state batteries. Carbon Brief has also published an explainer on the “six metals are key to a low-carbon future”, one of which is cobalt. Meanwhile, Akshat Rathi travels to Switzerland for Quartz to see why “stacking concrete blocks is a surprisingly efficient way to store energy”. He visits a demonstration plant built by Energy Vault: “The whole thing—from idea to a functional unit—took about nine months and less than $2m to accomplish. If this sort of low-tech, low-cost innovation could help solve even just a few parts of the huge energy-storage problem, maybe the energy transition the world needs won’t be so hard after all.”

Science.

Changes in temperature and precipitation extremes in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania
International Journal of Climatology Read Article

Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania have seen an increase in the number of “warm” nights, warm days and warm spells in the past four decades, new research shows. In addition, the countries faced fewer “cold” nights and cold days, the researchers say. “Precipitation [rainfall] indices, on the other hand, showed increasing and decreasing trends in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, but no general pattern,” they say.

High‐resolution projection of climate change and extremity over Israel using COSMO‐CLM
International Journal of Climatology Read Article

Israel could experience temperature increases of up to 2.5C and rainfall declines of 40% in some regions by 2070, according to a new study. Using regional climate models, the researchers find that rainfall declines are expected to affect the north and central parts of Israel, which currently have a Mediterranean climate. Other regions – including semi-arid and arid parts – could experience rainfall increases, the study says.

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