Geoengineering to alter climate change moves closer to reality, recent pattern of cloud cover may have masked some global warming, & more
News
Geoengineering to alter climate change moves closer to reality
Bloomberg reports on a new assessment by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity on the risks to ecosystems of giving the green light to artificially engineering the oceans and atmosphere to bring down temperatures. “Climate geoengineering is what countries have agreed to do, although they haven’t really realised that they’ve agreed to do it.,” said Phil Williamson, a scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author on the report. The report makes clear that while geoengineering still entails environmental, political and economic risks, it’s worth considering as long as potentially unintended consequences can be pinpointed and minimised, says Bloomberg. The authors include techniques for removing carbon dioxide from the air, such as the much discussed Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), as well solar radiation management under the umbrella term of geoengineering.
Shutdown of UK’s main gas storage site extended after technical problems
Britain’s only long-term gas storage site has suffered further technical problems, and is unlikely to restart on 1 November as expected, reports The Telegraph. The site in the North Sea owned by Centrica shut down for safety checks in June and yesterday reported that it was “still conducting preparatory works and reinstatement testing”. The delay, which is understood to have been caused by a bolt on a value failing during testing raises the prospect of higher prices this winter after Centrica permanently shut down the smaller and older of the two platforms at the site in September, says The Telegraph.
Recent pattern of cloud cover may have masked some global warming
All kinds of complex interactions are involved in working how out much warming we’ll get for a given amount of carbon dioxide – and one of the hardest to pin down has been clouds, begins an Ars Technica report on a new science paper. Overall, changes to clouds amplify human-caused warming but the new study found that since about 1980, faster warming in the western than the eastern tropical Atlantic and Pacific means that clouds have had a cooling influence. NASA’s Dr Kate Marvel warns, “We’ve gotten lucky recently—low cloud cover has increased, reflected more sunlight back to space, and slowed down global warming. But don’t expect this to persist in the future.” Carbon Brief talks to scientists about the new paper and its implications for understanding past, present and future warming.
First automated grid capacity warning triggered
Power generators have been asked to be ready to provide power, as the first capacity notice was been issued by National Grid yesterday. The new automated notices are intended to give advance warning that power generation is expected to fall within a certain headroom above national demand. The grid warned there could be insufficient electricity production supply to meet the UK’s demand at 4.30pm, with around 800MW of demand reduction and onsite generation capacity prepared to fill the gap. The capacity warning was later cancelled.
In rare move, China criticizes Trump plan to exit climate change pact
China on Tuesday rejected a plan by U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to back out of the Paris Agreement, saying a wise political leader should make policy in line with global trends. China’s top climate change negotiator told reporters, “If they resist this trend, I don’t think they’ll win the support of their people, and their country’s economic and social progress will also be affected.” Xie’s comments come as China plans to launch a national carbon trading scheme in 2017.
IMO torpedos hopes for early shipping carbon reduction plan
Climate campaigners have criticised the International Maritime Organisation for failing to draw up a comprehensive plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the sector at a meeting in London last week. The meeting secured an agreement to cap sulphur emissions from marine fuel by 2020 but no such plan was reached for capping carbon dioxide emissions, other than setting a target to agree an initial strategy by 2018. While not long ago it seemed like international climate deals were being agreed on a weekly basis, the momentum of the past eight weeks has not extended to shipping, says a separate BusinessGreen article today, which describes the IMO as “charting a dangerous and self-defeating course of delayed climate action.”
Government beefs up guidance to protect businesses that are vulnerable to flood risk
The government has released its new action plan and “one stop shop” web portal, designed to help people minimise the impact on their property of flooding. The Property Flood Resilience Action Plan explores how government can work together with industry to help limit the impacts of flooding and recover faster. The Committee on Climate Change has warned that flood resilience spending is still not keeping track with the increased risks likely to be brought about by climate change, the piece notes.
Comment
Great Barrier Reef: why are government and business perpetuating the big lie?
David Ritter, Guardian Sustainable Business Blog
Despite warnings from scientists that climate change poses the biggest ongoing threat to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the federal and Queensland governments’ long-term sustainability plan all but ignores it, says David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific. He says, “The rhetorical effect of the whole mechanism conveniently shifts responsibility away from government and big business on to individuals. It is time for governments to end the big lie by doing all they can to help our reef. This means calling time on the Carmichael mine project, moving rapidly towards renewable energy and bringing on the swift but just transition away from all fossil fuels.”
We don’t need a ‘war’ on climate change, we need a revolution
Eric S Godoy & Aaron Jaffe, The New York Times
Two US academics in social science and philosophy discuss the appropriateness, or otherwise, of war metaphors to discuss climate change, in response to a recent article by veteran activist Bill McKibben in which he said, “we’re under attack from climate change -and our only hope is to mobilise like we did in WWII.” They write that while war rhetoric can be useful in stressing the seriousness of the harm, in the context of climate change it is “inaccurate and a potentially counterproductive framing” because it unhelpfully divides the world into allies and enemies: “We urgently need to motivate action, but given the ambiguities and dangers surrounding war rhetoric, we need better orienting language. Perhaps, as some have suggested, “revolution” is the better path.”
Science
Enhanced intensity of global tropical cyclones during the mid-Pliocene warm period
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
New research explores the behaviour of tropical cyclones during the mid-Pliocene warm period – a time around three million years ago that shares similarities with projected future climate. Model simulations consistently show increased cyclone intensity during the mid-Pliocene, the paper says, along with longer duration storms and a shift of the strongest cyclones towards the Earth’s poles. The simulations are similar to global tropical cyclones changes seen during recent warming, the researchers say “as well as those of many future projections, providing a window into the potential tropical cyclone activity that may be expected in a warmer world.”
Reducing uncertainties in decadal variability of the global carbon budget with multiple datasets
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The conventional approach to calculating how much CO2 the Earth’s land surface takes up is to estimate the difference between how much CO2 we emit, what the ocean absorbs and how much is added to the atmosphere. A new study takes a different approach using multiple observed datasets to estimate the land and ocean carbon sinks as well as emissions from land use change. The new method reduces uncertainties in estimates by over 40%, the researchers say, and shows that both land and ocean sinks have been increasing since 1980.
Global environmental drivers of influenza
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In temperate countries, outbreaks of ‘flu are well correlated to seasonal changes in temperature and humidity. But in tropical countries, the links with environmental conditions are less clear. Now a new study shows that despite these apparent differences in outbreak patterns, absolute humidity and – to a lesser extent – temperature do drive incidence of ‘flu in tropical countries as well as temperate ones.
Other stories
- Campaigners tell Barclays, ‘you frack my home, we’ll move into yours’ (DeSmogUK )
- BP beats quarterly earnings estimates, trims spending (Reuters )
- Climate proves to be a key voter issue in Florida (ClimateWire via Scientific American )
- Global carbon intensity falls, on declining coal use (Climate Home )
- Study blames low 2015 Western snowpack on high temperatures (Associated Press )
- Facebook users ‘check in’ to support North Dakota pipeline protests (Reuters )
- M&S Energy awards £350,000 in community energy funding (BusinessGreen )
- Japan utilities say no problem with nuclear plants after carbon investigation (Reuters )
- BP’s aviation division gets carbon neutral status (Energy Live News )
- US crude output up in August for first time since March (The Financial Times )
- Energy giants ditch deals that denied existing customers cheapest prices (The Telegraph )
- Climate sceptics widen their net to claim all science – from medicine to physics to computing – is ‘in deep trouble’ (The Independent )
- The most dramatic climate fight of the election is in Washington state (Grist )