Trump touts 'beautiful, clean coal' and fails to link disasters to climate change
News
Trump touts ‘beautiful, clean coal’ and fails to link disasters to climate change
President Trump announced in his first State of the Union speech that the US has “ended the war on beautiful clean coal”. Trump also made a mention of the numerous natural disasters that hit the US in 2017, which killed more than 300 people and caused more than $300bn in damages, according to the Huffington Post, but did not mention climate change. Trump’s comments on coal and other topics were subject to factchecks by The Guardian, the LA Times and Associated Press. Trump has “repeatedly confused plain old coal with ‘clean coal’,” the LA Times writes. “So-called clean coal is a marketing label for a very expensive technique to reduce pollution from coal that’s known more formally as carbon sequestration. It involves capturing the greenhouse gases generated by burning coal and storing them underground, to keep the burning of coal from accelerating climate change. There hasn’t ever been much of a war on clean coal, although some environmental groups oppose it.” In his rebuttal, US Senator Bernie Sanders blasted Trump for not recognising climate change in his address, according to The Independent. “Now I don’t understand how can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change?” Sanders said, according to the Washington Examiner. “No, Mr. Trump, climate change is not a ‘hoax.’ It is a reality which is causing devastating harm all over our country and all over the world.” The New York Times and Al Jazeeraalso examined Trump’s claims.
Renewables made more electricity than coal in Europe in 2017
The amount of electricity generated by renewables was higher than that produced by coal for the first time in 2017, according to new analysis of official figures. Wind, solar and biomass now supply 20.9% of the electricity generated in the EU while coal supplies 20.6%. The analysis, which was produced by London-based Sandbag and Berlin-based Agora Energiewende, was also covered by The Telegraph. It writes that the UK “is leading the way on support for wind and solar power”, while also “scrapping high-carbon coal-fired power in favour of cleaner alternatives at a quicker rate than almost anywhere else in the EU”. The Guardian reports that the analysis shows that the UK was the only country in the EU to reduce its electricity consumption last year. Simon Evans, policy editor at Carbon Brief, told The Guardian: “This is one of the least-reported and most significant stories in the UK power sector. Since 2005, the UK has saved the equivalent of two-and-a-half Hinkley Point Cs [a nuclear power station], a trend that started several years before the financial crisis.” Carbon Brief also covers the new analysis.
Project tests electric vehicles recharging grid
A project led by Nissan has been awarded £10 million of government funding to test the ability of electric cars to send power back to the national grid. Over the next two years, the project aims to install 1,000 vehicle-to-grid chargers, which have a two-way connection between the battery and the power network. “Allowing EVs to return energy to the power grid when parked will increase grid resilience, allow for better exploitation of renewable sources and lower the cost of ownership for EV owners,” a spokesperson said, according to BBC News. Newcastle University’s project lead Myriam Neaimeh said the trial would be “a real game changer as we move towards decarbonising the grid,” Sky Newsreports. Elsewhere, The Guardian and The Telegraph report that BP is to install rapid charging points for electric cars at its UK petrol stations within the next two months.
Exxon plans fivefold rise in Permian Basin shale oil production
US energy group ExxonMobil has announced plans to increase its shale oil production in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico by five times to 500,000 barrels a day by 2025. Exxon has steadily acquiring assets in the Permian Basin and last year bought the drilling rights on 250,000 acres from the Bass family for up to $6.6bn, according to the Financial Times. Total oil production in the Permian Basin has almost tripled in the past seven years as a result of the shale boom.
Comment
Communicating the science is the next step in the evolution of the UN climate panel
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) needs to find ways to better communicate its “crucial” findings to the public, writes Adam Corner, research director at Climate Outreach and an honorary research fellow in psychology at Cardiff University. The IPCC “has been woefully underserved on the crucial issue of communicating its findings beyond specialist scientific and policy circles,” Corner writes. However, it has now worked with the non-profit organisation Climate Outreach to produce a handbook with “social science-based guidance for IPCC scientists to use in their communication and public engagement,” Corner says. “This is the first time advice like this has been produced for the world’s most prestigious climate science organisation, and it represents a timely and welcome shift.”
The ‘smart’ devices at home that should frighten you
“My household, like 7.7 million others up and down the country, is now the proud owner of a smart meter,” writes city editor Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. He writes that using a smart meter will hopefully allow him to cut down on his energy bills, noting: “It is already making a big difference to the way in which our household behaves. No longer are unwanted lights left on. Television sets are not left on standby…So far so good.” However, there are downsides to having a smart meter, he writes: “The most worrying concerns are about privacy. Smart meters may inform us about wastefulness, but like so many other electronic devices, they are capable of spying on our lifestyles.”
Science
What climate sensitivity index is most useful for projections?
Transient climate response (TCR), transient response at 140 years (T140) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) indices are all used in different ways when analysing climate model projections. It is generally assumed that TCR or T140 would explain more variability between models than ECS for temperature change over the 21st Century, since this timescale is the realm of transient climate change. This study finds that TCR explains more variability across CMIP5 than ECS for global temperature change since pre-industrial, for 50- or 100-year global trends up to the present, and for projected change under representative concentration pathways in regions of delayed warming such as the Southern Ocean. However, unexpectedly they find that ECS correlates higher than TCR for projected change from the present in the global mean and in most regions. This higher correlation doesn’t relate to aerosol forcing, and the physical cause requires further investigation.
Internal variability and disequilibrium confound estimates of climate sensitivity from observations
A number of recent studies have suggested that estimates of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) derived from observations and energy balance models are biased low because models project more positive climate feedbacks in the far future. This study looked to see what implied ECS observational approaches got when applied to historical runs of climate models where model ECS is known. They found that ECS inferred from the recent historical period (1979-2005) is almost uniformly lower than actual model ECS, and that ECS inferred from simulations in which sea surface temperatures are prescribed according to observations is lower still. ECS inferred from simulations with prescribed sea surface temperatures is strongly linked to changes to tropical marine low clouds. However, feedbacks from these clouds are a weak constraint on long-term model ECS. One interpretation is that observations of recent climate changes constitute a poor direct proxy for long term sensitivity.
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- Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. Chief, Assailed Trump in a 2016 Interview (New York Times )
- Trump’s simple cure for solar panel ills ignores complexities (Financial Times)
- Why Donald Trump’s view that the polar ice caps are ‘setting records’ is baffling climate scientists (Reuters via The Independent )
- Scrutiny over wood and coal fires in UK homes (BBC News )
- Pentagon survey details effects of climate change on military sites (The Washington Post )
- Large beetles are shrinking, thanks to climate change (Science )