US lifts odds of La Niña weather pattern, Solar panels only work properly on nine days a year, & more
News
US lifts odds of La Niña weather pattern
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now predicting a 71 per cent chance of the La Niña weather phenomenon occurring later this year. La Niña, which is the opposite of the El Niño weather pattern, normally brings dryness in the US midwest farm belt but rainfall in Southeast Asia, caused by the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean. AP, Reuters, and theMailOnline also have the story.
Solar panels only work properly on nine days a year
Britain’s 32 million solar panels are highly productive, generating at more than half of their capacity, for just 210 hours or nine days a year, finds a reports by the Adam Smith Institute. Solar subsidies are now at about £1 billion a year, and have resulted in Britain’s solar capacity rising from three megawatts in 2008 to 7,769 megawatts last year, Webster notes. However Leonie Greene, of the Solar Trade Association, said that the report plays-down the contribution of solar power, which generated 3.4% of the UK’s power, adding that it “seriously misrepresents solar power, and it is clearly deliberately designed to do so…overall, even including back-up costs, solar appears likely to be the cheapest form of power generation in the 2020s”.
Wales ‘lacks plan’ to tackle climate change – campaigners
Stop Climate Chaos Cymru (SCCC) said welsh ministers were “yet to deliver” on climate, while WWF Cymru warned of an “ambition gap”, the BBC reports. The latest statistics show Wales has reduced its emissions by 18% since 1990, compared to 46% in Scotland. Its target is for a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. “We’re far behind the trajectory needed to meet that target,” said Haf Elgar, chairman of SCCC, “We really need a comprehensive action plan across all departments of Welsh Government – not just in obvious areas like the environment. That can only be done if climate change is a consideration in all decisions and strategies.”
Hinkley signals ‘start of nuclear renaissance’
Energy Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe believes the approval of Hinkley Point C signals “the start of a nuclear renaissance”, reports Energy Live News. She said that the decision is a vital demonstration to the rest of the world that the UK is open for business in the aftermath of Brexit, and that the project remains a good deal for taxpayers: “Going forward, for future projects, we should continue to secure value for money – thereby limiting the impact on bills for UK domestic and industrial users, for example steel; and be similarly ambitious about the opportunities for UK companies in future nuclear projects.”
Sanders among five senators asking Obama to order Dakota pipeline review
Five US senators including former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders have called on President Barack Obama to order a comprehensive environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The project has stirred widespread opposition from Native Americans and environmental activists, Reuters reports. If built, the 1,770 km pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil directly to the US Gulf from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota. The Hill also has the story.
Power stations to get early warning against jellyfish invasions
Jellyfish swarms have proven adept at closing power plants in recent years: Torness nuclear power plant was closed for a week 2011 due to moon jellyfish blocking the cooling water intake, while power plants in Sweden, the US and Japan have also been affected. But an early warning tool is now in development to alert power stations to incoming swarms, the Guardian reports. The project will use a supercomputer to model how currents sweep jellyfish blooms across the oceans.
Government launches clean air zone consultation and unveils £35m low-emission vehicle package
The UK government published long-awaited proposals for tackling air pollution in five of the UK’s largest cities yesterday, setting out plans for greener public transport and new Clean Air Zones, Business Green reports. Ministers seek feedback on plans for new air quality measures in Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton. The proposals are designed to bring the UK into line with EU air quality rules.
Comment
Hillary Clinton the best candidate to confront climate change
The paper’s editorial board writes: “In the long, long list of reasons that Hillary Clinton would be a far better president than Donald Trump, the world of difference on climate change is near the top. And this must be of great significance to Floridians…[Clinton] rightly sees the potential in clean energy, not only to reduce carbon emissions but also to create good jobs. If you care about climate change, the choice in this election is a no-brainer.”
Trump and the truth: Climate-change denial
If elected, Trump would be the only world leader who denies that man-made climate change is occurring, while his energy plan would essentially “reverse every step Obama has made toward reducing carbon emissions and meeting the goals established in Paris”, writes Carolyn Kormann in the New Yorker, in a piece reflecting on Trump’s rhetoric on climate change, and his obsession with “clean coal”. But even if Trump loses, and the US sticks to all the climate-friendly policies the Obama administration has put forward, a study in Nature Climate Change found that additional measures will still be required to bring carbon emissions down to the goal set in the Paris Agreement, Kormann notes.
The trouble with negative emissions
Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters, Science
We should be careful not to place too much confidence in negative emissions technologies – which remove CO2 from the atmosphere – as a way of curbing global temperature rise, warn Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters in a comment piece for the journal Science: “If we rely on these and they are not deployed or are unsuccessful…society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway”. Moreover the distribution of this risk is “highly inequitable”, as their failure will be felt most by vulnerable low-emitting countries. They continue: “The promise of future and cost-optimal negative-emission technologies is more politically appealing than the prospect of developing policies to deliver rapid and deep mitigation now”. Yet negative emission technologies are not an insurance policy, they argue, but “an unjust and high stakes gamble. There is a real risk they will be unable to deliver on the scale of their promise”.
Science
Global warming projection in the 21st Century based on an observational data-driven model
Environmental Research Letters
While most projections of future climate are made using models that simulate the various aspects of the Earth system, a new study uses a model that is driven by observed data. The projections of average global temperature at the end of the century by the data-driven model are consistent with those from Earth System Models (ESMs), the paper says. The main difference between the two sets of projections is the pace of warming, the researchers find. The data-driven model projects a warming rate in the next two decades of around two-thirds that of the ESMs, followed by a faster pace.
Other stories
- UN moves to ban ‘fastest growing’ greenhouse gases (BBC News )
- Electric cars set to pass two million landmark globally by end of 2016 (BusinessGreen )
- Frogfish turns itself white to blend in with bleached corals (New Scientist )
- About those non-disappearing Pacific Islands (Wall Street Journal )
- If the Government won’t build new infrastructure let others have a go (The Telegraph )
- Petrobras: salt for salt (Financial Times )
- UK’s dirtiest funds revealed (Financial Times )
- Psychedelic time-lapse footage shows the unbelievable colour of coral (Daily Express )
- An Anthropocene journey (Anthropocene Magazine )
- We should be putting the brake on the Carmichael coalmine, not hitting the accelerator (The Guardian )
- Food and Drink Federation unwraps bold new green targets (BusinessGreen )
- Powerful greenhouse gases in focus at global climate meeting (AP News )
- Simulator: The climate in a post-elections America (Yale Climate Connections )
- EU Parliament committee backs carbon market reform compromise (Reuters )
- How crickets can provide cheap, climate-friendly protein (Climate Home )
- Leading fossil fuel companies fail climate responsibility test (InsideClimate )
- EPA agrees its emissions estimates from flaring may be flawed (InsideClimate News )
- Clinton camp worried carbon tax would be ‘lethal’ (The Hill )