Tag Archives: climate change

what to do about the U.S. electric grid

Actually, it’s pretty simple. To deal with climate change, we need to electrify everything, bring lots and lots of renewable energy sources online, and have a grid that can handle them. Renewables are intermittent and unreliable locally, the cynics tell us, but in a big country they are always online somewhere. Our 50-year-old duct-taped together grid isn’t up to the task of getting enough electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed. Permitting, NIMBYism, and our antiquated system of semi-sovereign states are all part of the problem. But also, we just need to throw tons of money at this. The current administration and dysfunctional legislature are maybe considering a small “downpayment” that is the most they consider politically possible. Meanwhile, Asia is running rings around us, not that it is a competition.

Blah blah blah the statistics continue to tell a clear story of U.S. decline. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up – the problem is diagnosed, solutions exist and it is time to take action.

Other countries are zipping ahead in this area. China has emerged as the world’s clear leader in high-voltage transmission, building tens of thousands of miles of these lines to connect its power plants with cities across the vast nation. But while China developed 260 gigawatts of transmission capacity between 2014 and 2021, all of North America added just seven, according to a survey conducted by Iowa State University.

MIT Technology Review

This seems slightly unfair – we had a significant head start on China I would assume, so we might not need to build as much new infrastructure as they do. But this head starter is a driver of our complacency – we have been coasting on past investments for a long time, and we are running out of gas…er, juice. (This reminds me of a Chinese friend asking me once why Americans refer to electricity as “juice”, and I didn’t and still don’t have a good answer.)

early warning of Gulf Stream collapse?

There has been plenty of hypothesizing that global warming could cause destabilization of key ocean currents that have determined the character of the world’s regional climates over the last few millennia or so, i.e. human history. This new paper is the first I am aware of (but I am not even close to an expert on this subject or oceanography more generally) to find empirical evidence that the the AMOC current (which I believe includes the Gulf Stream) could be nearing a tipping point.

Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the currently attained strong to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain. Here, a robust and general early-warning indicator for forthcoming critical transitions is introduced. Significant early-warning signals are found in eight independent AMOC indices, based on observational sea-surface temperature and salinity data from across the Atlantic Ocean basin. These results reveal spatially consistent empirical evidence that, in the course of the last century, the AMOC may have evolved from relatively stable conditions to a point close to a critical transition.

Nature Climate Change

This would seem to have major consequences to (1) where and how much food we can grow in the world, and (2) the location of our actual physical coastlines and the coastal cities that house much of the world’s human population. Adjusting to gradual long-term changes in these things will be a challenge. A sudden, major shift might be something our civilization can’t adjust to. The consequences are unimaginably dire. The risk is unknown but this study suggests it is real. Logic and risk management principles suggest that we need to be cautious here and actually do what we can to avoid this. Let’s hope “a point close to a critical transition” is not really all that close in human terms, and we have time for our civilization, with its flawed geopolitical and economic systems, to come to its senses.

what Europe and China are doing on carbon emissions

Well, the EU is apparently instituting a “carbon border tax”.

The EU plan is controversial because it contains an extra-territorial dimension – the much-foreshadowed and very controversial carbon border tax that would impose a carbon tax on imports from countries with lesser emissions reduction targets and carbon prices…

The EU already has arguably the world’s most ambitious response to climate change. It launched its emissions trading system in 2005 and has reduced its emissions, from 1990 levels, by nearly 25 per cent.

Sydney Morning Herald

Not all industries have been covered by the emissions trading scheme, but going forward the system would add steelmakers, power generators, shipping, transport, buildings, carmakers and eventually agriculture to some extent.

Meanwhile, China is starting a new emissions trading scheme, and the U.S. Congress is at least talking again about some kind of carbon pricing, trading, and/or border tax. If all this happens, it would cover a lot of the world’s people, economic production, and pollutant production. I suppose developing countries could be at a disadvantage initially if they can’t continue to grow by expanding dirty industries, but in theory the clean technologies and processes that will result should filter through to them. They certainly will not be well-served by a world of famines, fires, and floods that will result if nothing is done.

July 2021 in Review

July 2021 is in the books. In current events (I’m writing on Sunday, August 1), the Delta variant of Covid is now ripping through the unvaccinated population in the U.S. and predictably leaking out into the vaccinated population. I wasn’t too focused on Covid in July though, looking at the posts I have chosen below.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The western-U.S. megadrought looks like it is settling in for the long haul.

Most hopeful story: A new Lyme disease vaccine may be on the horizon (if you’re a human – if you are a dog, talk to your owner about getting the approved vaccine today.) I admit, I had to stretch a bit to find a positive story this month.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: “Cliodynamics” is an attempt at a structured, evidence-based way to test hypotheses about history.

western U.S. mega-drought

blog.weather.us has a nice three-part article on the hydrometeorology behind the severe and likely long-term drought affecting the western U.S. I’ll admit I haven’t had time to read every word, but it looks to be well worth the read. It’s complicated if you want to get into the details, but it pretty much boils down to less rain and more evaporation.

I remember going to an American Water Resources Association specialty conference on climate change around 2011 or 2012, and listening to a speaker from Australia. The person showed data clearly showing that annual rainfall had slowly declined over the course of a decade or more and settled at a new normal. It took the political system there about a decade to accept the situation and begin to address it. The U.S. may be about where Australia was 10-15 years ago, but that is in a context of global trends that have been going downhill during that time.

I figure the west will turn to conservation and, if necessary, desalination to supply drinking water to large urban populations. Fires will just have to be accepted and dealt with. It seems to me that the long-term viability of agriculture in California and maybe across the Great Plains is in doubt, as the loss of rainfall and increased evaporation happen alongside loss of mountain ice and snowpack, and alongside a century of groundwater mining. Maybe we can move more agricultural indoors, maybe to coastal areas served by desalination plants, but we’ll have to harden those coastlines against sea level rise and increasingly severe storms. If all this comes to pass, it will cost a lot more than growing food outside in the sun, soil, and water and nature has provided mostly for free up until now. There is the question of where the energy required will come from. Food prices will go up, and unless our incomes go up along with them we will have less resources to spend on other things, making us poorer. Preservation of natural habitats will not be a priority if such a world comes to pass. And of course, in the United States and many other countries, we do not share the wealth we do have, so the poor and working class will suffer the most. Eventually this will lead to migration pressure and further strain our political system.

May 2021 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The Colorado River basin is drying out.

Most hopeful story: An effective vaccine for malaria may be on the way. Malaria kills more children in Africa every year than Covid-19 killed people of all ages in Africa during the worst year of the pandemic. And malaria has been killing children every year for centuries and will continue long after Covid-19 is gone unless something is done.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I learned about Lawrence Kohlberg, who had some ideas on the use of moral dilemmas in education.

misleading the public about misleading the public

Rolling Stone (I admit, maybe not the #1 most prestigious, objective journalistic outlet) goes through the history of companies using propaganda to blame consumers that environmental problems are their fault, from smoking to litter to plastic waste (these last two being related) and now global warming.

Selling deadly poisonous products to children for decades gains you admission to one circle of hell. But decades of deliberate propaganda aimed at intentionally destroying nature and civilization to make a short-term profit? It’s the biggest crime in history.

Colorado River headed for official shortage declaration

This has been a slow motion crisis a long time coming, but here is how the process apparently works:

  • The Bureau of Reclamation has issued a 24-month forecast indicating that an official shortage declaration is coming. The forecast does not yet prompt any specific requirements or action.
  • The shortage declaration would happen when Lake Mead falls below 1,075 feet (328 meters), projected to happen in June. “That’s the level that prompts a shortage declaration under agreements negotiated by seven states that rely on Colorado River water: Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.”
  • Actual changes to reservoir operations would happen in January 2022.

The article says Arizona could “lose one third of its water supply”. This is not a surprise however and there have been some preparations. Arizona and Nevada, along with Mexico, have already agreed to voluntary cuts and started looking into alternative sources and conservation measures.

So, it’s not a good idea to live near a coastline, in a desert, or in a fire prone region. Earthquakes and volcanoes are also best avoided. What is left? Maybe the Great Lakes region and parts of Canada?

Biden’s “30 by 30”

According to Yale Climate Connections, “30 by 30” is an ambitious plan to protect 30% of the USA’s land in a natural state by 2030. There is also a less ambitious part of the plan to protect 30% of the USA’s ocean area. I say the ocean part is less ambitious because, according to this article, 26% is already protected. And all you really have to do to protect the ocean (on paper) is draw a box on a map and pass a law saying that box is now protected.

The article refers to E.O. Wilson’s book Half Earth, which argues for protecting…I forget how much of the Earth, I am not good at math. But you get the idea. The moral and rhetorical case here is biodiversity-based, but it’s pretty clear that the practical case is carbon sequestration. There must be a cost-benefit calculation somewhere in there that this is the cheap way to make some progress on blunting the droughts, fires, floods, famines and abandoned coastal cities that are headed our way if we do nothing, and maybe even if we do something but not enough.

Land is different. This article says about 12% is now protected. So how would we actually get to 30? There must be 30% of land out there that is just not legally protected yet.

Achieving 30 by 30 will require action on numerous fronts. “A national program to enact 30 by 30 won’t just be a series of new national parks declared by the President, but will include things like national wildlife refuges, national monuments, state-level protected areas, conservation easements on private land, and co-management with tribal leadership,” wrote marine conservation biologist David Shiffman in Scientific American last October. “Local consultation and support will have to be part of it from the beginning, but it won’t be successful without support and leadership from the federal government.”

And it won’t be enough just to protect any land; it will matter significantly which 30 percent is protected. “Conserving a giant, undeveloped stretch of land where little lives and that no one wanted to develop anyway is not especially helpful to biodiversity conservation or climate resilience,” Shiffman wrote. At least some part of every major ecosystem needs to be protected, he wrote…

More than half of the country’s forests – critical carbon sinks, places that absorb more carbon dioxide than they release – are privately owned. U.C. Berkeley environmental science professors Arthur Middleton and Justin Brashares in the New York Times in December 2020 wrote that “private lands also connect our public lands, providing seasonal habitat for wide-ranging wildlife and clean drinking water, crop pollination, and flood control.” With about 12 percent of the privately land now meeting the 30 by 30 goals, they wrote, protecting the remaining 18 percent “means protecting an area more than twice the size of Texas.”

Yale Climate Connections

For this to be viable, it almost has to be easier than it sounds. I know large private forests are owned by university endowments and other wealthy institutional investors. They can either log them, or they can leave the trees in the ground to get more valuable until they log them later. Or they can sell them, or for all I know buy and sell complicated derivatives based on them. These investors are probably open to the idea of conservation easements which give them an additional payoff in return for agreeing not to develop (i.e. pave or build buildings) the land, which they are probably not interested in doing anyway. This is all speculation on my part.

There’s a lot of farmland out there that farmers would probably be happy to sell for reforestation (or restoration of grassland or wetland habitats) if the government were willing to pay. But I assume we need most of our cropland for growing crops, and taking cropland out of production doesn’t seem like a politically likely solution. Soil conservation is always good, but counting farms engaging in soil conservation practices as “protected natural land” would seem a bit sneaky. If that is what they are thinking, the 30% wouldn’t sound ambitious at all, it would just be a practical common-sense soil conservation program. Again, all speculation on my part. It will be interesting to hear more about this, and interesting to see if the administration can communicate it in a way that avoids conspiracy theories about the government coming for our sacrosanct private property.

February 2021 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: For people who just don’t care that much about plants and animals, the elevator pitch on climate change is it is coming for our houses and it is coming for our food and water.

Most hopeful story: It is possible that mRNA technology could cure or prevent herpes, malaria, flu, sickle cell anemia, cancer HIV, Zika and Ebola (and obviously coronavirus). With flu and coronavirus, it may become possible to design a single shot that would protect against thousands of strains. It could also be used for nefarious purposes, and to protect against that are ideas about what a biological threat surveillance system could look like.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: At least one serious scientist is arguing that Oumuamua was only the tip of an iceberg of extraterrestrial objects we should expect to see going forward.