Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

https://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/michael-bloomberg-launches-beyond-carbon-the-largest-ever-coordinated-campaign-against-climate-change-in-united-states/

New York, NY – In a commencement address today at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michael R. Bloomberg will launch Beyond Carbon, the largest coordinated campaign to tackle climate change ever undertaken in the United States. With a $500 million investment — the largest ever philanthropic effort to fight the climate crisis — Beyond Carbon will work to ­put the U.S. on track towards a 100% clean energy economy by working with advocates around the country to build on the leadership and climate progress underway in our states, cities, and communities. Bloomberg and his foundation joined forces with the Sierra Club in 2011 to launch Beyond Coal with the goal of closing at least a third of the country’s coal plants. With 289 of 530 closed to date – more than half the country’s coal fleet – Beyond Carbon will aim to close the rest by 2030 and stop the rush to build new gas plants.

i love when our elite overlords do something good

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s got a solution to avoiding the harms of climate change: Just live somewhere else. Pompeo gave an interview to the Washington Times on Friday, during which he addressed the Trump administration’s approach to combating global warming.

The top diplomat claimed that the climate “always changes,” and so “societies reorganize, we move to different places, we develop technology and innovation.” In May, Pompeo praised rising sea levels caused by climate change as a boon for trade opportunities.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/pompeo-climate-change-move-different-places

That terrifying 2019 study about breakup of marine subtropical clouds potentially resulting in a +8 °C positive feedback? Coauthor

Again,

That terrifying 2019 study about breakup of marine subtropical clouds potentially resulting in an additional +8 °C positive feedback? Coauthor Tapio Schneider presents this work at CalTech.

That guy is super smart, I took a class with him.

That is frightening. I had no idea we could get to 1200 ppm within a hundred years, and potentially up to 5000 ppm? Sanpaku if you're familiar with the modeling would you agree with his assessment that the type of cloud cover is the main driver of uncertainty?

humans are just kickstarting the Second Cretaceous. no big deal. unless we go full-on Venusian. that would be bad, even for bacteria, our last best hope.

viborg: I'm fascinated with the projections, but its not my field. I'd love to recall enough math to follow what Arrhenius was doing in the field 123 years ago with pencil and paper.

As for 1200 ppm, we're at 415 and adding around 2.5 ppm/yr over the past decade. With no further growth in emissions or positive feedbacks (from permafrost, peat, soil, seabed hydrates), it would take 300 years to hit 1200 ppm. Or by 2100 with just a 2.6% annual growth rate..

the more i read about this the more likely it seems to me that humanity is just an extreme example of a self-limiting organism

as usual thanks for the link sanpaku-- i just "lost" 25 min reading about the carbonic aceeeeed and the temperature of the moon.

looks like rick perry is slowly learning what the Dept of Energy can and cannot do:

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-has-no-regulatory-or-statutory-ability-to-create-coal-nuclear-bailou/556687/

The Department of Energy (DOE) does not have the "regulatory or statutory ability" to create economic incentives for coal and nuclear plants, DOE Secretary Rick Perry told reporters on Tuesday at the 2019 Edison Electric Institute conference in Philadelphia.

"FERC would be where I would direct your attention," he said, adding that he was also not aware of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or the White House making any progress on plans to bail out the fuels. "We're pretty much at the same place we were 12 months ago," he said, though the administration "continue[s] to talk ... very openly" about "an all of the above strategy."

The secretary's comments come three months after the White House Council of Economic Advisors released a report to the president calling for a strategic electricity reserve to save uneconomic plants. And earlier in March, Perry had told reporters a coal and nuclear bailout was not entirely off the table.

after years of fighting against subsidies for clean energy, republicans have now shifted to fighting for subsidies and bailouts of coal and nuclear

after years of fighting against subsidies for clean energy, republicans have now shifted to fighting for subsidies and bailouts of coal and nuclear

Emphasis added -- they've been subsidizing coal/nuclear for YEARS (which I'm sure you already know).

man, these republicans seem like dicks

total dicks

xp Leee, yes, thanks! not sure why i phrased it like that

https://thinkprogress.org/11-million-renewable-jobs-global-solar-wind-employment-df60d66f4cfe

the tipping point for green jobs in the US is getting closer: 855K employed in renewable industry, vs 1.1M "employed in petroleum fuels, natural gas, coal, and biomass across the country."

https://i.imgur.com/1uB3hOP.jpg

Rapidly melting sea ice in Greenland has presented an unusual hazard for research teams retrieving their oceanographic moorings and weather station equipment.

A photo, taken by Steffen Olsen from the Centre for Ocean and Ice at the Danish Meteorological Institute on 13 June, showed sled dogs wading through water ankle-deep on top of a melting ice sheet in the country’s north-west. In the startling image, it seems as though the dogs are walking on water.

The photo, taken in the Inglefield Bredning fjord, depicted water on top of what Olsen said was an ice sheet 1.2 metres thick.

His colleague at the institute, Rasmus Tonboe, tweeted that the “rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top”.

https://i.imgur.com/KbPsIsv.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/photograph-melting-greenland-sea-ice-fjord-dogs-water

gulp

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.

“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis

So my friend was reporting to me his 70-ish dad's view on global warming/climate breakdown, which amounted to: "what's everyone on about, it'll be fine! People are always going on about some terrible thing, none of it ever happens." His circle of friends and family seem to think the same way too. Sigh. I'm guessing we as a species will largely go straight from denial to acceptance, and by the time it's all too late the causes will be blamed on no-one and the knock-on social effects will be blamed on migrants or whatever.

a lot of people are angry and concerned

replace concerned with panicking depending on where you are on the spectrum

I sometimes worry (probably irrationally) that there just aren’t enough resources available for e.g. energy storage, solar panels, etc. Like we’re just going to blow through the world’s lithium supply.

the problem is more the cobalt/rare earths etc. so there are supply issues but not so much with lithium itself

http://cleanenergytrust.org/enough-lithium-feed-current-battery-market-demand/

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact

I really wish Aquion's salt water metal hydride batteries would get some $ thrown at them, the company went under but someone's gotta own that IP

http://aquionenergy.com/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-11/saving-the-planet-with-electric-cars-means-strangling-this-desert

Don't worry, we're gonna have deserts to spare!

can anyone recommend any authors or works that touch on ethics in the face of this?

Maybe it was mentioned in this thread, but it seemed like there’s was some incorrect modeling that falsely predicted a crisis in the 70s that is possibly informing the older folks’ skepticism. My dad should know better but is always talking about how unreliable models are since he was working in resource management at the time. I used to take these concerns seriously but now realize they’re just excuses to not change anything

I sometimes worry (probably irrationally) that there just aren’t enough resources available for e.g. energy storage, solar panels, etc. Like we’re just going to blow through the world’s lithium supply.

― Vape Store (crüt)

anything we can use up we will. malthus was right.

malthus is a broken clock telling the correct time twice a day, dont give that fucker any credit

Try this on: infinite growth on a finite world is absurd.

Malthus was right about some things, wrong about others. Why should crop productivity grow arithmetically?

At present, though, we're living in a world where no-less than half the global human carrying capacity is provided by Haber-Boche fertilizer (fossil fuels) and the dwarf cereal cultivars that can tolerate it, where groundwater everywhere is being exploited faster than aquifers can refill, where remaining soil can be counted in a few decades of erosion, where Morocco will soon decide whether nations live or die through controlling the phosphorus trade, and where estimates of crop losses due to climate change run 10% per °C for the first few °C, but increasing.

Malthus didn't predict those things, but ecology borrows deeply from him (as Darwin did) in concepts like carrying capacity. A new UN report came out today trumpeting successes in population policy, in which the population would hit 9.7 billion by 2050. Personally, I find those numbers nonsense, as they don't take any consideration of what declining agriculture will mean.

For clarity, that should really read "10% per °C for the first few °C, but with increasingly severe impacts per °C after around +2 °C." We're on track to hit 2 °C around 2050.

The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration on Wednesday finalized a package of new rules to replace the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama’s signature effort to reduce planet-warming emissions from coal plants.

The new measure, known as the Affordable Clean Energy rule, will very likely prompt a flurry of legal challenges from environmental groups that could have far-reaching implications for global warming.

If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds the rule’s approach to the regulation of pollution, it would be difficult or impossible for future presidents to tackle climate change through the Environmental Protection Agency.

what??

lol we’re all gonna die

I meant soon.

it's a blast from the past, but back in the early 2000s when it seemed like Cap and Trade might be bipartisan legislation that could pass (McCain was a co-sponsor and was pretending to care about climate change at that point), one of the big things in its favor was that it would be a legislative act of congress, rather than a regulatory rule/policy promulgated by an agency. legislation is much more difficult to repeal than a promulgated rule.

the big risk with relying on EPA regulation to address climate change is what's happening right now - a conservative administration arrives and destroys the effort, internally, through the rulemaking process. the legislative effort to address climate change failed in 2009/10, so we were left with the next best option, having EPA address it (which they're actually required to do since the 2007 Mass v EPA supreme court decision) through policy/rulemaking. and now here we are, in the nightmare scenario where a conservative administration arrives and destroys the effort.

one silver lining - perhaps this will spur efforts to pass real legislation, possibly in the form of a carbon tax/fee and dividend. in the meantime, i expect the lawsuits will immediately start as environmental groups sue EPA to do what Mass v EPA (2007) requires them to do. but that'll take years

thx Karl, i was hoping you would explain it to we civilians

I really wish Aquion's salt water metal hydride batteries would get some $ thrown at them, the company went under but someone's gotta own that IP

http://aquionenergy.com/

― Ambient Police (sleeve), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 8:23 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I’m on three patents on the that battery some notes

Its got lithium in it, both in the cathode and the electrolyte
Two Chinese companies are making batteries based on the tech
It’s not a great chemistry, voltage window is too low in an aqueous environment so energy and power density are terrible. Energy per raw material input is potentially terrible
Localised over potential at the anodes made long term durability challenging. Not sure if the Chinese have dived this but I always thought we were a cathode company in search of an anode.

As for getting $ thrown at Aquion, we blew through the best part of $200millions.

Glad to see some more folks in the field commenting here, much appreciated.

I've been wondering about this piece and particularly point #12:

[12] Wind and solar, when analyzed without the need for energy storage, seem to help reduce CO2 emissions. But if substantial electricity storage needs to be included, this CO2 benefit tends to disappear.

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/solar-pv-eroei-graham-palmer.png?w=640&h=410

Not that I'm advocating that view, it's just something I don't see addressed much at all in the popular press.

Malthus was right about some things, wrong about others. Why should crop productivity grow arithmetically?

― despondently sipping tomato soup (Sanpaku)

the big problem with malthus was that he construed the limiting factor in narrow terms - i.e. food supply

we can make more food than we can consume? great! we will find some other resource to hammer on until it has catastrophic resources, possibly so catastrophic that mere universal famine seems a blessing in comparison

i'm less concerned about whatever policies the current president is putting in place because i am assuming that america will not outlast human civilization, that in fact the opposite will probably turn out to be the case

Residential batteries are a terrible idea. The economics of putting them in every home are shockingly bad. They need to go at nodes in the grid and with renewable production. Unfortunately the way the electricity industry is regulated and structured in Australia is spectacularly ill equipped to allow for this.

The other thing that limits the need for stationary batteries is geography. The NEM grid in eastern Australia is massive - build a bunch of solar west of Whyalla and you can match the Sydney peak very well (planned interconnector between SA and NSW needs to be build and not talked to death). You can use the fact that the world turns and that its almost always windy somewhere to use the geographic spread of renewables to smooth our intermittency. When you've got to much energy - pumped hydro, make hydrogen, make water. Sadly as the climate goes to pot we are going to need to do a lot of desalination to fed people, luckily the marginal cost of energy generation is trending to zero so we do have that.

NB this works for any continent spanning energy system, Euope is well placed to do this, the US need better interconnections between its various grids.

Power-to-methane, using the existing natural gas infrastructure to store excess power from renewables and generate during renewable intermittency, seems a really attractive approach to the storage problem. As does solar thermal with molten salt heat storage.

I'd rather see battery production (with its rarer mineral requirements) be primarily devoted to displacing petrol in land transport.

You can also inject hydrogen into the natural gas system at moderate concentrations.

It's not that batteries use particularly rare components, they don't, it's that batteries really are the last resort when it comes to energy. It is much better to do something useful with energy that to store it. You never get back what you put in. As I mentioned above you can do a lot to alleviate intermittency with geographic spreads of your renewable resources. The next is having much more responsive demand side resources. There's all kinds of things you can cycle up and down to meet changes in generation. Hydrogen and Desalination are the out there processes, but you can do a lot with commercial air conditioners, refrigeration, hot water heaters etc. your re using the thermal mass of a building or of water as a storage medium.

You probably wouldn't notice if your building HVAC adjusted it's thermostat a few fractions of a degree on a half hourly basis to see the load curve -> this is a really good one because the bulk of people are unhappy with the temperature in their office building anyway, you're just adjusting the mix of who's unhappy. Electric cars are also great, you just change the speed at which they charge, nobody cares as long as it's ready to go when they leave.

The problem we face today though is we are demanding that wind and solar farms behave like gas power plants rather than working to make supply and demand balance across the grid. We really fucked ourselves by vertically diagregating utilities and introducing competition into the most natural of natural monopolies.

If you don't want to go through the trouble of better matching supply and demand. Just over build the hell out of your wind and solar and dump the excess energy into making hydrogen and water

binding referendum on implementing the recommendations of Ed and Sanpaku's blue ribbon committee please. stat

Power-to-methane, using the existing natural gas infrastructure to store excess power from renewables and generate during renewable intermittency, seems a really attractive approach to the storage problem.

That's really interesting. My dad, before he retired, ended his career working on a lot of methane digesters in big agricultural areas of the US that used animal & slaughterhouse waste, and his observation ultimately was that they took so much electricity, he wasn't sure it was actually an improvement. I had never thought about that as a low-demand-time kind of solution but it makes a lot of sense.

Republican members of Oregon’s state senate skipped town on Thursday to avoid voting on a sweeping climate change bill – and now Gov. Kate Brown’s authorizing the state police to bring them back.

Earlier this week, the Democratic-controlled Oregon House passed a carbon reduction bill aimed at capping greenhouse gas emissions through a cap-and-trade regulation system. House Republicans voted unanimously against it, along with two other Democrats.

On Thursday, Oregon Senate Republicans, who also oppose the bill, made good on their promise to stage a walkout ahead of the vote. Sen. Tim Knopp (R) told Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) that they would be fleeing to different states.

This protest prompted Senate President Peter Courtney (D) to request that the state police to fetch his GOP colleagues, and Brown followed suit.

“As the executive of the agency, I am authorizing the State Police to fulfill the Senate Democrats’ request,” Brown said in a statement to OPB. “It is absolutely unacceptable that the Senate Republicans would turn their back on their constituents who they are honor-bound to represent here in this building.”

“I do not believe the state police will be able to find any of our members,” Knopp, who plans to travel through at least three different states, told OPB. “So, instead of the Democrats putting efforts into finding bipartisan solutions, their answer is to waste state police resources to try and track down legislators and arrest them. It sounds more like a dictatorship than a democracy.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/oregon-gop-republicans-flee-state-climate-change-bill

Reminded of the Texas Eleven.

I think cap-trade is fundamentally the wrong approach (compared to a carbon price + dividend + incentives for enabling infrastructure), so I'm a bit ambivalent.

thanks Ed for those posts esp. the Aquion breakdown, oh well

agree that big batteries at grid nodes and as peaker plants seems to be the way to go

(and that fixing supply/demand is even better)

That's really interesting. My dad, before he retired, ended his career working on a lot of methane digesters in big agricultural areas of the US that used animal & slaughterhouse waste, and his observation ultimately was that they took so much electricity, he wasn't sure it was actually an improvement. I had never thought about that as a low-demand-time kind of solution but it makes a lot of sense.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Friday, 21 June 2019 5:40 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love anaerobic digesters and their should be load more of them, at farms in the sewage systems and processing food waste. I’m working with a startup that is putting these at dairy farms taking the slurry (polite term for ponds of shit) and tiring it into fertiliser, heating, cooling and electricity. Interestingly the fertiliser is the most valuable part of the mix and it’s helping organic farms truck in less from outside. It also helps with fugitive methane emissions by containing the slurry. They’ve also been approached about putting one in my part of inner Melbourne.

It doesn’t matter if there are no exported to the grid you are reducing the overall consumption of the facility where they are located (supply and demand again). They are also eminently dispatchable, you can store the gas and turn on the generator as required which makes them a great compliment for solar and wind. The biogas generation fils in the gaps.

Whilst we should have as little food waste and food production waste as possible; all of our food waste and sewage should be going AD units. Fugitive methane emissions from land full are a big greenhouse gas problem in themselves (although some facilities, collect the gas from landfill and turn it into power, better for it never to get there in the first place). It does require collecting food waste separately but not too difficult.