Desert Climate Overtaking More of Central Asia July 20, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Rising annual temperatures and dwindling yearly precipitation across the mid-latitudes of Central Asia have extended its desert climate 60 miles northward since the 1980s, says a recent study led by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
An analysis of the region’s climate has revealed that what was once a zone of semi-arid climate, featuring at least some summer precipitation, has since transitioned to a drier and hotter clime offering little rainfall during the growing season. The average annual temperature of the once-temperate areas rose roughly 9 degrees Fahrenheit when comparing the 20-year stretch of 1960-1980 to the 30-year period of 1990-2020.
More than 70 million people live in Central Asia, which comprises five former Soviet republics — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — but is sometimes considered to encompass Afghanistan, western China and fragments of other neighboring nations. Because more than 60% of its land contends with arid or semi-arid climate, the region is especially susceptible to drought and sensitive to fluctuations in precipitation, the researchers said.
“The region is dry, so small deviations from the average or anticipated amount of growing-season rainfall can be devastating to the agricultural production and social stability of the region,” said Qi “Steve” Hu, professor of natural resources and of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Nebraska. “It’s a place very vulnerable to climate change.”
Who Cut Checks to Manchin Last quarter by Daniel Lippman
Updated July 18, 2022
Introduction:
(Politico) WHO CUT CHECKS TO MANCHIN LAST QUARTER: Sen. Joe Manchin’s rejection of Democratic plans to forge ahead with a reconciliation package centered around climate and tax reform ahead of the August recess prompted anger and shock from Democratic colleagues and activists alike.
— While the West Virginia Democrat negotiated behind closed doors with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to find agreement on a skinnier party-line bill, Manchin continued to rake in thousands from executives and corporations whose industries could be altered or who, as billionaires, could face higher taxes under such a package, according to a campaign finance report filed today.
— Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, has long been a top recipient of campaign contributions from the energy sector, and last quarter’s campaign finance data shows that trend has continued. The senator received donations from executives at Georgia Power, including the utility’s CFO Aaron Abramovitz, and from Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue.
— Energy services firm Concord Energy CEO Matthew Flavin gave Manchin the maximum allowable amount of $5,800, as did Southern Company Gas CEO Kim Greene and Harvest Midstream CEO Jason Rebrook. Southern Company’s chair and CEO Chris Cummiskey gave Manchin $2,000, while three other company executives gave at least $1,000. An in-house lobbyist for the company donated $1,000 as well. Kara G. Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil & Gas Association, gave $1,000, too, along with two executives from the energy storage company Form Energy.
— Manchin also took in more than $19,000 from political action committees belonging to fossil fuel or energy companies and their trade groups, including the Coterra Energy, NextEra Energy, North American Coal Corp., the American Exploration & Production Council’s PAC. The PACs for private equity giant the Carlyle Group and AT&T contributed $10,000 and $5,000, respectively.
How Many of Joe Manchin’s “Energy Sector” Donors Does It Take to Screw In an Apocalypse? by Ali Breland
July 17, 2022
Extract:
(Mother Jones) On Friday, reports emerged that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) torpedoed another climate change proposal and nixed Democrats’ plan to tax the rich. It’s the end of months of negotiations and the final death knell for the Biden agenda. Even centrists like Jonathan Chait in New York have said that Biden’s agenda has now, officially, failed.
…
After, I found myself reading a Politico summation of the Senator slash coal magnate‘s donors (see article cited above in this thread).
After looking at the donations I happened to read a bit of political theorist Sheldon Wolin. He has a theory of “inverted totalitarianism.” Wolin’s theory posits that we’re turning into a thinly veiled, autocratic “managed democracy,” in which people hold less and less power, as elite individuals and institutions gain more and more.
Wolin’s argument is wide-ranging and comprehensive but as I was skimming through an essay he wrote on it, I found a couple of fun passages:
Inverted totalitarianism, in contrast, while exploiting the authority and resources of the state, gains its dynamic by combining with other forms of power, such as evangelical religions, and most notably by encouraging a symbiotic relationship between traditional government and the system of ‘private’ governance represented by the modern business corporation. The result is not a system of codetermination by equal partners who retain their distinctive identities but rather a system that represents the political coming-of-age of corporate power.
Fascinating. This too:
(The)… emergence of the corporation marked the presence of private power on a scale and in numbers hitherto unknown, the concentration of private power unconnected to a citizen body.
President Joe Biden today announced three executive actions aimed at helping curb the impacts of climate change.
The actions focus on helping communities cope with heat; providing money for cities to build infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather; and expanding wind energy production to the Gulf of Mexico.
[snip]
“As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces a clear and present danger," Biden said in his speech. “This is an emergency and I will look at it that way.”
The president announced that the Department of Energy is proposing, for the first time ever, putting wind turbines in the Gulf of Mexico to boost clean energy. Biden is also directing that wind energy development be advanced in waters off the mid- and southern Atlantic coasts.
Metallurgists at Saarland University Aim to Decarbonize Aluminium Production July 22, 2022
Extract::
(EurekAlert)…In Isabella Gallino's case, the time between completing her doctorate and the practical application of her research has taken more than a few years. But it may all have been worth the wait, because Gallino's PhD thesis could potentially pave the way for a paradigm shift within the energy-intensive and environmentally challenging aluminium industry….
The conventional method of producing aluminium from its oxide alumina releases enormous amounts of the environmentally damaging greenhouse gas CO2. 'Smelting one tonne of alumina results in the emission of eight tonnes of CO2 if electricity from coal-fired power stations is used,' explained Ralf Busch, Professor of Metallic Materials at Saarland University. 'And,' added metallurgist Isabella Gallino, 'even if we were to use green electricity, smelting one tonne of alumina would still emit 1.5 tonnes of CO2.' The reason for this lies with how aluminium is produced industrially. The alumina (Al2O3) is electrolysed in the smelting furnace, where it is decomposed into its negatively and positively charged components, which are separated from one another by the anode and cathode of the electrolytic cell. Up until now, the oxygen from the alumina is separated from the aluminium metal by means of a graphite anode. The carbon of the anode combines with the oxygen from the alumina to produce CO2, with 1.5 tonnes of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere for every tonne of alumina processed... Germany's largest aluminium producer is the company Trimet, which now has access to the scientific expertise of Isabella Gallino and Ralf Busch as part of a major research project…. According to the industry body that represents the aluminium sector, around 63 million tonnes of primary aluminium are produced annually – a fact that clearly underscores the need to introduce more climate-friendly means of producing aluminium (see also http://www.aluinfo.de/production-worldwide.html ).
This is where Isabella Gallino's PhD thesis comes into play…In (her doctorate)…she demonstrated that so-called inert anodes do in fact work in practice. Put simply, she replaced the conventional graphite anode by one made from an alloy of iron, copper and nickel. When this anode is used, the gas produced at its surface is not CO2 but oxygen (O2) and, unlike the graphite anode, the metallic anode does not get consumed as electrolysis progresses.
Afghanistan is facing a climate calamity – it’s time the world took notice
Mon 25 Jul 2022 18.30 BST
If it bleeds, it leads – so goes the media expression – and this is especially true of news out of Afghanistan, which made global headlines during the presence of US forces but few while lives are being lost to the climate crisis.
The main attention Afghanistan gets these days is when big international aid agencies put together posters of hungry women and children for donations, or when a calamity like the June 2022 earthquake hits.
But as you are reading these lines, many towns and villages in the war-ravaged country remain submerged by flash floods triggered weeks ago by a relentless spate of untimely rains and melting glaciers, claiming lives and destroying livelihoods of marginalised communities already surviving on small amounts of foreign aid.
It’s currently peak summer harvest season when farmers gather fruits and collect staples for the approaching winter. But it snowed briefly in the central highlands after long and crippling dry spells, when farmers were desperately longing for the usual spring season rains.
Then came violent hail storms destroying orchards and eventually rain that ruined the wheat crops. None of these events are anywhere near normal in terms of the climate of this landlocked country of nearly 40 million people.
Van Andel Institute, University of Freiburg Study Reveals Insights Into Enzyme That Combats a Common Greenhouse Gas July 27, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (July 27, 2022) — An enzyme that combats the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) may one day give scientists a potent new tool for reducing the amount of the gas in the atmosphere thanks in part to new findings published today in Nature
( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05015-2 ).
The study details how the enzyme — N2O reductase — is assembled and offers key insights into its ability to render nitrous oxide into harmless nitrogen and water.
Conclusion:
N2O reductase is used by certain microbes to break down nitrogen-based molecules as part of the Earth’s natural nitrogen cycle. Use of nitrogen-heavy fertilizers can overwhelm these microbes’ ability to fully mitigate nitrous oxide, allowing it to escape into the atmosphere. Understanding exactly how this happens is a crucial step toward strategies to mediate nitrous oxide, thus reducing atmospheric levels.
The study centered on N2O reductase’s structure and the way it interacts with other molecular complexes. Using a host of mapping and modeling techniques, the team discovered that N2O reductase acts as a conduit that converts chemical energy into mechanical energy, which in turn powers the delivery of copper ions required for the creation of more N2O reductase.
The findings reshape a decade-old belief about this crucial copper delivery system and reveal a novel mode of operation for similar molecules. Although additional research is needed, the findings provide a detailed blueprint that may be translated into future environmental remediation strategies.
From all the climate changes we could possibly have, I think we have got the best one (least worst?). The global cooling of the 70s would probably be much worse and if it had been true it would probably be much harder to control/terraform.
In other words, ditching excess energy is usually cheaper than generating excess I'd say.
Decarbonizing China’s Energy System to Support the Paris Climate Goals July 28, 2022
Entire EurekAlert article:
This study is led by Prof. Dr. Wenying Chen (Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University), Prof. Dr. Xi Lu (School of Environment, Tsinghua University), and Dr. Xunzhang Pan (School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum-Beijing).
China surprised the international community by announcing carbon neutrality before 2060. A critical question arose as to the strategic decarbonization pathways for China’s fossil fuel-dominated energy system. The research team used an integrated assessment model (GCAM-TU) with a detailed representation of China’s energy system to derive how China could decarbonize its energy system to 2100 in the context of carbon peak, carbon neutrality and the global goal of keeping temperature increases well below 2°C or 1.5°C. The researchers designed new mitigation scenarios by combining temperature-control goals (1.5°C/2°C) and development narratives (net-zero/net-negative/deep-net-negative emissions development).
The team showed that China’s energy system would need to achieve carbon neutrality in 2055–2080 for staying well below 2°C and in approximately 2050 for staying below 1.5°C. “Our analysis indicates that China’s carbon-neutrality vision could align with the Paris climate goals,” Wenying Chen says. The team found that all scenarios suggested China to rapidly scale up end-use electrification, low-carbon electricity share, and non-fossil energy share. “China might need to peak coal consumption immediately, oil by 2035 and gas by 2045. It should also accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage and negative emissions technologies through targeted investments and policies,” Xi Lu says. “The installed capacity of coal-fired power plants in China is still growing slightly. However, it is robust across scenarios that China might need to completely phase out its conventional coal power plants before 2060 under 2°C and before 2050 under 1.5°C,” Xunzhang Pan says.
China’s decarbonization is critical to the success of the Paris climate goals. Through a comprehensive assessment of CO2 trajectories, sectoral mitigation, end-use sectors, electricity production, primary energy, and carbon capture and storage, this study provided illustrative references that could help Chinese decision-makers develop energy system decarbonization pathways, targets, and policies to achieve its carbon neutrality vision and global Paris goals. The study could also provide an example for other developing countries in considering Paris-compliant decarbonization pathways.
Reduction of Methane Emissions from Lakes Possible with New Approach August 2, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Lakes and other freshwater systems emit large quantities of methane, which is the second most important greenhouse gas worldwide after CO2. Dredging and the use of Phoslock (a phosphate-binding clay particle) can reduce these lake emissions by over 50%. This is the conclusion of a study by Radboud University researchers, published today in Science of The Total Environment.
Methane largely originates in natural systems, with 49% of all emissions coming from freshwater systems. Worldwide methane emissions also continue to increase as a result of global warming and eutrophication (an excess of nutrients in water). Radboud University researchers investigated whether reducing this eutrophication could help curb methane emissions.
Conclusion:
The researchers say that it is a little premature at this point to extend this approach to as many lakes as possible. Nijman: “These experiments first have to be repeated on a large scale. The first results are promising, but we want to measure the effect in more locations and over a longer period of time to see whether the positive effects lasts.”
In addition, this approach is not suitable for every situation, it is too expensive for that, as Nijman shows with a simple calculation. “An approach based on the use of Phoslock can easily be six to ten times more expensive than an approach that focuses on the environment surrounding the lake. This is not always possible in the Netherlands, think of lakes that are surrounded by trees or agricultural land, in some cases with little to no water flowing through. In such places you cannot simply overhaul the entire environment, in which case it might be useful to use dredging or Phoslock. But in places where the environment can be adjusted, the latter is always preferable. Prevention is still better than a cure.”
Due to climate change, Nevada says goodbye to grass
Source: CBS News
In Las Vegas, Nevada, it's come to this: climate change has helped make water ever more scarce, so under a new Nevada law, the grass has got to go. "When we look at outdoor water use in Southern Nevada, landscaping far and away is the largest water user, and of that, it's grass," said Bronson Mack of the Las Vegas Water Authority.
The city's already pulled up about four million square feet of grass on public property so far this year, because thirsty green parkways are something they just can't afford anymore. "The grass that you see behind me is not long for this world," Mack told correspondent Tracy Smith. "In fact, within the next couple of months to a year, this grass will be completely eliminated, and it'll be replaced with drip-irrigated trees and plants."
We Must Pass This Imperfect Climate Bill—and Then Continue to Fight for the Future We Deserve by Amy Goodman and Dennis Moynihan
August 11, 2022
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) The climate emergency intensifies daily as the planet warms. More frequent and powerful heat waves, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes are costing billions of dollars while driving unprecedented human migration that fuels conflict. Despite the enormity of the problem, there is still good news to report. As governments prepare for the upcoming United Nations global climate summit to be held in Egypt in mid-November, developments in the fight against catastrophic climate change suggest that, against all odds, hope is not lost.
In the United States, the world’s greatest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses, the Senate passed what has been called the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history. The bill passed by reconciliation, requiring only 50 votes rather than the usual 60. The vote was 51 to 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaker.
After the House passes the bill and it’s signed into law by President Biden, roughly $370 billion will fund a broad array of programs intended to cut U.S carbon emissions by 40% by the year 2030, over 2005 levels. Tax credits and other incentives to buy and install renewable energy equipment like solar panels and wind turbines, and to invest in clean energy manufacturing make up a bulk of the funding. Up to $60 billion in environmental justice funding is for incentives to bring wind, solar and other renewable technologies into poor, marginalized communities long shut out of green investments.
The bill, however, includes significant trade-offs, including major handouts to the fossil fuel industry, primarily to win the needed support of conservative Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. Manchin has made a personal fortune worth millions from his family coal business. He is the largest recipient of fossil fuel industry donations in Congress. Among the concessions Manchin won was a side agreement to expedite fossil fuel permitting, including for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline. If built, the MVP will carry two billion cubic feet of fracked gas across more than 1,000 streams and wetlands in Appalachia, including parts of West Virginia.
“It’s doubling down on fossil fuels to get to renewables,” Tara Houska Indigenous lawyer and founder of Giniw Collective, said on the Democracy Now! news hour.
A new model developed by Caltech and JPL researchers suggests that Antarctica's ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate, which could eventually contribute to more rapid sea level rise. The model accounts for an often-overlooked narrow ocean current along the Antarctic coast and simulates how rapidly flowing freshwater, melted from the ice shelves, can trap dense warm ocean water at the base of the ice, causing it to warm and melt even more.
The study was conducted in the laboratory of Andy Thompson, professor of environmental science and engineering, and appears in the journal Science Advances on August 12.
Ice shelves are outcroppings of the Antarctic ice sheet, found where the ice juts out from land and floats on top of the ocean. The shelves, which are each several hundred meters thick, act as a protective buffer for the mainland ice, keeping the whole ice sheet from flowing into the ocean (which would dramatically raise global sea levels). However, a warming atmosphere and warming oceans caused by climate change are increasing the speed at which these ice shelves are melting, threatening their ability to hold back the flow of the ice sheet into the ocean.
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S. has successfully pulled an ice core from Antarctica's Ong Valley that contains samples of Earth's atmosphere from up to 5 million years ago. In their paper published in The Cryosphere, the researchers explain why they chose to drill in the Ong Valley and what they hope to learn from their study of the ice core.
Scientists have been drilling and pulling ice cores in Antarctica for many years—the idea is to study the air bubbles that have been trapped in the ice, some of which go back millions of years, to learn more about the Earth's atmosphere back then. Until now, most such core samples have been pulled from sites in eastern parts of Antarctica because the ice there has been deposited slowly in clean layers over millions of years.
In this new effort, the researchers chose to drill instead in the Ong Valley, located in the Transantarctic Mountains, which, as their name suggests, separate eastern and western Antarctica. Ice in the Ong valley was deposited there by glaciers that slid down from the mountains. As the ice on top melted, rocks pulled down from the mountains created a layer of rock that protects the ice beneath it. And prior research has suggested that the ice underneath could be from as far back as 5 million years ago. In addition to being older than the ice in the east, the ice in the Ong Valley is also less thick, which means getting a useful core does not require drilling as deep.
The New U.S. Climate Bill by Jessica McKenzie
August 9, 2022
Introduction:
(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) After more than a year of wheeling and dealing with resistant holdouts, the Senate Democrats finally passed a package of climate legislation on Sunday under the umbrella of the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill, if it passes the House (which it has - caltrek) as expected and is signed into law by President Biden, will be the country’s first major climate law.
The package earmarks $369 billion for energy security and climate change programs over the next 10 years, including: $44 billion in tax credits for wind, solar, and other renewable power sources like hydrogen and another $30 billion for investing in renewable energy technologies, including solar panels and wind turbines; $30 billion for nuclear power companies, to discourage existing power plants from shutting down; $9 billion to encourage investments in efficient heating and cooling systems; and $36 billion to encourage individuals to buy new or used electric vehicles.
The bill also includes some boons for the fossil fuel industry, making it easier to build fossil fuel pipelines and providing tax credits for carbon capture. It also mandates that the Interior Department auction off oil and gas leases before permitting new wind and solar projects on federal land, although whether industry will even want those drilling leases remains to be seen.
A preliminary assessment of the bill by the Rhodium Group, a think tank, estimates the bill’s provisions could reduce US greenhouse gas emissions from 31 percent to 44 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, which is lower than the goal of a 50 percent reduction in that time frame, but still significant.
“Congress finally resisted the temptation to make the perfect be the enemy of excellent,” Susan Solomon, a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board, wrote in an emailed statement.
The Fervent Debate Over the Best Way to Confront Global Warming by Madeline Ostrander
August 12, 2022
Introduction:
(Undark) IN THE LATE 1950S, Ian Burton, then a geographer at the University of Chicago, learned about a troubling conundrum with levees. These expensive and engineering-intensive strategies — which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers favored for reining in floods along big river floodplains — worked well for holding back intermediate amounts of water. But they gave people a false sense of safety. After a levee went up, sometimes more people actually built and moved onto the land behind it. Then, if an oversized flood eventually poured over or broke through the levee, the disaster could damage more property and cause more havoc than it might have before engineers began meddling.
The paradox would become a classic lesson in how not to adapt to the hazards nature might throw at the human-built environment. It was also an important cautionary tale for an even larger set of disasters and dilemmas caused by climate change. (The problem was on full display when New Orleans’ levees failed in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, submerging parts of the Lower Ninth Ward with up to 15 feet of water by some estimates. That storm was also made worse by shifting climate conditions and rising sea levels.)
Burton began to work on climate change in the 1990s. He jumped into an emerging but then somewhat stunted field called “climate change adaptation”: study and policy on how the world could prepare for and adapt to the new disasters and dangers brought forth on a warming planet. Among Burton’s colleagues, “I was the only one who put my hand up” to work on adaptation, he says now.
In that moment, he also walked into an area of controversy and misunderstanding that may have ultimately stymied work on climate change for years or even decades thereafter. Some climate experts felt that any talk about adaptation distracted from the work of keeping pollution out of the atmosphere: it sounded less like a coping mechanism and more like giving up.
Climate Researchers Correct Faulty Rainfall Predictions for China’s Breadbasket August 17, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Climate models had until recently not been performing very well predicting variation in the spring rainfall over northeast China, home to some of the country’s main cereal production. This uncertainty potentially puts the food security of the country—and even the world—at risk. Researchers have however now identified the problem: a previously unidentified major shift that occurred in the mid-1980s in atmospheric flows from the North Atlantic as a result of a weakening jet stream.
Conclusion:
Moving forward, climate scientists need to pay close attention to such decadal shifts, the researchers say, in order to produce better predictions of climate variation for northeast China and perhaps even the whole of northeast Asia in the spring.
Having identified the cause of the of the faulty climate predictions for the region, the researchers now intend to develop a better, decadal-varying seasonal prediction model covering a century-long period.
