Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Monsters - Bigger, Stronger, More Dangerous


Climate Change is making our familiar monsters bigger, stronger and more dangerous.

Supertyphoon Haiyan (known as Yolanda in the Philippines) blew past the definition of a Category 5 storm. It looks like it's time to create a new category, just as Australia has created a new category for fire alerts - we now have 'Catastrophic' sitting above the old 'Extreme' Fire Warning.

The diagram above shows how warming oceans provide the energy that makes cyclones/typhoons/hurricanes bigger, stronger, and more damaging.

Professor Will Steffen, a researcher at the Australian National University, says scientists understand how a hotter, moister climate is already affecting storms such as Haiyan. 
Once cyclones form, they get most of their energy from the surface waters of the ocean. We know sea-surface temperatures are warming pretty much around the planet, so that's a pretty direct influence of climate change on the nature of the storm. Prof Will Steffan.

Data compiled from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows sea temperatures were about 0.5 to 1 degree above normal in the waters to the east of the Philippines as Haiyan began forming. The waters cooled in the storm's wake, an indication of how the storm sucked up energy.

So, when someone says, "We can't say that climate change made that storm worse," you can reply, "We can say that climate change is making tropical storms worse. It's a brave person who would claim that doesn't apply to this particular storm. Especially when, like Haiyan, it is the biggest storm ever to make landfall." 

Without strong action to reduce emissions, we are ensuring there will be ever-bigger monsters battering our children.

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News from the Transformation tab.

Apple has announced plans to open a new factory in Mesa, Arizona — a facility that will run on 100 percent renewable energy from day one. 

Monday, June 24, 2013

Four Hiroshimas Every Second



The heat contributed to the atmosphere over the past 15 years due to rising CO2 levels is equivalent to four Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. So said John Cook at the Climate Action Summit in Sydney this weekend.

That puts it in context, doesn't it?

It doesn't leave me feeling relaxed and comfortable. Not at all. Most of this added heat has gone into the oceans rather than into the atmosphere, land, glaciers, ice sheets or sea ice.


Ocean temperatures affect world weather patterns because they drive ocean currents.  It's one big planetary system, and we're pumping an extra four Hiroshimas of heat into it, every second.

There's no time for complacency, no time to be relaxed and comfortable. You're not sitting on the sidelines. You're right in the middle of this big planetary system. It's time to tell policy-makers that we want strong action to cut back from four Hiroshimas every second to zero.

Send your elected representative a letter today telling her/him that you care. If YOU don't speak up, they'll never know you care. Instead, they'll only hear the loud and persistent voices of oil, coal and gas businesses telling them that this isn't happening and people don't care anyway.

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News from the Transformation tab.   

Coal India, the largest coal mining company in the world, will invest in solar power in order to reduce energy bills and to diversify. Unlike ExxonMobil, Coal India is preparing a succession plan for the post-carbon world.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Cheap as Chips Renewables



“Three years ago, we thought wind and solar would be cheap as chips, and they’ve even gone below that,” said Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The plummeting price of renewable energy has bankrupted more than two dozen wind and solar manufacturers, but BNEF analysts say these lower prices could lead to a tripling of investment in the sector over the next 17 years. The collapse of companies appears to be little more than natural attrition in a fast-evolving industry with an extremely bright future.

This is comparable with the car industry where just a handful of major players emerged from the hundreds of small companies that started up from the 1880s onwards.

While suppliers are suffering from falling prices, those lower prices are making more projects profitable to develop and advancing the day when renewables can rival coal and oil on cost. 

Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that renewables will account for half of all generation capacity by 2030. They predict that much of the future market growth will be driven by low-cost attractiveness rather than by the government subsidies that have supported renewables markets so far. As costs fall, countries are paring back subsidies.

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Carbon trading in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), involving nine states in the U.S. Northeast, has produced $1.6 billion in economic value added to the region. They have been so successful at reducing emissions that they plan to tighten the cap. 

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Now you see it, now you don't


When the stage magician makes the bird appear the audience gasps because he has conjured a bird where there was no bird before.

In the same way, a new carbon tax evokes gasps of shock as opponents complain that it is a new expense that didn't exist before.

Nonsense, of course. The magician's bird existed all along but was hidden from sight. In the same way, the cost of carbon pollution existed all along but was hidden from sight. The costs include threats to food production and water supplies; damage caused by heatwaves that are more extreme and more frequent; droughts that come more often and last longer; more severe storms and flooding; loss of habitats, plants and animals; and worsening ocean acidification.

Carbon taxes don't magically add new costs, they reveal the costs that already exist. With these costs out in the light, there's a better chance that they'll be contained so we can avoid the worst damage from dangerous climate change.

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Consumer goods manufacturing giant Procter & Gamble is now sending zero waste to landfill at 45 of its sites across the globe. Procter & Gamble says less than 1% of its waste currently goes to landfill worldwide. The company has reduced the amount of waste it produces by 68% since 2008. It aims to achieve zero waste at all sites.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Do what you can




Listen to this wonderful storyteller showing that every action counts.  No action is too small.

Now get out there and do it! Feet on the ground are tipping the balance right now!

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Germany installed 7.6 GW of photovoltaic power plants in 2012, a new record.  

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Much Ado about Nothing

When people set their minds against something, they'll use any excuse to pull it down. Even the smallest molehill is blown out of proportion to become a mountain. In "Much Ado about Nothing" Shakespeare poked fun at protagonists who duelled over a verbal insult. They were ready to risk their lives for something Shakespeare saw as little more than nothing.



Similarly today, climate change deniers make a big fuss about little more than nothing. They exaggerate the importance of small differences to deny the broad consensus that exists among climate scientists.

This NASA graph shows global temperature anomalies 1880-2012 according to four main agencies (click to enlarge).



The agencies are NASA GISS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, and the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom. All four institutions tally temperature data from stations around the world and make independent judgments about whether the year was warm or cool compared to other years.

Though there are minor variations from year to year, all four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the last decade as the warmest.

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) say 2012 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The ten warmest years in the 132-year record have all occurred since 1998. The last year that was cooler than average was 1976.

Contrarians and deniers who have their minds set against climate change pretend that the overall pattern isn't real, instead they make much ado about minor differences.

No wonder they are regarded as figures of fun who can't be taken seriously.

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Australian carbon emissions fell 8.6% in the first six months after the introduction of a carbon price in July 2012. 

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Discount for up-front payment



You need a new washing machine and you need it now! Who is offering the better deal - the guy who says you can pay the full price on delivery, or the girl who offers a 20% discount for cash payment upfront?

If you don't have the cash, you might think that you have no option but to pay the full price on delivery. Or you might figure that you could borrow the money, pay cash, collect the 20% discount, then repay what you borrowed, and still be ahead. If you actually have the cash on you -  it's a no brainer!

When ExxonMobil boss, Rex Tillerson, acknowledged man-made global warming but said society will adapt, he was selling the line that paying for goods after they are delivered is a good idea.  This is a line that benefits ExxonMobile because it lets them keep making money selling fossil fuel while the cost of dealing with the consequences is borne by society.

The costs of paying for the consequences of climate change became more apparent this year as we counted the cost of recovering from drought,  storms and flooding.  For example, Superstorm Sandy  caused an estimated $50 billion worth of damage to the New York region.

Economists say that whatever happens we can't escape the costs of damage caused by rising CO2 emissions. The stark benefit of paying upfront is that this is the only way to avoid the worst extremes of climate change. If we don't pay upfront, we risk average temperature increases of 4-7C by the end of the century. The World Bank warns -
A global temperature increase of about 7 degrees will lead to “unprecedented heat waves, severe drought and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems, ecosystems and associated services.”
So, how much is the upfront payment option? About 0.1% of GDP over 40 years, according to Treasury modelling for Australia's carbon price legislation.

Worldwide, the IPCC (2007) report said keeping greenhouse gas concentrations low would cost less than 3 percent of world gross domestic product by 2030.

That sounds like a deal you'd want to snap up.

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News from the Transformation tab.  

Abu Dhabi: The largest single-unit solar power plant in the world is expected to be completed by the end of 2012 and officially open in the first quarter of 2013.