Month: October 2020

Study: We have to accelerate clean energy innovation to curb the climate crisis. Here’s how.

Vox discusses why We have to accelerate clean energy innovation to curb the climate crisis. Here’s how. A detailed road map for building a US energy innovation ecosystem.

“Innovation” is a fraught concept in climate politics. For years, it was used as a kind of fig leaf to cover for delaying tactics, as though climate progress must wait on some kind of technological breakthrough or miracle. That left climate advocates with an enduring suspicion toward the notion, and hostility toward those championing it.

Lately, though, that has changed. Arguably, some Republicans in Congress are still using innovation as a way to create the illusion of climate concern (without any conflict with fossil fuel companies). But among people serious about the climate crisis, it is now widely acknowledged that hitting the world’s ambitious emissions targets will require decreasing resource consumption, aggressively deploying existing technologies, and an equally aggressive push to improve those technologies and develop nascent ones.

What kind of reform? Here, as in other areas of climate policy, there is increasing alignment across the left-of-center spectrum. Two recent reports illustrate this.

The first — a report so long they’re calling it a book — is from a group of scholars at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), led by energy scholar Varun Sivaram; it is the first in what will be three volumes on what CGEP is calling a “National Energy Innovation Mission.” The second is from the progressive think tank Data for Progress, on “A Progressive Climate Innovation Agenda,” accompanied by a policy brief and some polling.

Both reports accept the International Energy Agency (IEA) conclusion that “roughly half of the reductions that the world needs to swiftly achieve net-zero emissions in the coming decades must come from technologies that have not yet reached the market today.” There are reasons to think this might be an overly gloomy assessment, but whether it’s 20 percent or 50 percent, aggressive innovation will be required to pull it off.

The U.S. financial system needs to prepare for climate disruption.

Fast Company discusses The U.S. financial system needs to prepare for climate disruption. Climate change, partly by increasing the risks and severity of wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters, poses a threat that permeates the U.S. financial system.

Burnt orange daytime skies signal that the consequences of climate change are already here. But while we tend to focus on the death and destruction resulting from the growing frequency and severity of wildfires and other disasters, we often pay less heed to the ways their costs ricochet through the financial system, with the potential for widespread collateral damage.

The wildfires raging in the West illustrate the problem. Their unprecedented damage has spooked insurance companies, which have raised rates, dropped coverage for high-risk properties, and even walked away from markets entirely, depressing property values. This has forced states such as California to step in and offer more coverage for affected residents. Beyond putting taxpayers on the hook, it could also lead to municipal bankruptcies, large bondholder losses, and financial crises.

Study: Is It Better to Plant Trees or Let Forests Regrow Naturally?

Wired discusses Is It Better to Plant Trees or Let Forests Regrow Naturally? Nations are pledging to plant billions of trees. But a new study shows that we’ve underestimated the power of natural forest regrowth to fight climate change.

When Susan Cook-Patton was doing a postdoc in forest restoration at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland seven years ago, she says, she helped plant 20,000 trees along Chesapeake Bay. It was a salutary lesson. “The ones that grew best were mostly ones we didn’t plant,” she remembers. “They just grew naturally on the ground we had set aside for planting. Lots popped up all around. It was a good reminder that nature knows what it is doing.”

What is true for Chesapeake Bay is probably true in many other places, says Cook-Patton, now at the Nature Conservancy. Sometimes, we just need to give nature room to grow back naturally. Her conclusion follows a new global study that finds the potential for natural forest regrowth to absorb atmospheric carbon and fight climate change has been seriously underestimated.

Narwhals could be at high risk of catching COVID-19: researcher

The Narwhal discusses how Narwhals could be at high risk of catching COVID-19: researcher. Northern whales could contract virus from vessel wastewater and spread it through blowhole droplets.

Frozen tissue samples from a narwhal harvested by Inuit subsistence hunters will soon arrive at a laboratory in Boston, where researchers will work to determine whether the species could be susceptible to COVID-19.

At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, scientists will expose live narwhal cells to SARS-CoV-2 to determine if the virus that causes COVID-19 can latch onto the cells and cause a potentially lethal infection.

Scientists are focusing on narwhals because they have almost the same number of “binding sites” as humans. These binding sites are found on ACE2 receptors, proteins on cells throughout the body. ACE2 receptors act as doorways for the coronavirus to enter and infect a range of cells.

EPA documents show dicamba damage worse than previously thought

Investigate Midwest discusses how EPA documents show dicamba damage worse than previously thought.

Despite reinstating the controversial pesticide dicamba this week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data shows that the damage from the weed killer was worse than previously known.

The pesticide harmed tens of thousands of farmers, overwhelmed state agriculture departments and damaged research plots across the United States, according to documents the federal agency released Tuesday. Wide swaths of natural areas and rural communities were also poisoned.

Attempting to curb the damage, the agency implemented new measures, including nation-wide cut-off dates after which dicamba cannot be sprayed. The agency said this gives it “90% confidence” the damage will go away, documents show.

The Trump Administration approved the controversial pesticide for five more years this week, reinstating the weed killer after it had been banned earlier this year by a federal court for causing widespread damage to farmers and the environment.

Tongass National Forest – 2 articles

The Washington Post discusses Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest, one of the biggest intact temperate rainforests. President Trump will open up more than half of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging and other forms of development, according to a notice posted Wednesday, stripping protections that had safeguarded one of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforests for nearly two decades.

National Geographic discusses An ancient forest in Alaska loses environmental protections. The Tongass National Forest, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, sustains Indigenous communities. A rollback of federal protections puts more than half of it at risk.

Study: Fish that eat microplastics take more risks and die younger

The Guardian discusses a study showing that Fish that eat microplastics take more risks and die younger. Joint study conducted finds that fish fed a diet including plastic were more likely to be eaten themselves.

Microplastics can alter the behaviour of fish, with those that ingest the pollutants likely to be bolder, more active and swim in risky areas where they die en masse, according to a new study.

The survival risk posed by microplastics is also exacerbated by degrading coral reefs, as dying corals make particularly younger fish more desperate to find nutrition and shelter, and to venture into waters where they are more likely to be taken by predators themselves.

In a joint study conducted by Australia’s James Cook University as well as other institutions including the University of Cambridge, marine ecologists pulse fed groups of juvenile ambon damselfish, housed across several tanks, a diet of brine shrimp.

Study: TRUMP’S PULLBACK OF POLLUTION CONTROLS IS EVEN MORE HAZARDOUS THAN YOU THINK

The Center for Public Integrity discusses how TRUMP’S PULLBACK OF POLLUTION CONTROLS IS EVEN MORE HAZARDOUS THAN YOU THINK. The EPA scrapped the Obama-era rules controlling methane emissions. The fracking-friendly move will also result in the release of hazardous air pollutants linked to cancer.

The Permian Basin is one of the most prolific oil and gas plays in the world, responsible for more than a third of the United States’ oil and one-sixth of gas production last year.

The formation in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that has minted fortunes and transformed the country into a global petroleum supplier is also ground zero for the worst oil and gas air pollution in the country.

One 2018 study, published in the journal Science, found that emissions in the oil and gas supply chain could be 60 percent higher than EPA estimates, “likely because existing inventory methods miss emissions released during abnormal operating conditions,” the authors wrote.

In a separate study published in Science earlier this year, researchers using new satellite data found that methane emissions in the Permian Basin likely were more than twice as high as what the agency’s data predicts.

 

Yale Climate Connections, October 30, 2020

Articles include:  Should I move to Europe?’;  Warmer climate and Arctic sea ice;  Inaction on climate – NOT an option;  efficiency & cleaner grid slash carbon;  US & Paris climate goals;  Latino voters and climate change;  ‘Ghost forests’ and sea-level rise;  ‘Zombie fires’ in the Arctic.

DeSmogBlog, October 30, 2020

Articles include:  Detroit Knew of Climate Risks;  Right-Wing Think Tank Behind Herd Immunity;  Affordable Housing & Toxic Oil Fields;  Koch Behind DOE’s Renewables Research Censorship;  Most Pennsylvania Voters Oppose Fracking;   Climate Disinformation Database: American Institute for Economic Research.