Moral of the story: economic growth in the US, as measured by real GDP, is about to plunge. Which is prolly why the Fed has backed away from further rate increases, and is muttering about slowing the unwinding of QE.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
US econ slumps
The various regional branches of the US Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed) do surveys of business conditions in their region. If you add 5 of them together (unweighted) you get an indicator which closely follows the year on year change in real GDP, but leads it by 3-5 months. We now have data for January. This is perfectly consistent with my longer-leading index which points to an at best slowdown in 2019 and 2020 and at worst recession. Of which more anon.
Moral of the story: economic growth in the US, as measured by real GDP, is about to plunge. Which is prolly why the Fed has backed away from further rate increases, and is muttering about slowing the unwinding of QE.
Moral of the story: economic growth in the US, as measured by real GDP, is about to plunge. Which is prolly why the Fed has backed away from further rate increases, and is muttering about slowing the unwinding of QE.
Bring back global warming
Trump tweeted again that we need a bit of global warming because it's so very cold in some parts of the US. I just want to remind the prez that the US is not the world. Other parts of the world have been record hot (for exmple Australia).
These maps from Climate Denial Crock of the Week show how though it's bitterly cold in Minnesota, much colder than normal, it is much warmer than normal in the SW USA, in the Arctic, over eastern Siberia and China and Africa and Australia.
Nope. Just because it's cold in the eastern states of the USA does not mean that global warming has suddenly ended. And I can tell you, Donny, that we in Australia most emphatically do not want more global warming. What we have is already too much.
These maps from Climate Denial Crock of the Week show how though it's bitterly cold in Minnesota, much colder than normal, it is much warmer than normal in the SW USA, in the Arctic, over eastern Siberia and China and Africa and Australia.
Nope. Just because it's cold in the eastern states of the USA does not mean that global warming has suddenly ended. And I can tell you, Donny, that we in Australia most emphatically do not want more global warming. What we have is already too much.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The methane time bomb
Just how bad is it? Short answer, if we move quickly we might avoid 70% of the damage from melting clathrates. But that doesn't mean the danger is negligible. And the quicker we act, the less the risk of runaway global warming.
This video is very informative:
This video is very informative:
You do this ..... you get this
You do this:
You get this:
Never has it been more obvious that the Right would rather the Earth was destroyed than give up their pet obsessions and their corruption.
There is no way you can write the sentence, “The treasurer of Australia, Scott Morrison, came to question time with a lump of coal on Thursday,” and have that sentence seem anything other than the ravings of a psychedelic trip, so let’s just say it and be done with it.
Scott Morrison brought coal into the House of Representatives. A nice big hunk of black coal, kindly supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia.
“This is coal,” the treasurer said triumphantly, brandishing the trophy as if he’d just stumbled across an exotic species previously thought to be extinct.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said, soothingly, “don’t be scared.”
No one was afraid, or scared. People were just confused. What was this fresh idiocy?
You get this:
A third fish kill has occurred near Menindee on the Darling River overnight after temperatures plummeted following days of hot weather.
The latest fish kill follows an incident on 6 and 7 January in which hundreds of thousands of native fish, including Murray cod, golden perch and bony bream died around the Menindee weir.
There was also another mass kill before Christmas.
“This is likely worse than the last time,” said local Graeme McCrabb, who on Monday morning was down at the water’s edge at the back of the township, above Weir 32.
“I’ve just picked up a 50cm golden perch, and there are tens of thousands of little bony bream, dead.
“There are fish all around me just gasping for breath,” he said.
Never has it been more obvious that the Right would rather the Earth was destroyed than give up their pet obsessions and their corruption.
Texas's largest battery starts working
From Energy Manager Today:
Luminant, a subsidiary of Vistra Energy, recently announced that its Upton 2 battery energy storage system project has finished construction and began operating Dec. 31, 2018.
The battery system, which is the largest energy storage project in Texas and seventh largest in the United States, is located on the site of Luminant’s 180-megawatt Upton 2 Solar Power Plant in Upton County, Texas.
The 10-MW/42-MWh lithium-ion energy storage system captures excess solar energy produced at [Upton 2] during the day and can release the power in late afternoon and early evening, when energy demand in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) area is highest. The battery system can also take advantage of low-priced grid power — during times of high wind output, for example — to charge the batteries to be available for higher demand periods.
Vistra is also currently developing the world’s largest battery energy storage project, the 300-MW/1,200-MWh storage system at its Moss Landing Power Plant in California, scheduled for commercial operations in the fourth quarter of 2020.
[Read more here]
A 10 MW/42 MWh battery can provide 10 MW of electricity for 4.2 hours. The solar plant itself, with a capacity factor of 25%, would provide 45 MW, so the battery's maximum output is equal to less than one quarter of that. All the same it's a start. The critical point is that batteries are already cheap enough to be profitable on a small scale. As battery costs fall (20% per annum), their deployment will grow exponentially.
Monday, January 28, 2019
Germany to phase out coal over 20 years
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| The lignite-fired power plant in Niederaussem, Germany (Source: The Guardian) |
From The Guardian:
Germany has agreed to end its reliance on polluting coal power stations by 2038, in a long-awaited decision that will have major ramifications for Europe’s attempts to meet its Paris climate change targets.
The country is the last major bastion of coal-burning in north-western Europe and the dirtiest of fossil fuels still provides nearly 40% of Germany’s power, compared with 5% in the UK, which plans to phase the fuel out entirely by 2025.
After overnight talks, the German coal exit commission of 28 members from industry, politicians and NGOs, which has worked since last summer to thrash out a timetable for ditching coal power, agreed an end date of 2038. A review in 2032 will decide if the deadline can be brought forward to 2035.
The final 336-page document agreed by the coal commission, seen by the Guardian, shows Germany plans to reduce its 42.6GW of coal power capacity to about 30GW by 2022, falling to around 17GW by 2030. The deal will be formally published next Friday.
Greenpeace has called for an end date of 2030, but other environmental groups in the country supported a 2035 cut-off. Almost three quarters of Germans believe a quick exit from coal is important, according to a poll of 1,285 people by the broadcaster ZDF.
[Read more here]
I would have preferred a faster elimination of coal, but if you look at the figures, a target of 30 GW of capacity by 2022 implies a 9% per annum decline, which is actually substantial. The rate of decline after 2022 slows, though only to 7% per annum, which is interesting--usually, taking the medicine is postponed as long as possible. I would have expected slow declines initially and faster ones later on.
But at least Germany is doing something, and planning for a total coal phase-out. And a phase-out over 20 years still ends carbon emissions 12 years before the global target which is 2050. Even if some gas is used instead, the probability is that Germany won't build too many new gas power stations because storage will be much cheaper in 5 years, and less gas peaking will be needed. And if total emissions could fall by a compound 7% per annum, then they would fall nearly 80% over 20 years. Surely a major achievement,
Solar and wind plus batteries massively disruptive
From PV Magazine:
NextEra: solar and wind plus batteries will be “massively disruptive” to conventional generation.
The power giant says that coal, gas and nukes will not be able to compete with clean energy, and that renewable energy deployment is “just getting started”.
Only one day after the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected that coal’s decline will slow, gas will dominate the future energy mix and that wind will peter out after the PTC ends, one of the nation’s largest and arguably its most successful power companies has a very different forecast for the future.
In NextEra Energy’s fourth quarter results call, CEO Jim Robo dropped another bombshell, with his statement that solar and wind plus storage will be cheaper than coal, oil or nuclear, that this will be “massively disruptive to the conventional fleet” and that it will provide opportunities for developers well through the next decade.
Robo’s exact math is that even after the federal tax credits expire, wind will be 2 – 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, large-scale solar will be 2.5 – 3 cents, and storage will add .5 – 1 cent. This would put these resources slightly below the current cost of natural gas-fired generation, without the uncertainty around fuel prices that is inherent to gas.
Robo has been similarly optimistic about energy storage in the past, stating in a 2015 analyst conference covered by Greentech Media that “post-2020, there may never be another peaker built in the United States — very likely you’ll be just building energy storage instead.”
[Read more here]
Utilities aren't switching to renewables out of the goodness of their hearts, but because renewables are cheaper. Good news.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Friday, January 25, 2019
More on SpaceX's stainless steel Starship
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| Starship reflecting earthlight; Rendering by @reesecarges |
Musk has revealed some more about why SpaceX has pivoted away from carbon-fibre composites to stainless steel for its workhorse/Moon shuttle/Mars explorer spaceship, the Starship (BFS as was).
Teslarati:
Speaking in a late-December 2018 interview with Popular Mechanics’ editor-in-chief, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared considerable insight into the thought processes that ultimately led him to – in his own words – “convince” his team that the company’s BFR rocket (now Starship and Super Heavy) should pivot from an advanced composite structure to a relatively common form of stainless steel.
Aside from steel’s relative ease of manipulation and affordability, Musk delved into the technical solution he arrived at for an advanced, ultra-reusable heat shield for Starship – build it out of steel and use water (or liquid methane) to wick reentry heat away.
Although there has been some successful experimental research done on “transpirational” heat shields (relying on the heat capacity of vaporizing liquids or gases to soak up thermal energy during orbital rocket reentries), Musk is by no means wrong when he says that a stainless steel sandwich-hulled spaceship regeneratively cooled by microscopic holes and liquid water or propellant “has never been proposed before”. While the basic concept probably arose somewhere over the last 50-100 years, it does not appear that any serious theoretical or experimental research has been conducted to explore transpiration-cooled metallic heat shields, where metallic thermal protection systems (TPS) are already fairly exotic and unproven in the realm of modern aerospace.
“Very easy to work with steel. Oh, and I forgot to mention: [SpaceX’s high-quality] carbon fiber is $135 a kilogram, 35 percent scrap, so you’re starting to approach almost $200 a kilogram. [301] steel is $3 a kilogram. You just need, essentially, [a stainless-steel sandwich]. You flow either fuel or water in between the sandwich layer, and then you have [very tiny] perforations on the outside and you essentially bleed water [or fuel] through them … to cool the windward side of the rocket.” – Elon Musk
While Musk’s solution could dramatically simplify what is needed for Starship’s high-performance heat shield, a stainless steel sandwich on half of Starship offers another huge benefit: the spacecraft can still gain many of the mass ratio benefits of stainless steel balloon tanks (metal tanks so thin that they collapse without positive pressure) while retaining structural rigidity even when depressurized. At the end of the day, Musk very well might be correct when he states that a stainless steel Starship can ultimately be more mass-efficient (“lighter”) than a Starship built out of advanced carbon composites, a characteristic he rightly describes as “counterintuitive”.
Inverse:
The decision is not aesthetic, he [Musk] explained in a recent interview with Popular Mechanics about Starship’s specs. The material is also a lot cheaper. To ensure it’s up to the rigors of space flight, Musk said he envisions it being used as the foundation for a kind of self-healing heat shield that would coat Starship almost entirely. He described the concept as a “stainless-steel sandwich” that can “bleed water…fuel” through tiny holes on its surface to keep it cool as it enters the Martian atmosphere at breakneck speeds.
“What I want to do is have the first-ever regenerative heat shield,” he said. “A double-walled stainless shell—like a stainless-steel sandwich…with two layers [to] flow either fuel or water in between the sandwich layer, and then you have micro-perforations on the outside… to cool the windward side of the rocket.”
The concept is known as transpiration cooling, which is fancy engineering jargon for passing a liquid through a porous surface to lower the surface’s overall temperature. Musk says in theory that either water or super-chilled liquid oxygen would pass through a Swiss cheese-like heat shield, absorb a part of the component’s energy, and prevent serious heat damage.
The virtues of stainless steel are actually two-fold, Musk says. Not only could stainless steel contain heat damage, but Musk also says it’ll serve as an ideal skeleton.
While it’s still the same grade as what’s sometimes found in your pots and pans, the 300-series stainless steel that Musk said would make up Starship has a melting point of up to 2,786 Fahrenheit, compared to aluminum’s 1,221 degrees Fahrenheit melting point. And while carbon fiber doesn’t melt, it can begin to degrade if exposed to heat upwards of 400 degrees, according to the CEO.
The fins (at the back) and canards (up front) will prolly be made of a titanium alloy, with a melting point around 3000 degrees F (1650 C), as these will be hotspots during re-entry and a more robust metal is required than steel. The grid-fins on the Falcon 9 boosters are made of titanium.
One of the factors that has made SpaceX so successful is its ability to pivot to new ideas and technologies without having to go through the vast political and bureaucratic processes that NASA or ESA (European Space Agency) have to go through, or for that matter (to a lesser extent), Boeing, ULA (United Launch Alliance) and Lockheed Martin have to endure. Of course, that could mean he might fail. But I suspect not. At every step along the road, others have grimly foretold SpaceX's imminent demise. "A new space company? Don't be silly!" "Cheaper than the incumbents? How we laughed!" "Landing first stages? It'll never be done!" "Cheap re-usable rockets? Pull the other one!" And now they are no doubt questioning whether he will ever get transpiration cooling to work. Or whether he'll even get to the Moon, let alone Mars. What is really interesting is that according to Musk, building the Starship with stainless steel has likely shortened the development timetable. Which makes the 2022 (cargo ships), 2023 (moon expedition) and early 2025 (manned landing on Mars) timetable much more plausible.
Also, a water shield in the skin of the ship substantially reduces radiation (7 cm of water will halve radiation levels) If you have to take it anyway for re-entry, why not have one? The way I calculate it, they could have a much thicker shield than 7 cm assuming they'll need 10-30T of water for re-entry. A one metre shield would require 35 tonnes of water (actually less, but I did a simple back of the envelope calc), so a 300 cm thick layer of water would contain enough water for re-entry. This would reduce radiation almost to earth levels. [If anybody better at maths than me would like to comment, please do] However, how much water would be lost on the trip through the microscopic holes in the skin? I dunno, but I'm sure Musk and his team does.
The other vital point: if it's 70 times cheaper to build ...... OK, I know it won't be because of all the ancillary costs, such as engines, life support, etc. But let's say stainless steel instead of carbon-fibre reduces overall cost per Starship by 75-80%. I estimated here that the cost of the combined carbon-fibre BFR & BFS was $260 million. Could SpaceX cut that to, say, $60 million? And made of stainless steel, 100 re-uses are perfectly plausible. So capital costs (depreciation/development costs) fall to $600,000 per launch. Fuel is another $1 million, so $1.6 million per launch. With the reduced payload of 85 tonnes (because of 15 T of water) that still works out at under $20,000 per tonne launched to LEO (low earth orbit). Current non-SpaceX launch costs to LEO are $22 million per tonne, a 2 orders of magnitude decline.
The journey to Mars would be 7 times as expensive as a launch to LEO, or $140K per tonne to Mars. Your ticket to Mars would cost you $56K. That would include you (100 kg), your food on the way (200 kg) and 100 kg of personal cargo. NASA's estimate for sending a 5 man team to Mars was $5 BILLION per astronaut. Of course, we will need masses of cargo, collectively--solar panels, nuclear power plants, wind turbines, inflatable domes, 3-d printers, gas extraction plants, rovers.... Yet I have no doubt the first few expeditions would be well funded by government. And even by the media. What would it be worth for a reporter to actually be on the Starship? To report on the interactions between passengers on the way? To film the first time the door opens on a new world? To film the development of the colony, its crises and successes? $11 million? That's almost the total cost of the flight to Mars. And these costs will only decline, as bigger BFRs are built, because the tonnage launched increases exponentially with the size of the rocket--Falcon 1 (400 kg/launch cost $6 mill), Falcon 9 (23 tonnes/launch cost $60 mill), Falcon Heavy (63 tonnes/launch cost $90 mill), Starship (100 tonnes/launch cost 1.6 mill).
Meanwhile, NASA is planning to spend $1.5 to $2.5 billion on a single launch of its SLS (Space Launch System). For that it could send 18,000 ppl to Mars! Such are the improved economics when re-usability comes into the picture. Which explains why I'm confident NASA and ESA will be very happy to help fund the first journeys to Mars.
Wait, there's more. The cost of SpaceX's Starlink network of satellites, designed to bring truly global very high speed internet connections to the whole world (not just cities in developed countries), gets much much cheaper if launch costs fall as I have estimated they will. Starlink and Starship are linked. Success in one makes success in the other much more likely. Big risk, though, to bet the house on two hideously expensive brand new technologies. Still if anybody can do it, Musk and SpaceX can.
Fascinating. I might yet live to see humans on Mars.
Pakistan dumps coal for wind and solar
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| Kaghan valley in NE Pakistan (I thought y'all are maybe a bit sick of pictures of wind turbines. P.S. stunning, but prolly not safe to visit.) |
From IEEFA:
When a giant infrastructure project in an emerging country doesn’t make sense these days, you can usually count on China’s Belt and Road to be on hand with a bailout check. For the global coal industry, that prospect has been one of the last great hopes for demand growth. Chinese policy banks have committed some $45 billion to coal projects overseas since 2000, according to a Boston University database.
That pattern may be starting to crack. Pakistan, which has been working on an aggressive expansion of new coal power plants under the Belt and Road’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is getting cold feet. The country’s planning minister has told Beijing that it’s not interested in developing the Rahim Yar Khan plant, a potential 1.32 gigawatt project that would probably have left the country’s grid well over capacity.
While the big beasts of potential coal development are China and India, smaller second-ranked markets such as Pakistan are likely the tougher nuts to crack to wean the world from its most polluting fossil fuel.
Whereas new wind and solar is already cheaper than coal in those two countries – one reason project cancellations there are only likely to increase – that’s often not the case in smaller emerging markets, where the plug-and-play availability of thermal plants plus the existence of overseas developers seeking to build them can still look tempting. As my colleague Liam Denning wrote last year, coal is like junk food: ubiquitous, full of calories and (at least at the building stage) cheap.
Still, power generation is more about long-term than short-term costs, and with fuel accounting for about half the price of coal generation, the presence of willing foreign builders can only stave off economic reality for so long. Coal in the Thar region east of Karachi already costs about twice that of equivalent lignite in other markets and the area’s multiple thermal projects may become uncompetitive, Syed Akhtar Ali, a former member of the country’s Planning Commission, wrote in the Express Tribune last year.
That dynamic is accentuated by the speed at which rival sources of energy are dropping in price. Pakistan has a rich endowment of wind and solar resources and has already joined the club of countries where the costs of new renewables are lower than coal. Long-run costs for wind projects are at about half the cost of coal, according to government data cited by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Given the low penetration of variable renewables and high share of natural gas, solar and wind won’t even need significant storage backup to maintain grid stability.
[Read more here]
If you are not well off, even though an EV might over the long-term be cheaper than an ICEV, you might still buy an ICEV because the up-front cost is less, and you are short of funds. You know that long term, it makes no sense, but you need a car now, and the fuel payments are postponed into the future. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
If you are a developing country, with limited access to capital, and what there is, is expensive, then the turn-key approach offered by China for building coal power stations is attractive. Yes, you know that the total cost for the electricity from a coal power station is greater than the cost from wind or solar, bu the up-front cost is less. (And China will lend you the money to pay for it, anyway.) Or has been until now. Just as with EVs, when the sticker price falls to levels comparable with ICEVs, and demand soars, so it is with renewables. We are now at the point where the operating cost of coal mines is close to or more than the total cost of new renewables (ignoring storage). And that is the death knell for coal.
Record heat in SE Australia
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| Oz is getting so hot the BOM has had to introduce new colours for the top of the scale Source: The New Scientist |
Here in Oz, we're used to summer having a few hot days. But the last few weeks have been unbearable. As Ben Phillips from the Australian National University tweeted:
Adelaide had 4 days of 40+ temps between 1955 and 1966 and 39 days between 2005 and 2015. How will the end of this century look?
Indeed. Records across Australia have crashed. In some places we've never recorded such high temperatures over the last 130 years. The number of new records is too long to list.
Meanwhile, although coal power stations have tripped because of the heat, the losses have been made up by renewables:
While there have been coal-fired power station breakdowns during the heatwave, wind, solar and hydro are working to fill in the gaps.
Between 600 and 800 megawatts is coming from wind power on Friday.This is around the equivalent of the two broken generators at EnergyAustralia's Yallourn power plant.
"Wind power is running quite strongly in Victoria at the moment," Australian Wind Alliance chief Andrew Bray said.
Wind and solar combined are providing almost 18 per cent of the state's power. When hydro power is included, renewables account for almost 40 per cent of Victoria's electricity.
Victoria is also leaning heavily on South Australia, which is exporting 25 per cent of its power to the state.
Wind and solar combined currently account for around 35 per cent of South Australia's energy today.
[Source: Melbourne's The Age Newspaper]
Note:
- The right-wing L/NP ruling coalition wants to build more coal power stations--with public subsidy because they are now wildly outcompeted by dirt-cheap renewables.
- Despite, according to the L/NP, coal supposedly being more reliable than renewables, it is renewables which have kept going and coal power stations which have failed just when electricity demand is very high for air conditioning.
- South Australia is supposed to be dependent on Victoria and NSW for its power because of all those pesky renewables, but it's actually exporting power to Victoria.
- The L/NP are still denying that this record heat and the worst drought ever have anything to do with global warming.
- They are demented.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Remorseless cost reductions
From IEEFA:
[Read more here]
In this piece, I pointed out that to get to 100% green electricity by 2040, we needed the percentage of renewables in electricity generation to grow by 10% per annum, compounded, and to get to 100% by 2030, growth needed to be 20% per annum.
In 2017, according to Wikipedia, total global solar capacity was 401.5 GW (my numbers are a couple of % higher), so capacity grew in 2018 by 27%, and will grow again in 2019 by 24% (at the lower end of BNEF's forecast) and by 27% (at the upper end).
Total wind capacity in 2017 was 539 GW, so this year's expansion will add 11.8% to its installed capacity.
Taking wind and solar capacity together, this year total (W+S) installed capacity should rise by about 18%. Which means we are on our way to 100% green electricity by 2040. In fact, an 18% growth in capacity every year from now on would get us there in 13 years, in 2032.
Also, for what it's worth, if the previous rate of decline in battery prices continues, battery costs this year should reach $141/kWh and $113/kWh in 2020, equivalent to $39/MWh and $31/MWh respectively for 24 hours of storage. 24 hours of storage will be quite sufficient to take us to 80 or 90% renewables on a grid powered by both wind and solar. Most national and regional grids are quite some way from that level of penetration yet, but will reach it in 10 or 12 years, by which time battery cost will have fallen by 90% from today.
Global installed capacity charts are shown below, with 2019 forecasts included. Note that they are plotted on a log scale, which shows as a straight line when there is a constant growth rate, whereas a linear scale shows as an ever steepening curve. Total wind capacity has risen from 1.8 GW in 1989 to 662 GW in 2019 (forecast), and solar has risen from 1 GW in 2000 to 673 in 2019 (f'cast). In recent years wind's growth has slowed from the 30% p.a. of early days to around 12% per annum (as can be seen from the flattening slope of the curve). Solar's growth has remained at +-30% p.a.. If anything, growth is likely to accelerate as costs fall, and as batteries become cheap.
Renewable energy will march forward this year, due to “remorseless reductions in the costs of solar and wind electricity and of lithium-ion batteries,” Angus McCrone, the chief editor of Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) wrote in a commentary.
Clean energy will also make huge strides because of the “widening realization on the part of investors and corporations that there is this ‘sustainability thing’ and, for reasons of self-interest, they just need to do it,” McCrone added.
Falling costs for wind and solar are great news, but they also make the headline investment figure appear less impressive. BNEF sees total clean energy investment hovering at around $300 billion, down from 2018’s $332.1 billion. But while investment totals will be down this year, as time marches on and costs continue to fall, every dollar invested brings more renewable energy capacity.
The same will be true in 2019. For instance, BNEF predicts that the world will add between 125 [+15%] and 141 gigawatts (GW) [+29%] of new solar this year, sharply up from the ~109 GW added in 2018. For wind, BNEF sees capacity additions of 70 GW [+31%]in 2019, up from 53.5 GW last year.
One notable development is the rise of offshore wind. It will still remain a fraction of the wind installation total, but “eye-catching price drops” will make it a “must-have” technology this year, BNEF analysts argue. Europe is set to install 4.9 GW of offshore wind, with Asia installing 3.5 GW – both new record highs. BNEF says this will be the last year that Europe leads in offshore wind. From here on out, Asia will take over as the global leader.
Energy storage hits a milestone in 2019 as well, adding 10 GWh of new capacity for the first time. China will “establish a truly global presence” in the energy storage market, with automakers increasingly seeking out Chinese suppliers. Average battery prices could fall below $150/kWh this year, down from $176/kWh last year, which itself was a record low.
[Read more here]
In this piece, I pointed out that to get to 100% green electricity by 2040, we needed the percentage of renewables in electricity generation to grow by 10% per annum, compounded, and to get to 100% by 2030, growth needed to be 20% per annum.
In 2017, according to Wikipedia, total global solar capacity was 401.5 GW (my numbers are a couple of % higher), so capacity grew in 2018 by 27%, and will grow again in 2019 by 24% (at the lower end of BNEF's forecast) and by 27% (at the upper end).
Total wind capacity in 2017 was 539 GW, so this year's expansion will add 11.8% to its installed capacity.
Taking wind and solar capacity together, this year total (W+S) installed capacity should rise by about 18%. Which means we are on our way to 100% green electricity by 2040. In fact, an 18% growth in capacity every year from now on would get us there in 13 years, in 2032.
Also, for what it's worth, if the previous rate of decline in battery prices continues, battery costs this year should reach $141/kWh and $113/kWh in 2020, equivalent to $39/MWh and $31/MWh respectively for 24 hours of storage. 24 hours of storage will be quite sufficient to take us to 80 or 90% renewables on a grid powered by both wind and solar. Most national and regional grids are quite some way from that level of penetration yet, but will reach it in 10 or 12 years, by which time battery cost will have fallen by 90% from today.
Global installed capacity charts are shown below, with 2019 forecasts included. Note that they are plotted on a log scale, which shows as a straight line when there is a constant growth rate, whereas a linear scale shows as an ever steepening curve. Total wind capacity has risen from 1.8 GW in 1989 to 662 GW in 2019 (forecast), and solar has risen from 1 GW in 2000 to 673 in 2019 (f'cast). In recent years wind's growth has slowed from the 30% p.a. of early days to around 12% per annum (as can be seen from the flattening slope of the curve). Solar's growth has remained at +-30% p.a.. If anything, growth is likely to accelerate as costs fall, and as batteries become cheap.
US home sales plunge
Lowest in three years. Even after adjusting for seasonality, December's data were very weak.
US recession, anyone?
US recession, anyone?
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Yet another scary report
Yet more scary reports about the effects of climate change. After this one, which told how Antarctic sea ice loss has gone up 6 fold, we get this one, which says that Greenland sea ice loss is up 4 fold. Goodbye Miami. Meanwhile mother nature is roaring at us to do something.
What can we do?
Think of the problem as comprising three baskets. They're not the same size in each country, but just for now think of them as 1/3rd of the problem each.
The first basket is electricity generation. We need to get rid of all fossil fuel generation. This is the most important basket because if we convert our system to 100% green electricity we can do most of the things in the other two baskets using carbon-free electricity, and so get to a zero-carbon economy. And this should be by far the easiest to do, because wind and solar are now much cheaper than coal and gas power stations, and in fact in many places, cheaper than the running costs of coal and gas. It might be possible to persuade developed countries to switch to renewables when renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels (ignoring the externalities of deaths and ill-health and rising global temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels) but it's hard to persuade poor countries to do that. But if renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels then poor countries won't reduce their standards of living by choosing renewables. They'll increase them. The task of transitioning electricity generation to renewables just got a lot easier.
However, to provide 100% renewables to the grid, we will need storage. Which brings me to the second basket: land transport. The key here is the cost of batteries. Battery costs are falling by 20% per annum, so it will take 3 years before they are below $100/kWh of storage, which is the level at which EVs have the same sticker price as petrol cars. So, 2021.
But the cost declines won't end in 2021. By 2025, at that rate of decline, batteries will cost $40/kWh. The cost of storage for 24 hours of electricity in the grid will be just $11/MWh, assuming a 10 year life. No one will build a new fossil fuel power plant and no one will use existing ones any more. Similarly, EVs (electric vehicles) will be a lot cheaper than ICEVs (internal combustion engined vehicles). EVs will make up 100% of car and light truck and prolly also bus and heavy truck sales. It will take a decade in developed countries and 15 years in developing countries for the vehicle fleet to transition to 100% electric. But by 2040, ICEVs will be available only in museums and at old-timer rallies.
So by 2040, both those baskets will be 100% green. Good news, even though the world will be o.4 degrees C warmer by then.
That leaves the third basket, which is a hodgepodge of lots of smaller emission sources. The two biggest are forest/bush clearing and burning and agriculture. Forest clearing could surely be stopped right now by appropriate international action, if we wanted it. A man-to-man talk with Brazil, Borneo, Indonesia and Australia would stop this source of emissions. Agriculture is a major source of emissions, but mostly of methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Apparently cattle produce more methane from their burps than their farts. We could reduce emissions by 10-20% if we stopped eating meat and dairy. Fat chance with that: if we tell people that they have to eat less meat or vat meat and give up cheese, they will fall to the floor and start chewing the carpet. Still, it might have to be done, if we are to stop runaway global warming.
Then there's air transport. Batteries are still too heavy for planes. But meanwhile, we can produce carbon-friendly jetfuel using the Sabatier process. Replacing 5% of fossil fuel jetfuel each year with carbon-friendly jetfuel will lead to a small annual increase in air fares. Same thing with sea transport and diesel.
We're left with cement and iron and steel production. These sectors are harder, because to make iron we have reduce iron ore (i.e., iron oxide) to iron by heating it with coking/metallurgical coal which inevitably produces carbon dioxide. And we make cement by cooking limestone to drive off some of its carbonates, which also inevitably produces carbon dioxide. For these we will need some kind of carbon capture and storage, which turns CO2 into rock or uses it to strengthen cement.
To make changes in the last basket we will mostly likely have to have a carbon fee. The fee would start low and rise each year to minimise economic disruption. Its proceeds would be distributed to the population by way of a monthly "dividend" cheque. For example, a $20/tonne of CO2 emissions in the US or Australia, rising by $5 per year, would generate a "dividend" per person of $300 per annum; per family of 4 $1200 per annum in the first year. To avoid distorting effects on international trade, it would also apply to imports from countries which don't have a similar carbon fee.
I am very confident that by 2030 there will be very few working coal power stations left, and not many gas ones either. By 2040 there will be few ICEVs. But emissions in air travel, sea transport, agriculture and cement and iron and steel will remain unless something is done. And of course, the maths dictates that by then they won't be 20% of emissions but 90% plus. The pressure to do something about them will be intense.
I'm very optimistic that baskets one and two will shift, because of economics. But the contents of basket three will require a carbon tax and tighter regulations. And there, I'm much more pessimistic. Yet the logic is inexorable. We have to get to zero emissions by 2050 or face catastrophe. And that means emissions must fall by a compound 14% per annum. We're nowhere near that; in fact emissions are still rising. Is our species intelligent enough to save itself or not?
What can we do?
 |
| Source: EPA Buildings includes heating buildings, transportation is all transportation, industry includes iron and steel and cement. Heat production can be electrified as can transportation. But that still leaves industry and agriculture. |
Think of the problem as comprising three baskets. They're not the same size in each country, but just for now think of them as 1/3rd of the problem each.
The first basket is electricity generation. We need to get rid of all fossil fuel generation. This is the most important basket because if we convert our system to 100% green electricity we can do most of the things in the other two baskets using carbon-free electricity, and so get to a zero-carbon economy. And this should be by far the easiest to do, because wind and solar are now much cheaper than coal and gas power stations, and in fact in many places, cheaper than the running costs of coal and gas. It might be possible to persuade developed countries to switch to renewables when renewables are more expensive than fossil fuels (ignoring the externalities of deaths and ill-health and rising global temperatures caused by burning fossil fuels) but it's hard to persuade poor countries to do that. But if renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels then poor countries won't reduce their standards of living by choosing renewables. They'll increase them. The task of transitioning electricity generation to renewables just got a lot easier.
However, to provide 100% renewables to the grid, we will need storage. Which brings me to the second basket: land transport. The key here is the cost of batteries. Battery costs are falling by 20% per annum, so it will take 3 years before they are below $100/kWh of storage, which is the level at which EVs have the same sticker price as petrol cars. So, 2021.
But the cost declines won't end in 2021. By 2025, at that rate of decline, batteries will cost $40/kWh. The cost of storage for 24 hours of electricity in the grid will be just $11/MWh, assuming a 10 year life. No one will build a new fossil fuel power plant and no one will use existing ones any more. Similarly, EVs (electric vehicles) will be a lot cheaper than ICEVs (internal combustion engined vehicles). EVs will make up 100% of car and light truck and prolly also bus and heavy truck sales. It will take a decade in developed countries and 15 years in developing countries for the vehicle fleet to transition to 100% electric. But by 2040, ICEVs will be available only in museums and at old-timer rallies.
So by 2040, both those baskets will be 100% green. Good news, even though the world will be o.4 degrees C warmer by then.
That leaves the third basket, which is a hodgepodge of lots of smaller emission sources. The two biggest are forest/bush clearing and burning and agriculture. Forest clearing could surely be stopped right now by appropriate international action, if we wanted it. A man-to-man talk with Brazil, Borneo, Indonesia and Australia would stop this source of emissions. Agriculture is a major source of emissions, but mostly of methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Apparently cattle produce more methane from their burps than their farts. We could reduce emissions by 10-20% if we stopped eating meat and dairy. Fat chance with that: if we tell people that they have to eat less meat or vat meat and give up cheese, they will fall to the floor and start chewing the carpet. Still, it might have to be done, if we are to stop runaway global warming.
Then there's air transport. Batteries are still too heavy for planes. But meanwhile, we can produce carbon-friendly jetfuel using the Sabatier process. Replacing 5% of fossil fuel jetfuel each year with carbon-friendly jetfuel will lead to a small annual increase in air fares. Same thing with sea transport and diesel.
We're left with cement and iron and steel production. These sectors are harder, because to make iron we have reduce iron ore (i.e., iron oxide) to iron by heating it with coking/metallurgical coal which inevitably produces carbon dioxide. And we make cement by cooking limestone to drive off some of its carbonates, which also inevitably produces carbon dioxide. For these we will need some kind of carbon capture and storage, which turns CO2 into rock or uses it to strengthen cement.
To make changes in the last basket we will mostly likely have to have a carbon fee. The fee would start low and rise each year to minimise economic disruption. Its proceeds would be distributed to the population by way of a monthly "dividend" cheque. For example, a $20/tonne of CO2 emissions in the US or Australia, rising by $5 per year, would generate a "dividend" per person of $300 per annum; per family of 4 $1200 per annum in the first year. To avoid distorting effects on international trade, it would also apply to imports from countries which don't have a similar carbon fee.
I am very confident that by 2030 there will be very few working coal power stations left, and not many gas ones either. By 2040 there will be few ICEVs. But emissions in air travel, sea transport, agriculture and cement and iron and steel will remain unless something is done. And of course, the maths dictates that by then they won't be 20% of emissions but 90% plus. The pressure to do something about them will be intense.
I'm very optimistic that baskets one and two will shift, because of economics. But the contents of basket three will require a carbon tax and tighter regulations. And there, I'm much more pessimistic. Yet the logic is inexorable. We have to get to zero emissions by 2050 or face catastrophe. And that means emissions must fall by a compound 14% per annum. We're nowhere near that; in fact emissions are still rising. Is our species intelligent enough to save itself or not?
Monday, January 21, 2019
New wind farm to provide 10% of Vic's electricity
There has been an explosion in new wind and solar farms in Australia. The reason is simple: the all-in costs of new wind and solar have fallen below A$60/MWh ( US$42/MWh) whereas the cost of wholesale electricity, driven by the high cost of gas- and coal-powered generation in Oz is substantially above that (A$80/MWh or more). I talked before about a proposed offshore wind farm (its costs will be higher than $60/MWh, but offshore wind is less variable than onshore wind) which if it goes ahead will provide 18% of Victoria's electricity.
When storage gets cheap enough, coal power stations will be retired early because they'll simply be too expensive to run, let alone build.
Now there's another wind farm, which will be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere:
The managing director of a company that plans to construct Victoria’s largest windfarm says the project will supply enough power to replace up to a third of the generation of the decommissioned Hazelwood power station at less than $50/MWh.
The Victorian government has granted a planning permit for WestWind Energy’s $1.5bn Golden Plains windfarm, which will become one of the largest windfarms in the southern hemisphere.
The windfarm would span 17,000 hectares [42,000 acres] on land 60km north-west of Geelong and generate more than 3000 gigawatt hours of electricity per year – enough to power more than 400,000 homes.
Tobias Geiger, the managing director of WestWind Energy, said the large scale project would be able to supply energy at low cost.
“With this very large project and very good wind resource, combined with the latest wind turbine technology that’s now available, we can achieve a levelised cost of energy for this project that is below $50 per MW/h,” he said.
“If you put that into the context of electricity market prices from Victoria which for the past two years have hovered around $80 to $120 per MW/h, you can see the significance of this project for driving down electricity prices for all Victorians.”
Simon Holmes à Court, a senior advisor at the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University, said bigger turbines, better sites, economies of scale and more competitive financing “have literally halved the cost of of wind energy”.
“At $50/MWh — just 5 cents per kWh — the Golden Plains windfarm will produce power for less than the market cost of fuel alone for many coal and all gas power stations,” he said.
“And it’s big — expected to provide between 8–10% of Victoria’s energy.”
[Read more here]
Although the electricity produced by this wind farm will be half the cost of coal- or gas-generated electricity, it's still not a done deal that there will be complete replacement of fossil fuel electricity. This is because as the percentage of renewables in the grid rises, we need more storage. And although wind farms have started adding storage, it's only a couple of hours. To go to twelve hours of storage which is what we'll need to get to 80 or 90% renewables, we'll have to see the cost of battery packs below $100/kWh, which won't happen until 2021.
However I see no problems with the ne Victorian renewable energy target of 50% by 2030. Actually, I suspect we'll get to 100% by then. The key is Simon Holmes à Court's point:
“At $50/MWh — just 5 cents per kWh — the Golden Plains windfarm will produce power for less than the market cost of fuel alone for many coal and all gas power stations,” he said.
When storage gets cheap enough, coal power stations will be retired early because they'll simply be too expensive to run, let alone build.
How the world warmed in 2018
By Zeke Hausfather in Carbon Brief:
The oceans were the hottest ever:
The atmosphere was the 4th warmest on record (chart shows temperature anomalies) :
The recent sustained rise started in 1975:
And that old standby of denialists, the upper air temperature, has also risen:
And arctic sea ice has trended inexorably downwards:
The oceans were the hottest ever:
The atmosphere was the 4th warmest on record (chart shows temperature anomalies) :
 |
| The dashed line shows raw data (i.e., unadjusted) for the global anomaly. Note how unadjusted data have risen more than adjusted. |
The recent sustained rise started in 1975:
 |
| A steady rise, despite volcanic eruptions in 1982 and 1991 and El Niños in 1998 and 2016. |
 |
| The average model forecast post 1995 has tracked the real world temperature rather well. |
And that old standby of denialists, the upper air temperature, has also risen:
And arctic sea ice has trended inexorably downwards:
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Installed wind capacity
Another handy chart from World Economic Forum:
China has more installed wind capacity than the next 3 (USA, Germany and India) put together. On a per-capita basis, Denmark has the most wind, with 1,000 watts of capacity per person, and Germany (!!) the most solar at 500 watts per person.
I can't remember where I got the chart below, but it gives you a good idea of just how rapidly wind capacity is growing--23% per annum compound. Because solar is now cheaper than wind, wind capacity growth is likely to slow. But, as I say here, to get to 100% renewable energy by 2040, we only need to grow the percentage generated from renewable energy by 10% per annum.
China has more installed wind capacity than the next 3 (USA, Germany and India) put together. On a per-capita basis, Denmark has the most wind, with 1,000 watts of capacity per person, and Germany (!!) the most solar at 500 watts per person.
I can't remember where I got the chart below, but it gives you a good idea of just how rapidly wind capacity is growing--23% per annum compound. Because solar is now cheaper than wind, wind capacity growth is likely to slow. But, as I say here, to get to 100% renewable energy by 2040, we only need to grow the percentage generated from renewable energy by 10% per annum.
Progress on clean electricity
The growth (or decline) of CO2 emissions can be explained by this formula:
CO2 emissions=Population*Economic output*Energy Intensity*Carbon Intensity.
Since we can't do a lot over the next 20 years about population growth, and since most people in the world would like to see higher living standards, we're left with the last two factors. We can reduce energy intensity by mandating more efficient cars, or better building insulation, for example. New light bulbs, more efficient heaters, and so on. In addition we can reduce the carbon intensity of our energy usage, by for example replacing fossil fuels with renewables and ICE (petrol/diesel) cars with EVs.
The chart below, from World Economic Forum, shows the carbon intensity of electricity generation:
Norway, New Zealand and Brazil are low because of hydro, France because of nuclear.
The second chart shows the change in carbon intensity over the last decade:
Note the massive improvements in the UK (ending coal, replacing with wind and gas), Denmark (massive growth of wind), China (world's largest renewables investor), but see also the disasters at the right-hand side: Brazil, India, Japan and Indonesia, all big and fast-growing economies. Obviously, it is vital that in the next 10 and 20 years, every country in this list cuts the carbon intensity of its electricity generation by 200 g/kWh.
There are heaps more interesting charts in the article from WEF.
CO2 emissions=Population*Economic output*Energy Intensity*Carbon Intensity.
Since we can't do a lot over the next 20 years about population growth, and since most people in the world would like to see higher living standards, we're left with the last two factors. We can reduce energy intensity by mandating more efficient cars, or better building insulation, for example. New light bulbs, more efficient heaters, and so on. In addition we can reduce the carbon intensity of our energy usage, by for example replacing fossil fuels with renewables and ICE (petrol/diesel) cars with EVs.
The chart below, from World Economic Forum, shows the carbon intensity of electricity generation:
Norway, New Zealand and Brazil are low because of hydro, France because of nuclear.
The second chart shows the change in carbon intensity over the last decade:
Note the massive improvements in the UK (ending coal, replacing with wind and gas), Denmark (massive growth of wind), China (world's largest renewables investor), but see also the disasters at the right-hand side: Brazil, India, Japan and Indonesia, all big and fast-growing economies. Obviously, it is vital that in the next 10 and 20 years, every country in this list cuts the carbon intensity of its electricity generation by 200 g/kWh.
There are heaps more interesting charts in the article from WEF.
Slugs for salt
A cartoon from AgentAggregator:
It makes no sense for the poor and the working class to vote for right-wing parties. Yet they do. Bizarre.
Come to think of it, maybe it's because the Left embraced neo-liberalism.
It makes no sense for the poor and the working class to vote for right-wing parties. Yet they do. Bizarre.
Come to think of it, maybe it's because the Left embraced neo-liberalism.
Temp up; Arctic sea ice down
Some nice charts from Tamino:
No, global temperatures aren't falling. No, Arctic sea ice isn't recovering. Whatever the denialists say.
No, global temperatures aren't falling. No, Arctic sea ice isn't recovering. Whatever the denialists say.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Last year was the hottest ever for the oceans
Zeke Hausfather:
The chart below (from Hausfather's tweet) shows surface air temperatures vs the heat stored in the top 2000 metres of the oceans. The green line is the surface air temperature with various trend lines and a centred moving average. The purple line shows ocean heat. Note how since the last El Niño, air temperatures have fallen but the ocean heat content hasn't. Note also that if you start at the peak of the previous El Niño (1998) and end before the latest El Niño (2014) you can say that there has been a "pause". It is obvious if you add more data before and after this period that there has been no pause. If anything since 1998 the trend increase appears to be accelerating.
This second chart shows ocean heat content anomaly vs the "Keeling curve"--the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Note how the error range (error bar; the pink area) gets wider as you go further back in time because of more primitive measurement methods. Note also that 2018 is the hottest year ever for the oceans.
Around 93% of the additional heat trapped by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ends up being absorbed by the oceans. Ocean heat content is a critical measure of climate change, and shows the warming signal much more clearly than the more noisy surface record.
The chart below (from Hausfather's tweet) shows surface air temperatures vs the heat stored in the top 2000 metres of the oceans. The green line is the surface air temperature with various trend lines and a centred moving average. The purple line shows ocean heat. Note how since the last El Niño, air temperatures have fallen but the ocean heat content hasn't. Note also that if you start at the peak of the previous El Niño (1998) and end before the latest El Niño (2014) you can say that there has been a "pause". It is obvious if you add more data before and after this period that there has been no pause. If anything since 1998 the trend increase appears to be accelerating.
This second chart shows ocean heat content anomaly vs the "Keeling curve"--the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Note how the error range (error bar; the pink area) gets wider as you go further back in time because of more primitive measurement methods. Note also that 2018 is the hottest year ever for the oceans.
When Nature Roars
 |
| Sweden: fires rage north of the Arctic circle: Source: CNN |
I thought this blog post from Tamino (Open Mind) was so important and so heartfelt that I should include all of it here on my blog.
A new voice has taken center stage in the argument over what to do, if anything, about man-made climate change.
Although clear for decades, the science is easily obscured by clever propogandists. But thanks to this new advocate, things have changed; hers is a voice powerful enough that we’re nearing the point where climate deniers simply won’t be taken seriously any more. An unimpeachable source, impervious to politics, we cannot help but listen, by the millions, from New York to California, from Alaska to Florida, women and men, liberal and conservative and independent, Christian and Jew and Moslem and atheist alike.
The children hear her loudest.
Nature has been telling us for decades, but in that quiet, achingly slow way that speaks volumes to scientists and those few living close enough to nature, but escapes the mass of modern society. When scientists began ringing alarm bells, the clever propogandists swung into action. The subtlety and complexity of nature’s changes made it easy for them to paint twisted pictures of what was happening and what was likely to happen. Human behavior, wrapped in the flags of ideology and tribal identity, saw scientific truths as conspiracies. Beliefs were burned into place, indelibly so it seemed, and no argument or reason could be entertained, let alone considered; it would fall on deaf ears.
Then she raised her voice.
Truly ferocious heat waves in Europe, in Russia, Australia, India, Pakistan. Tremendous wildfires in the western U.S. Unprecedented flooding worldwide. Coastal flooding on a sunny day with no wind or rain or storm. And the hurricanes! Just to list them almost seems excessive.
This year, she didn’t just raise her voice. She roared.
Killer heat waves all around the northern hemisphere. Temperature in the 90s (°F) in the Arctic circle no less. Wildfires raging out of control, in Greece, in Sweden of all places, and of course in the U.S. where one fire destroyed the entire city of Paradise, California. And the hurricanes! In Florida, the one called “Michael” wiped another American town off the map.
We heard. This is bad
At least, we heard the main message: this is very bad. It’s not a nuisance, not just an annoyance, these changes we’re seeing are the things that kill people. They cost — in dollar terms, beyond billions to hundreds of billions and trillions. In human suffering, in lives destroyed, beyond imagining. And no one, no where, is safe.
The deeper messages are in all of nature, and among them are subtle but sometimes crystal clear messages that speak to scientists. They’ve been saying them for decades, but now perhaps, maybe, those so long blinded by ideology or ego, will finally start to take them seriously. For the human race, the important scientific messages are:
Climate change is because of us.
It’s going to get worse.
How much worse depends on what we do.
If you think 2018 was noisy, wait until nature roars really loud.
[Read more of Tamino's informative posts here]
Friday, January 18, 2019
Antarctica's ice loss up six fold
From The Independent:
Antarctica's annual ice loss six times greater than 40 years ago, Nasa research shows. Warming since 1979 'tip of the iceberg' as accelerating pace of melting predicted to add metres to global sea levels.
The Antarctic ice sheet is losing six times as much ice each year as it was in the 1980s and the pace is accelerating, one of the most comprehensive studies of climate change effects on the continent has shown.
More than half an inch has been added to global sea levels since 1979, but if current trends continue it will be responsible for metres more in future, the Nasa-funded study found.
The international effort used aerial photos, satellite data and climate models dating back to the 1970s across18 Antarctic regions to get the most complete picture to date on the impacts of the changing climate.
It found that between 1979 and 1990 Antarctica lost an average of 40 gigatonnes (40 billion tonnes) of its mass each year.
Between 2009 and 2017 it lost an average 252 gigatonnes a year. This has added 3.6mm per decade to sea levels, or around 14mm since 1979, the study shows.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak,” Professor Eric Rignot from University of California, Irvine and lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience. “As the Antarctic ice sheet continues to melt away, we expect multi-metre sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries.”
The new analysis provides a breakdown of how ice losses in different sectors of Antarctica have changed and helps address confusion that has led to some climate change sceptics claiming the Antarctic ice mass is growing.
While western Antarctica has had some of the most visible ice loss, particularly to the extent of its sea ice, some studies have suggested that ice coverage is increasing in eastern Antarctica fast enough to cancel this out.
The latest study shows that east Antarctica ice loss has been a significant contributor to sea level rises, and called for more research on the factors that affect this.
[Read more here]
Goodbye Miami. Goodbye Venice. Goodbye St Petersburg. Goodbye Holland. Goodbye Copenhagen. Goodbye downtown Melbourne. Goodbye.
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