Record number of days above 1.5 degrees

 Racing towards catastrophe.  And still we do nothing.

Global warming off the charts

 From a toot by Zack Labe

Wow, the last three months have really shattered the previous September to November temperature record for our planet...

Using data from ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsa

Note that this is the anomaly relative to the 1981-2010 baseline.
Relative to the 1850-1900 baseline (i.e., pre-industrialisation),
temperatures are now up over 1.5 degrees.

Yet the latest COP meeting shows that we (mankind) will once again do nothing to reduce emissions.

Global heating accelerating

 From a toot by Peter Gleick

Global warming is not just happening, it's accelerating rapidly.
That means the impacts and consequences are accelerating as well.

So, up from ~0.2 per decade to ~0.3 per decade.  Note that the 2023 datum is only so far this year (Jan-Sept).    The rest of this year is likely to push this year's average up even further, because of El Niño, taking us beyond 1.5 degrees above the 1850-1900 average.  Already.  Long before 2040.

And still we permit emissions to rise.  Still we make excuses for inaction.  Still we allow oil and gas companies to buy politicians.  

China's peculiar coal policy

From Reuters

China's plans for some 100 new coal-fired power plants to back up wind and solar capacity have sparked warnings that the world's second-biggest economy is likely to end up lumbered with even more loss-making power assets.

Analysts question the logic of policies that intend to reduce the role of the dirtiest fossil fuel but at the same time require more coal-fired power plants to be built - especially given that only a small number of older plants are typically retired each year.

The plans also highlight how local government interests have impeded the development of an effective nationwide power market that would allow surplus power to be delivered to regions that need it, they add.

"The reality is that China has more coal power capacity than it needs," said Zhang Shuwei, director at Draworld Energy Research Centre. "It doesn't make sense to give more incentives for more coal-fired power investments."

China is the world's largest and fastest-growing producer of renewable energy, which is expected to account for a third of all power supplied to its grid by 2025, up from 28.8% in 2020.

But it was scarred by a record drought last year that slashed hydropower output, forcing factories throughout the southwest to shut down and raising concerns that power shortages could undermine its post-COVID economic recovery. The experience increased its determination not to be too reliant on the intermittent nature of wind and solar power and has made China the only major economy building new coal-powered plants.

The construction of 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power was approved last year - four times more than in 2021 and the highest amount since 2015, according to research published last month by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

That's equivalent to about a hundred large coal-fired plants and enough to supply the whole of Britain. At least 50 GW of that capacity began construction in 2022, the report said.

China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has also flagged that at least 200 GW of coal capacity is expected to be deployed to support renewable power.

China's big jump in coal power approvals has sparked fears that there will be backsliding on its climate goals.

The CREA-GEM report says it won't necessarily mean the sector's coal use or carbon emissions will climb. But for China to make good on its goals - namely a peak in emissions before 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060 - the loss-making sector's plant utilisation rates will probably have to slide further.

Coal accounted for 58.4% of China's total power generation last year, but high prices have meant many plants have suffered losses for years. More than half of the country's large coal power firms were loss-making in the first half of 2022, according to the China Electricity Council.

And even though many plants were producing more last year to compensate for the decline in hydropower output, the average utilisation rate inched down to 52.4%.

Analysts note existing coal plants could provide sufficient backup for renewables if they were plugged into a nationwide market, but China's power sector remains fragmented.

Historically, power plants have been built to support local industry and local GDP growth rather than national power supplies, with provinces reluctant to rely on other provinces for their needs.

Power plants are also not motivated to maximise power output because prices are fixed for residential users while price hikes for business users are limited to 20% of the fixed tariff.

The NDRC has been working on capacity payment mechanisms that compensate coal power plants for the decline in earnings as they adjust to their new role as backup suppliers.

The drought-prone southwestern province of Yunnan, which depends on hydropower for most of its electricity, recently set up a capacity market in which coal plants are paid to be available to fulfil supply shortfalls. Other regions are also involved in pilot schemes.

"I think the expectation of these capacity payments is one motivation for coal power groups to pursue new projects despite the fact that power generation from coal is unprofitable at the moment," said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA.

It is also unclear who will be paying for the subsidies, said Zhang at Draworld Energy, adding it would be "terrible news" if the costs were to be shouldered by renewable power generators.

Yunnan's provincial planning agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Instead of building expensive new plants, China could instead encourage existing plants with surplus capacity to deliver electricity to regions that need it the most, said Matt Gray, chief executive of think tank TransitionZero.

"It would be far cheaper... to incentivise provincial trading than incentivising new loss-making coal," he said.

 China and coal are key to cutting emissions.  China is the world's biggest coal user.  It's also the world's biggest emitter.   

India to build no new coal plants

 From Reuters

India plans to stop building new coal-fired power plants, apart from those already in the pipeline, by removing a key clause from the final draft of its National Electricity Policy (NEP), in a major boost to fight climate change, sources said.

The draft, if approved by the federal cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, would make China the only major economy open to fresh requests to add significant new coal-fired capacity.

India and China account for about 80% of all active coal projects as most developing nations wind down capacity to meet climate targets. As of January 2023, only 20 countries have more than one coal project planned, according to E3G, an independent climate think tank.

"After months of deliberations, we have arrived at a conclusion that we would not need new coal additions apart from the ones already in pipeline," one of three government sources said.

The sources declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media. India's power ministry did not respond to requests seeking comment.

The new policy, if approved, would not impact the 28.2 GW of coal-based power in various stages of construction, the sources said.

China and India have together been lobbying for freedom for countries to choose a roadmap to cut emissions.

India, whose proposed coal power capacity is the highest after China, had repeatedly refused to set a timeline to phase out coal, citing low per-capita emissions, surging renewable energy capacity and demand for inexpensive fuel sources.

Coal is expected to be the dominant fuel in generating electricity in India for decades, but activists have pressed for a halt to new coal-fired plants, arguing this would at least help to reduce the share of the polluting fuel in overall power output.

The draft, India's first attempt at revising its electricity policy enacted in 2005, also proposes delaying the retirement of old coal-fired plants until energy storage for renewable power becomes financially viable, the sources said.

So far, old coal-fired power plants with a cumulative capacity of 13 GW have been earmarked for functioning post retirement deadline to meet high power demand, they said.

In the first draft of the NEP in 2021, India had said it may add new coal-fired capacity, though it proposed tighter technology standards to reduce pollution.

The Central Electricity Authority, an advisory body to the federal power ministry, had said last year India might have to add as much as 28 GW of new coal-fired power in addition to the plants under construction to address surging power demand.

However, the final draft, which will guide India's policymaking on energy over the next decade, features no references to new coal-fired power, the sources said.

In contrast, China's National Development and Reform Commission said in a March 2022 document that outlined its energy policy, that the world's largest coal user "will rationally build advanced coal-fired power plants based on development needs."

China plans to build some 100 new coal-fired power plants to back up wind and solar capacity, which analysts said goes against Beijing's stated intention to reduce the role of coal.

The policy revision could also impact long-term coal prices and miners in Indonesia, Australia and South Africa, as India is the world's second-largest coal importer.

But emissions continue to rise:

We are not yet at peak coal.  Which means emissions haven't yet peaked.  Depressing.

Trees bring rain

Land clearing in a paddock outside Moree NSW
Source: The Guardian

My mother used to say that, and I didn't believe her.  Arrogant pup!  Here's an excerpt from a deeply depressing Guardian article about land clearing in Australia which explains how the process works:

Prof Clive McAlpine from University of Queensland explains that not only does land clearing release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it also has an effect on climate, well beyond the emissions.

“It causes warming locally, regionally and even globally, and it changes rainfall by altering the circulation of heat and moisture,” he says.

“Trees evaporate more water than any other vegetation type – up to 10 times more than crops and pastures. This is because trees have root systems that can access moisture deep within the soil.”

The increased evaporation and rough surface of trees create moist, turbulent layers in the lower atmosphere, he says. “This reduces temperatures and contributes to cloud formation and increased rainfall. The increased rainfall then provides more moisture to soils and vegetation.

“The clearing of deep-rooted native vegetation for shallow-rooted crops and pastures diminishes this process, resulting in a warmer and drier climate.”

McAlpine argues that we should be replanting in the north-west of NSW and south-west Queensland to achieve a tree density of 40% to stabilise the local climate. Grazing would still be possible underneath the tree cover.

This is why the centre of continents at the equator have high precipitation.  At the coasts, the rain comes from moist air from the sea.  But it falls on rain forests, and the trees transpire water vapour into the air.  In the tropics, an acre of rain forest puts more water vapour into the air than an acre of sea.  This water vapour then falls on forests further inland and the process is repeated.  So even in the heart of the continent, there is rain and rain forest, and the two go together.  Which is why land clearing can create a desert. 

As a species, we seem bent on destroying our world.

USA: 17,000 a year dead from opioids

More than 70,000 Americans died from drugs in 2017. That is more than all the American soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam war.  Look at the increases from 1999-2003 to 2012-2016.  The US government is spectacularly failing its citizens.  Imagine if this was the number of deaths from terrorism.

Source: The Economist

Coal emits more than ever

From the Washington Post:

Global energy experts released grim findings Monday, saying that not only are planet-warming carbon-dioxide emissions still increasing, but the world’s growing thirst for energy has led to higher emissions from coal-fired power plants than ever before.

Energy demand around the world grew by 2.3 percent over the past year, marking the most rapid increase in a decade, according to the report from the International Energy Agency. To meet that demand, largely fueled by a booming economy, countries turned to an array of sources, including renewables.

But nothing filled the void quite like fossil fuels, which satisfied nearly 70 percent of the skyrocketing electricity demand, according to the agency, which analyzes energy trends on behalf of 30 member countries, including the United States.

In particular, a fleet of relatively young coal plants located in Asia, with decades to go on their lifetimes, led the way toward a record for emissions from coal fired power plants — exceeding 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide “for the first time,” the agency said. In Asia, “average plants are only 12 years old, decades younger than their average economic lifetime of around 40 years,” the agency found.

As a result, greenhouse-gas emissions from the use of energy — by far their largest source — surged in 2018, reaching an record high of 33.1 billion tons. Emissions showed 1.7 percent growth, well above the average since 2010. The growth in global emissions in 2018 alone was “equivalent to the total emissions from international aviation,” the body found.

China, for instance, satisfied a demand for more energy last year with some new generation from renewables. But it relied far more on natural gas, coal and oil. In India, about half of all new demand was similarly met by coal-fired power plants.

In the United States, by contrast, coal is declining — but most of the increase in demand for energy in this country was nonetheless fueled by the burning of natural gas, rather than renewable energy. Natural gas emits less carbon dioxide than coal does when it is burned, but it’s still a fossil fuel and still causes significant emissions.

Granted, there’s some slight good news in the new report, in that as renewables and natural gas have grown, coal has a smaller share of the energy pie overall.

Yet the fact that it’s still growing strongly contradicts what scientists have said about what’s needed to curb climate warming. In a major report last year the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that global emissions would have to be cut nearly in half, by 2030, to preserve a chance of holding the planet’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

That would require extremely fast annual reductions in emissions — but instead, the world is still marking record highs.

[Read more here]

A couple of years ago, I thought that global emissions had peaked.  Nope.  Nowhere near. 

We are not doing enough.  Catastrophic climate change is already beginning.  And we still defer to denialists and profits.

We need to do more:

• No more coal power stations, anywhere, ever again.  And if a country plans more, we need to persuade them with carrots and sticks to instead build renewables with storage.  And perhaps a loan scheme funded by rich countries for developing countries for renewables plus storage.
• We need active programs to close down existing coal power stations in developed countries.  Right now, even though wind and solar are cheaper than coal, that transition isn't happening fast enough.
• We need subsidies to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles (EVs).  EVs will be price compatible with with ICEVs by the mid 2020s, so perhaps we could start with a cashback if you buy a new EV of $8000, falling by $1000 each year till it reaches zero.  Even if 100% of new car sales are electric, it could still take more than a decade before the whole car fleet is.  The sooner we start the better.
• We need to eliminate all subsidies for fossil fuels.
• Each country must introduce a carbon price.  The best would be a carbon tax, returned by way of a monthly dividend to all residents, and applied to all imports from countries which do not have a carbon tax.

Will the world act?  Will politicians stop mouthing platitudes about it and do something?  We took just a decade to get to the Moon.  If we wanted to, we could slash global CO2 emissions by more than third by 2030 (5% compound per year), just 11 years away.  But we have to want it.  And not piously prate.

Act.  Now.  Or we face catastrophe.

The last Knysna elephant

The last Knysna elephant
Source: S A National Parks

The Knysna elephants in South Africa were all that survived of the giant herds which once roamed the temperate southern forests of the Outeniqua/Tsitsikamma area of the former Cape Province.

Now a recent report confirms that there is only one elephant left.

A sobering 15-month study on the declining population of the southernmost herd of African elephants has determined only one elephant, a mature female, is free-roaming in the Knysna forest in South Africa.

The analysis—titled And Then There Was One—was recently published in the African Journal of Wildlife Research.

For the study, researchers set up camera trap across the whole elephant range from July 2016 to October 2017 and concluded upon analysis that the female elephant, estimated at 45 years old, was by herself.

"Because elephants move along defined elephant pathways, we placed our cameras on these paths and covered the elephant range evenly, with spaces between camera traps no larger than the smallest range recorded for elephants," one of the study's authors Lizette Moolman, a South African National Parks scientist, explained in an article posted to the park's website.

"In other words, an elephant would not reside in a gap area, between camera trap locations, for the duration of the survey. The cameras were all active for 15 months, and during this time the same female elephant was identified in 140 capture events, always by herself. No other elephants were photographically captured."

Fellow researchers behind the study were shocked to find only one elephant left in Knysna, as the gentle giants historically roamed the area in the thousands.

"The brutal reality is there is no longer a population of Knysna elephants," study co-author Graham Kerley of the of Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University, told Business Day. "All the mystique of the Knysna elephant is reduced to a single elephant left in rather tragic circumstances."

While the solitary elephant appears in relatively good shape, Kerley explained to Business Day that she has swollen temporal glands with excessive temporal streaming, suggesting she might be stressed from being alone.

According to the National Elephant Center, female African elephants are social creatures and usually roam in herds with a number of related female adults and male and female offspring.

The maximum lifespan for females is more than 65 years, so the lone Knysna elephant could be by herself for two more decades.

As for capturing her and moving her to other elephant populations, Kerley noted that "would be dangerous for her and we don't know if it would even be of any value to her as she knows the forest and she might not be able to settle into another area with other elephants."

Images of her show that her breasts are undeveloped and her mammary glands are shriveled, meaning she has likely never been pregnant or has not given birth in a long time, according to Business Day. Artificially inseminating her would be too risky to attempt, Kerley said.

"Considering all these factors, the debate about how we have allowed this population to go functionally extinct and how to manage the last elephant is very emotional and very serious as she is a symbol of how we are treating biodiversity as a whole," Kerley told the publication.

[Read more here]

When I read a report like this, it is impossible to contain my contempt for mankind.  If we destroy ourselves and our civilisation via global warming or through the destruction of insect life, our fate will be richly deserved.  Greed, selfishness and folly.  Do we even deserve to survive? 

Trump is God's plan

Safe climate zone

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?

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?

2019 worries

A cartoon from Chris Riddell

US emissions off track

More on the rise in US emissions in 2018 (see previous post here):

Getting behind makes the target harder to reach. Yes, coal is being replaced, yes EVs could make up 20% of total car sales by end 2021.   But more needs to be done.  Not much luck with that given Lord Cheeto and the Republicans.  It's likely emissions will fall sharply in 2019 because the US will have a recession.   Add the ongoing shuttering of coal power stations, the expansion of EV sales to 5% of total car sales, and it's easy to expect emissions will fall.  We'll see.

Hottest ever 3 months

From ThinkProgress:

For the three-month period of May to July, the entire contiguous United States (CONUS) “ranked hottest on record,” as the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, California tweeted out Wednesday, adding that “records go back to 1895.”

That map comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report, “Assessing the U.S. Climate in July 2018,” released last week.

But NOAA didn’t mention the May-June-July heat record in its report, and that left it to the NWS in Los Angeles to point out the sea of red across the contiguous U.S.

NOAA did point out that in California in particular, “July was off the charts: The state saw its hottest July and hottest month on record with an average temperature of 79.7 degrees F.”

No wonder the state has been ravaged by deadly, record-smashing wildfires this summer.

This wasn't the average for the US.  It was every single region.  Every single one was at an all-time record.  Do you know how unlikely that is?

When are we going to act? 

Rise in atmospheric CO2 level still accelerating

Not only is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere continuing to rise, it's rising at an accelerating pace.

Source: Open Mind

Remember, even if annual CO2 emissions peak, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to rise, though the rate at which it rises (shown in the chart above) will level off.  To stop global temperatures from continuing to rise, we need to stop all CO2 emissions entirely.  In the context of the chart above, that would mean that the black line goes to zero (below the bottom of the chart area) and the red line changes trend.  BTW,  an  El Niño year (1998, 2016) causes the rate of increase in CO2 levels to spike up.

No signs of a slow down yet.