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The Environment
Per the IPCC glossary, decarbonisation (British spelling) aims to achieve “zero fossil carbon existence” and typically refers to a reduction of the carbon emissions associated with electricity, industry and transport. Examples include methanisation, biomass co-firing, carbon capture and storage, and many more. Here’s a list of 18 decarbonisation measures…
Climate change mitigation pathways are a series of measures taken to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions or to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Demand-side measures are policies and programs for influencing the demand for goods and/or services. Without further ado, here are 17 demand-side measures found in the 2018 IPCC report, “Mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development”…
Per the IPCC, here are a few of the “key uncertainties” (reflecting low or very low confidence) regarding the effects of climate change…Global-scale trends in drought…Changes in tropical cyclone activity…Global-scale trends in cloud cover (as well as cloud-climate feedback effects)…Global-scale ocean sub-surface temperature trends and variability…Global-scale and regional changes in precipitation levels….
Per “Analysis: Global coal power set for record fall in 2019” (Carbon Brief), global electricity production from coal is set to fall by around 3% in 2019, the largest drop on record. The projected drop is due to record falls in developed countries, including Germany, the EU overall, South Korea and the United States.
The primary fuel reduction method used by the DOI was “vegetation treatment”, which includes thinning and timber harvest; controlled burns, chemical treatments; targeted grazing; mechanical removal; mowing or cutting; logging; and fuel breaks, or gaps in vegetation that limit fire spreading or speed of spreading. Vegetation treatment is still an method in progress.
This is a Reblog of “The toxic rhetoric of climate change” by Judith Curry. Posted on December 14, 2019 (link here). I highly recommend you check out the comments on original blog and to explore Judith Curry’s other posts.
“…A new report by the Global Commission on Adaptation, a group convened by 20 advanced and emerging economies, identifies $1.8trn in potential adaptation investments which, if realised between 2020 and 2030, would yield estimated net benefits of $7.1trn.” The Economist Humanity will find ways to adapt to climate change. September 19, 2019…All the adaptations in the above list would be good ideas even if the climate stopped warming today. Meaning that even climate change skeptics could get behind these adaptations because they address current threats to humanity and the environment.
For the record, there is nothing in the UN Report about “mass extinctions” or large parts of the planet becoming “uninhabitable” unless we abide by the Paris Agreement (check for yourself, here). And despite the scary introduction, the UN report’s specific recommendations are quite doable without “fundamental structural changes”. Here are the main recommendations:
The Promise of Science: “…truth [will emerge] as a large number of flawed and limited minds battle it out.” (Jonathan Haidt).
According to the just released Responding to Rising Seas: OECD Country Approaches to Tackling Coastal Risks, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and United Kingdom all have coastal adaptation plans in place.
Lecturing, guilt-tripping, or trying to scare farmers into sustainable practices will not work and is likely to invite resistance - especially in the US, where there’s already a lot of bad blood between the farming community and environmental activists. Forcing farmers to change their ways with new laws and regulations could very well backfire come the next election cycle. Nope, advancing the cause of sustainable agriculture requires an attitude of respect and a solid understanding of farmer priorities, constraints, and concerns. And that requires getting answers to a bunch of questions, such as…
Why is self-efficacy so important to how we approach the challenge of climate change? Because self-efficacy is associated with persistence, tolerance of uncertainty and risk, creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience. Qualities we all could use in the coming decades.
The study authors applied a new model to calculate the global land area below high tide lines this century. Based on this model, they estimated 110 million people already occupy land lower than current high tide lines and that somewhere between 150 - 630 million people currently occupy land that would be lower than the high tide lines in 2100, depending on the emissions scenario.
…global beef consumption will continue to rise due to increasing demand outside the US. Beef consumption destroys carbon-storing habitats and contributes to climate change. However, much of the damage done by beef consumption happens outside the US. If Americans ate less beef, there would be more beef available to export. If the US exported more beef, fewer forests and wetlands abroad would be cleared for cattle.
The inspiration for these thoughts was a recent paper, “Techno-Optimism and Farmers’ Attitudes Toward Climate Change Adaptation”, in which the authors initially define techno-optimism as “the belief [in industrialized societies] that human ingenuity, through improved science and technology, will ultimately provide remedies to most current and future threats to human well-being”.
I’m starting this What If thought experiment with a What Is. Specifically, what is the current breakdown of US electricity generation by source, amount, and share? Glad you asked…
Here’s what the Audubon Society has to say about Working Lands:
“Working lands represent one of the best hopes for conservation. These parcels of forests, ranches, and farms add up to roughly a billion acres—or about half the land in the entire Lower 48 states. Audubon collaborates with landowners, land managers, government agencies, and private industry across the hemisphere to increase the quality of habitat on privately managed lands to benefit 20 flagship bird species. Audubon also helps landowners and land managers apply bird-friendly practices on their lands and develop market-based solutions to build economic incentives that have the potential to engage many more landowners.”
Original Study published in Nature on November 1, 2018: “Our result—which relies on high-precision O2 measurements dating back to 1991 —suggests that ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates…” … Nature issues an editor's note about the errors on November 19, 2018: : We would like to alert readers that the authors have informed us of errors in the paper. An implication of the errors is that the uncertainties in ocean heat content are substantially underestimated.” …Retraction published online in Nature on September 25, 2019….
To hear Elizabeth Warren tell it, Agribusiness is ruining the family farm and Big Chicken is making life miserable for US chicken farmers….agricultural economists have a different take…and here is what chicken farmers have to say about the matter.
The mid-Pliocene climate may be a decent proxy for the earth’s near-future climate, under the mid-range emissions scenario Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5, otherwise know as RCP4.5, The mid-Pliocene was around three million years ago. The global climate was wetter and 2-3 °C higher than today. Atmospheric CO2 and sea levels were also higher. There was much less ice in the northern hemisphere. Forests, woodland and savanna dominated the landscape.