Tag: EV

The denial twist

hansen.jpg James Hansen [CV], the most outspoken climate scientist in the world, has been stirring up something of a furore. Invited by the Democrats to speak in Washington on the 20th anniversary of his famous 1988 testimony to Congress on the dangers of global warming, he used to opportunity to complain about the funding of climate disinformation campaigns by fossil fuel companies [full text]:

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming. CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children.

Prosecuted for “high crimes against humanity and nature”. That’s a pretty radical view and not surprisingly the climate disinformers have been hard at work trying to rubbish the idea – and Hansen and his work.

Continue reading “The denial twist”

Sight of the wind

windturbine.gif Time for me to front up on wind power. As I mentioned last year, our local lines company, Mainpower, is planning a windfarm on the ridge of Mt Cass above the eastern edge of the Waipara Valley. That’s a good chunk of the skyline visible from my veranda. Some of it will be hidden behind Mt Brown, but I’ll still have windmills to tilt at (though no donkey). The resource consent application has now been lodged with the Hurunui District Council [here]. Getting that together has been a major undertaking for one of HT’s regular commenters, Andrew Hurley, as he blogs at the Mainpower development blog (needs more posts Andrew!). There’s a lot of interesting stuff both in the application and in Mainpower’s resource pages.

Here’s the rub. I think global warming’s a huge problem, and subscribe to the view that we need to do more to encourage electricity generation from renewable resources. So can I overcome my latent nimbyism (what, big white things whirring on the skyline?) and welcome the windfarm? To that, the answer is yes. But then the issue becomes complex. Mainpower are asking for consent to build within a “design envelope” which stretches from a lot of little turbines, to a smaller number of really big ones. Which is the least visually intrusive? Depends where you’re looking from.

I’m pondering the options. The little turbines would be more or less invisible from my house – certainly not intrusive – but they would generate the least power and cover the largest area. I’m tempted to prefer the really big turbines, for a variety of reasons. Smaller ecological footprint and significantly greater power generation, but big 125m towers. That would mean making the most of the power available from a good site, and perhaps limit the need for a rash of sites in areas of greater visual beauty.

Submissions close on August 1st. I’m open to debate…

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I don’t feel fine)

CTarctic110608.jpg For REM, it “starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane“, for us, it looks like diminishing Arctic sea ice is the sign. Over at Open Mind, the blogger formerly known as Tamino looks in some detail at the sea ice/rapid warming paper I linked to yesterday. His post makes for sober reading. David Lawrence and his team at NCAR and the NSIDC examined runs of the NCAR-based CCSM climate model that included episodes of rapid sea ice loss, and looked at what happened to climate of the Arctic during those periods. They found that the rate of warming increased 3.5 times faster than the average rate models project over the coming century. From the press release:

While this warming is largest over the ocean, the simulations suggest that it can penetrate as far as 900 miles inland. The simulations also indicate that the warming acceleration during such events is especially pronounced in autumn. The decade during which a rapid sea-ice loss event occurs could see autumn temperatures warm by as much as 9 degrees F (5 degrees C) along the Arctic coasts of Russia, Alaska, and Canada.

This is what it looks like in their nifty graphic:

permafrost.jpg

This is what we saw last winter.

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Looks as though the process the paper describes is already under way. Canada’s a bit cooler, but then it still has some ice left at the moment…

And the end of the world? Go and re-read my recent post on methane hydrates in the shallow seas north of Siberia. Consider what Lawrence et al have to say about permafrost. Then ponder the meaning of “positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle”. What’s happening up North could make any efforts to reduce global emissions irrelevant, or at best, mean that reaching a relatively low stabilisation target (450ppm?) suddenly a lot harder. Just to make things even harder, we have 30 years of warming to go, even if we could stabilise atmospheric greenhouse gases today.

I’m going to enlarge my veggie garden, and re-examine my thoughts on resilience as a response to climate change.

[Update: Joe Romm at Climate Progress has good coverage.]

[Update 2: Nature‘s In The Field blog reports reactions to the Lawrence et al paper from aboard a ship cruising the Arctic, and in passing confirms some of my thoughts…]

Like takin’ candy from a baby

CTarctic110608.jpg Another day, another bet on sea ice. A few days ago, a regular reader of HT emailed to ask me if I could provide some support in a long series of comments to a post at Poneke! about the showing of Swindle. So I did (my contributions start here). And now I have another bet on this northern hemisphere summer’s sea ice minimum, with a commenter calling himself “malcolm” taking the Stoat position (cold side = more ice than last year, not something out of the Kama Sutra). So here’s an update on events up North. Consider it a form guide, if you will.

Continue reading “Like takin’ candy from a baby”

Home thoughts from abroad

BBC.gif Aunty Beeb has taken a look at New Zealand’s carbon ambitions. A report headlined “Attempting to ‘kick the carbon habit” gives a pretty good overview of the special problems – and advantages – that NZ has. There’s a decent plug for Grove Mill wines and their carbon zero status, plenty of room for the PM to tout her carbon ambitions, and a chance for the Greens to point out how our imported cheap cars pose a problem for transport emissions. It also gives National’s Nick Smith a chance to act all pessimistic about the prospects for agricultural emission reductions.

“The truth is that we are only just starting to nail the science of how to measure the amount of methane and nitrous oxide from agricultural production. I think it is a matter of decades rather than years before there’ll be the sort of breakthroughs that enable us to bring those emissions down.”

Decades? Has Dr Smith never heard of nitrification inhibitors, or about breakthrough research on methanogens? Or – perish the thought – land use change to low emissions crops? If he has his hands on National’s carbon policy, then I am extremely concerned about what might happen after the election if National form the core of the next government.

Luckily, there’s not one word in the BBC story about the ETS and its difficulties. That was a narrow escape. If the world gets to hear that emissions trading scheme is in trouble and that our low carbon talk is just hot air, then all our image building will be wasted. Nick Smith would do well to reflect on that.