Tag: coal

Just as the tide was flowing

Two disparate news items in New Zealand newspapers highlight some of the problems facing any switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. The first is the Environment Court’s welcome approval of Crest Energy’s application to sink 200 turbines to the sea bed of the Kaipara Harbour where the strong tidal flow will be used to generate electricity. The decision follows a 2008 appeal to the Court by Crest Energy against the Northland Regional Council’s decision to allow only 100 turbines. Environmental objection centred around the possible effect on the west coast snapper stocks and possible threats to the survival of the rare Maui’s dolphin. I wrote about the project and other NZ wave and tidal energy projects in a Hot Topic post a year or so ago.

 

The Environment Court approval is hedged with conditions. Crest can sink three turbines initially. If results with three turbines satisfy the Northland Regional Council, the company can add up to 17 more turbines, provided operation of the 20 turbines is monitored for a year to give sufficient information on the impact on fisheries. From there, the council will decide whether to allow turbines to be built up in further stages from 20 to 40, then 80 and then to a maximum of 200.

The director-general of conservation wanted the monitoring of the 20 turbines to last three years, not one. Another iwi-based objector wanted at least three years of monitoring after each stage. The environment court’s decision followed a year of mediation among four objectors.

It’s not my purpose to criticise the objections or the conditions imposed by the Court. Renewable energy development has environmental effects which must be taken into account and judgments made, and I’m certainly in no position to weigh the factors in specific cases. But one hopes that climate change carries very considerable weight in the process. I notice the judge is quoted as saying the proposal is very significant in terms of its contribution to power generation and the national economic interest. Maybe he also said something about the importance of renewable energy in combating climate change and it wasn’t reported. Maybe he linked the national economic interest to clean power and emissions reduction. But maybe that’s outside the Court’s scope.

Which brings me to the second news item where the Grey District mayor pleads for the Pike River mine to be turned into an opencast operation.  There’s billions of dollars’ worth of coal there and the mayor even goes so far as to say that the deceased miners would want to see mining continue. One has to sympathise with the anxieties of West Coast communities whose livelihoods are to a considerable extent bound up with mining. The mayor was explicit that the financial benefits of opencast mining outweigh environmental concerns. Unfortunately he’s wrong if environmental concerns include global warming. There are plenty of environmental concerns around opencast mining of any kind, but when the object is coal those concerns are far greater than the localised disruption and pollution caused by the mining. Climate change concerns overshadow all kinds of coal mining for that matter.

This is tricky territory. West Coast coal is generally of a quality which makes it suitable for steel making and as such is a valuable export product. The coal industry in New Zealand has been invigorated in recent years. Obviously for the time being steel-making is going to need coking coal. Why should New Zealand not benefit financially from supplying that need?

It’s a fair question. However it’s not apparent that anyone involved in the coal industry or in government for that matter thinks in terms of supplying an interim need while the world organises itself to live without coal. That’s not the impetus driving our coal industry. That doesn’t explain Solid Energy’s plans to exploit Southland lignite. The thinking behind the expansion of coal mining and exporting is that there is a lot of money to be made from exploiting our coal resources to their fullest extent. Any cautionary sentiments seem to be along the lines of making sure we don’t move too slowly and miss out on the bonanza.

What unites these two seemingly unrelated pieces of news? The need to give full weight to the enormous threat of climate change. In the one case it lends strong support to a new venture. In the other it warns that the days of coal mining must be considered near an end. At least that’s the logic of the situation we’re in. But apart from the Greens there’s hardly a politician in the country who seems willing to say just that. They seem to be overcome with a collective embarrassment at the thought of expressing deep concern at the prospect of climate change, let alone applying that concern to the coal industry. The embarrassment that appears to inhibit them is dwarfed by the embarrassment of watching them virtually ignore a matter of such consequence for the human future.

[Eliza Carthy]

A hard road

The jury may have found the climate protestors at Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal power station guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass, but the judge in his sentencing yesterday clearly showed a good deal of sympathy with the offenders. The 18 activists received sentences ranging from 18 months conditional discharge to 90 hours unpaid work. Two of them received modest fines. Judge Jonathan Teare conceded the public may consider his sentencing “impossibly lenient”. But he said he had been put in a highly unique position given the moral standing of the campaigners.

“You are all decent men and women with a genuine concern for others, and in particular for the survival of planet Earth in something resembling its present form.

“I have no doubt that each of you acted with the highest possible motives. And that is an extremely important consideration.

“There is not one of you who cannot provide glowing references from peers or professionals. And if I select some of the adjectives that recur throughout they are these: honest, sincere, conscientious, intelligent, committed, dedicated, caring.”

Continue reading “A hard road”

Warm oceans killing coral

This has not only been a bad year for the Amazon rainforest, it has also been a year in which coral reefs, the rainforests of the ocean as they are sometimes called, have suffered severe bleaching because of raised ocean temperatures. Not a matter likely to strike the public consciousness. A recent Yale University survey found 75 percent of Americans have not heard of coral bleaching. But the reefs are one of the world’s great ecosystems and they matter enormously.

Mark Eakin, who coordinates the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch and is frequently quoted in reports on this year’s bleaching events, explains that coral bleaching happens when ocean temperatures get too warm and stay warm for too long, and the relationship between the coral and the algae gets stressed. This thermal stress to corals, he said, is the highest it’s been since 1998, when 15% of the world’s coral reefs died.

 

“When you have high temperatures, in conjunction with normal high light conditions, the photosynthetic apparatus in the algae starts to poison the coral. They’ll spit them out into the water. When they do this, they lose their colour, look white, which is why they’re called bleached. If that persists for a long time, it can cause the corals to die.”

In July an article in the Telegraph on the coral bleaching events becoming apparent quoted Eakin:

“The bleaching is very strong throughout south east Asia and the central Indian Ocean. The reports are that it is the worst since 1997/1998. This is a really huge event and we are going to see a lot of corals dying.”

Indonesian reefs were badly affected. Some detail is provided in a report from the International Coral Reef Initiative which indicated the extent and severity of bleaching in different areas, and commented on the high rate of coral mortality following the bleaching.

In September Pierre Fidenci, president of Endangered Species International, wrote in a Mongabay article of severe wide-scale bleaching in the Philippines. The bleaching has been observed at many sites around the Philippines featuring mass mortality of corals including the coral triangle outside the Philippines. He considers this environmental catastrophe will probably be considered the most damaging bleaching event ever recorded in the Philippines, surpassing the big one of 1998.

“Prior to this year’s bleaching, it was estimated that about 85 percent of the reefs have been damaged or destroyed in the Philippines, now the current estimate is likely to be close to 95 percent.”

The Telegraph article noted scientists in Thailand have reported reefs suffering 90% of their corals being bleached and up to 20% of the corals dead. Olivia Durkin, who is leading the bleaching monitoring at the Centre for Biodiversity in Peninsular Thailand, said: “This year’s severe coral bleaching has the potential to be the worst on record.”

In June The Maldives reported the most serious incidence of coral bleaching since the major 1998 El Niño-event that destroyed most of the country’s shallow reef coral. Since then there has been gradual reef recovery but the 2010 event will be at least a major setback.

Eakin warned in September that this year had the potential to be also one of the worst bleaching seasons for some reefs in the Caribbean. It follows hard on the heels of the 2005 bleaching which caused record losses to Caribbean reefs, according to a collaborative study published a couple of weeks ago.  More than 80 percent of surveyed corals bleached and over 40 percent of the total surveyed died as a result of the 2005 event. It will be a while before the effects of this year’s bleaching can be measured, but it is already apparent that in some locations this year’s event is worse than the event in 2005. Not only are temperatures causing further damage to reefs hit hard during the 2005 event, but new locations have also been impacted.

Eakin’s comment on the release of the study of the 2005 impacts:

“This severe, widespread bleaching and mortality will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for reef ecosystems, and events like this are likely to become more common as the climate warms.”

Bleaching is a consequence of a warming ocean, but it’s not the only adverse effect of global warming on corals. The other major impact is from the increase in ocean acidification as carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise. The double whammy is very clearly explained by Australian scientist and coral reef expert John Veron in his 2009 lecture to the Royal Society. I summarised his content in this post last year, and suggest any readers who’d like a longer explanation of what bleaching and acidification mean for the future of coral reefs take a look at it. The link to the video of the lecture provided in the post is outdated, but this link will get you there if you want to hear him in person. He is sombre about the outlook for coral reefs if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, and nothing that has happened this year suggests he is getting it wrong.

Polar warming, Amazon drought, coral reefs bleaching and dying: I’ve gathered material for posts on all three of them within the past week. They are all sending out danger signals. They all threaten massive effects which cannot but have drastic consequences for humanity if they continue. And they’re only part of what threatens from climate change. They ought to have us scurrying to do what we are still able to do to prevent them developing further. The Cancún conference should be charged with a sense of high urgency.

I found myself applauding our Prime Minister when he said on Sunday that nothing less than the future of underground coal mining in New Zealand rests on the investigation into the Pike River tragedy. “We can’t put people into mines that are dangerous.” I also found myself wondering how that sentiment would go down with some of our economic interests. I thought John Key was absolutely right, and I presume in saying it he was not unaware of the economic implications. I guess I needn’t spell out the obvious parallel with the dangers from climate change and the perspective they put on the protests that economic interests mustn’t be harmed by climate change measures.

Johann Hari, in the eloquent article Gareth has already drawn attention to, wrote, “At Cancún, the real question will be carefully ignored by delegates keen to preserve big business as usual.”  It’s the wrong choice, Hari points out. But as he also says it’s not too late to change.

World leaders pretend

Apparently the American Geophysical Union’s readiness to speak out on climate change which I reported in a recent post was not as the LA Times portrayed it.  Joseph Romm has written of his disappointment that the AGU is constrained by a determination to veer away from anything that could be construed as advocacy. They state that the email exchange forum they have set up for journalists is designed to answer questions about the current state of scientific knowledge, with a special emphasis on the physical sciences that relate to climate change. Non-science questions such as those relating to policy, ethics, or economics will be returned to sender for refinement.

One example they provide is the question, “Is current U.S. infrastructure adequate for sea level rise?”  Such a question will be returned to sender on the grounds that judgments of adequacy involve tradeoffs in risk and in policy. The scientists will only answer the question if it is changed to “What amount of sea level rise might occur this century?”

It’s a stark contrast with climatologist  James Hansen, who recently delivered an open lecture in Japan on the occasion of his being awarded the prestigious Blue Planet Prize. The text and powerpoint charts can be accessed on his website. He doesn’t hold back. Here are the opening words:

 

“Human-made climate change is a moral issue. It pits the rich and the powerful against the young and the unborn, against the defenseless and against nature.

“Climate change is a political issue. But politics fails when there is a revolving door between government and the fossil fuel-industrial complex.

“Climate change is a legal issue. The judiciary provides the possibility of holding our governments accountable for their duty to protect the public interest.”

The accompanying slide has a footnote that statements relating to policy are personal opinion.

Of course Hansen then proceeds with the science of climate change, explaining the current position with his usual clarity.

“It is difficult for the public to recognize that we have a crisis, because human-made global warming, so far, is small compared to day-to-day weather fluctuations. Yet the fact is: we have an emergency. Because of the great inertia of the ocean, which is four kilometers deep, and the ice sheets, which are two to three kilometers thick, the climate system responds slowly to climate forcings such as increasing greenhouse gases. But this inertia is not our friend, because it increases the danger that we may pass tipping points, beyond which the dynamics of the climate system takes over and rapid changes occur out of humanity’s control.”

He offers three examples of tipping points. The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, especially the West Antarctic ice sheet, are one. If an ice sheet is weakened to the point that it begins to collapse then the dynamics of the process take over. Another non-linear problem is the extermination of species which can accelerate because of the interdependencies among species. A third is methane hydrates, essentially frozen methane. If they begin to disintegrate the process could become self-sustaining. He notes these tipping points have all occurred during Earth’s history in conjunction with warming climates.

At this point in his lecture he again crosses into the kind of territory that the AGU eschews for its scientists.

“Climate inertia and tipping points give rise to potential intergenerational injustice. Today’s adults enjoy the benefits of fossil fuel use, but the impacts will be borne by young people and future generations. Our parents did not know that their actions would affect future generations. We do not have that excuse. We can only feign ignorance. It is called denial.”

There was a lengthy period following Hansen’s testifying to Congress in the 1980s during which he decided to concentrate on research and leave public communication to others. He tells how  it was the arrival of his grandchildren combined with the growing gap between what was understood of the science and what was known by the public that brought him back to public communication. In 2004 he gave a carefully prepared public talk titled “Dangerous anthropogenic interference: a discussion of humanity’s Faustian climate bargain and the payments coming due”.

His public lecture in Japan is the latest example of his readiness to couple the communication of the science with clear assessment of the risk and with concrete recommendations as to how that risk may yet be avoided.  As his lecture proceeds he explains the basis of our current scientific understanding. It depends most of all on Earth’s paleoclimate history, then on ongoing global observations showing how climate is responding to rapid changes of atmospheric composition, and finally on climate models and theory which are helpful in interpreting what is happening and needed to predict future changes. There’s a pile of interesting material which follows which I won’t try to summarise here, save to say that he points out that the human-caused rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is occurring at a rate 10,000 times faster than the natural geologic change of the Cenozoic era of the past 65 million years. He also explains his assessment that a level of no more than 350ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide is required if we wish to preserve the planet on which civilisation developed.

He’s not backward in spelling out policy implications. We must halt all coal emissions in 20 years, not develop tar sands, oil shale or methane hydrates, and not pursue the last drops of oil in polar regions, deep sea drilling or pristine land. “In other words, we must move on to the clean energy future now, rather than using all the remaining fossil fuels.”

There’s as yet no sign of our doing so:

“But what is really happening? The United States has signed an agreement with Canada for a pipeline to carry tar sands oil to Texas. New coal plants are being built all around the world, some being financed by the World Bank. Environmentally destructive mountaintop removal continues. Oil is pursued in pristine places. The environmentally destructive practice of shale fracturing is being developed and implemented to find the last bits of gas.

“There is a huge gap between government rhetoric and policy reality. Leaders say that we have a ‘planet in peril’, yet their proposed policies barely differ from business-as-usual. Greenwash is plentiful, but the leaders follow a path of appeasement of fossil fuel special interests. There is no Winston Churchill willing to stand up and tell the truth about what is needed.”

Hansen then moves to his policy prescriptions which include a rising price on carbon, government regulation, and technology development driven by the certainty of the carbon price. He is not diffident in offering them, but his audience would have no difficulty recognising when he has moved from presentation of the science to advocacy of a particular response.

The notion that a scientist’s responsibility ends where a politician’s begins is simplistic. Politicians often enough show little sign of fully appreciating the reality of the science, and even if they do they appear to have an endless capacity to shy away from appropriate action. Are scientists like Hansen supposed to stay in their sanctums and be satisfied with issuing bulletins on the state of the science? And when they see the mayhem created by industry denial and media confusion and political timidity are they supposed to just shrug their shoulders and get on with their research? Even though they know what that research indicates for the human future if we carry on as usual?

Hansen’s record makes it quite clear that advocacy doesn’t mean compromising research. His scientific work continues and wins respect in its own right. Joe Romm has  reason to be disappointed that the AGU has put such stringent limits on its scientists’ communication with journalists.

[REM]

Prepare for business as unusual

Here’s something thought provoking for a Friday: The ultimate roller coaster ride: a brief history of fossil fuels, a five minute encapsulation of humanity’s flirtation with coal and rock oil. Narrated by Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute, animated by Monstro Design. Worth five minutes of your day.