So far, my call is right on track: “I predict U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007!”
Year-to-date, coal-fired plants contributed 46.1 percent of the Nation’s electric power.
In fact, Ken Bossong of the SUN DAY Campaign notes that in April, wind, solar, hydro, biomass and other clean energy sources that never run out hit 13% of total electrical ouput.
Coal on the slide as renewables top 11 per cent of US power mix
The renewable energy revolution under way in the US appears to be gathering pace according to new figures from the Energy Information Administration suggesting that zero carbon energy sources are successfully replacing fossil fuel-based forms of energy production.
According to the Administration’s July Electric Power Monthly report, green energy generation accounted for 11.1 per cent of total electricity production in the country between April 2008 and 2009.
Input from hydroelectric sources rose 18.4 per cent to make up seven per cent of the total, while other renewables such as solar, wind, biomass and geothermal sources now account for 4.1 per cent. Wind power was the biggest success story in the renewables sector with net generation increasing by over a third.
And the stimulus boost to renewables has barely begun (see “EIA projects wind at 5% of U.S. electricity in 2012, all renewables at 14%, thanks to Obama stimulus! Now can we get a stronger renewable standard?“ Plus, more states are taking action every day: “Last week, for example, Kansas and West Virginia both adopted legislation for the first time that mandates the use of renewable energy.
Fish ‘shrinking due to global warming’
FISH have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study has found.
“It’s huge,” said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France.
“Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity – the capacity to reproduce.”
Smaller fish tend to produce fewer eggs. They also provide less sustenance for predators – including humans – which could have significant implications for the food chain and ecosystem.
“¦They found the individual species lost an average of 50 per cent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 per cent.
HOT ISSUE: Should we deliberately move species?
On naked patches of land in western Canada and United States, scientists are planting trees that don’t belong there. It’s a bold experiment to move trees threatened by global warming into places where they may thrive amid a changing climate.
Take the Western larch with its thick grooved bark and green needles. It grows in the valleys and lower mountain slopes in British Columbia’s southern interior. Canadian foresters are testing how its seeds will fare when planted farther north “” just below the Arctic Circle.
Something similar will be tried in the Lower 48. Researchers will uproot moisture-loving Sitka spruce and Western redcedar that grace British Columbia’s coastal rainforests and drop their seedlings in the dry ponderosa pine forests of Idaho.
All of this swapping begs the question: Should humans lend nature a helping hand?
Americans should pay for carbon costs of imports — Locke
During his trip to China, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told a business leaders [sic] that the United States should pay for the carbon content of goods it imports.
“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Locke said today in remarks at the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
Locke met this week with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo and other officials to discuss how the countries could jointly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. During those meetings, Locke said officials raised concerns about the “carbon tariff” measures included in the House of Representative’s recent climate bill.
State RPS mandates are falling short of targets — analysis
State mandates intended to drive renewable power growth have seen mixed results, according to an analysis by the financial firm SNL Energy.
SNL looked at the 28 states with renewable portfolio standards and found that such mandates, which direct utilities to build renewable energy, have generated 5.3 percent renewable power, on average, in those states. That is 28 percent below the 7.3 percent target in the 2010 to 2012 time frame, the firm said.
Of that power, wind generation makes up 67 percent of the total, with hydroelectric at 17 percent and other types (including biomass and solar) netting 15 percent.
Five states — Iowa, Missouri, New Hampshire, Texas and Washington — are on track to comply with their targets by 2015. Most other states, the study found, “are well short of targets.”
Carbon market trading rose 61% last year: study
Trading in global carbon markets rose 61% last year, and European carbon trading during the first half of 2009 exceeded all of the activity during 2008, according to a report published Monday.
International Financial Services, London, or IFSL, said global markets trading in carbon dioxide emissions last year rose 61% from 2007 to 4.81 billion metric tons, as opposed to 71% growth between 2006 and 2007. And trading in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System rose to 3.2 billion tons during the first six months of the year, above the 2.7 billion tons traded during all of 2008, the group said.
The 2008 growth came as the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Japan plan their so-called “cap-and-trade” systems. There already are regional carbon trading systems in the U.S., but whether to adopt cap and trade broadly has touched off much controversy in Washington.
Meeting Shows U.S.-India Split on Emissions
It was supposed to be a showcase for how the United States and India can find common cause in fighting climate change: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured an innovative, energy-efficient office building on Sunday in this city on the outskirts of New Delhi.
But simmering grievances about how countries should share the burden of cutting greenhouse gases abruptly changed the mood. No sooner had Mrs. Clinton marveled at the building’s environmentally friendly features “” like windows that flood rooms with light but keep out heat “” than her hosts vented frustration at American pressure on India to cut its emissions.
Box Stores Target Lighting Inefficiencies
American retailers looking to save energy are aiming high “” just below the roof rafters. That’s where a small revolution is underway to replace 70-year-old magnetic-ballast lighting technology with efficient electronic circuitry. By using electronic ballasts “” the transformers that regulate the current and voltage needed to operate the lamps “” and a software-based energy management system, Wal-Mart, Publix and other retailers say they can typically cut a store’s lighting costs in half.
Largest Green-Power Program Stumbles
The nation’s largest green-power program has seen enrollment fall far short of expectations as its wind power prices have soared.
Austin Energy, which offers homeowners and businesses the chance to power their homes with renewable energy (mainly wind) through its GreenChoice program, has signed up only 1 percent of its hoped-for customers for its latest wind power offering, according to The Austin American Statesman.
Buying wind power now costs substantially more than conventional power (which has recently fallen in price as natural gas prices have plunged), and Austin Energy may be forced to spread the cost among all of its customers, according to the paper.
BP exits jatropha biofuel project to focus on ethanol
BP Plc, Europe’s second-largest oil company, will exit its jatropha biofuel project with D1 Oils Plc to focus on production of ethanol in Brazil and the U.S. and advance biobutanol development.
“To ensure the success of these investments, BP is concentrating new business development in these areas and will no longer be directly involved in the jatropha as a biofuel feedstock,” Sheila Williams, a London-based company spokeswoman, said today in an e-mail.
“¦The partners had planned to plant 1 million hectares of jatropha over four years, of which 220,000 hectares had been planted by April.
BP Alternative Energy has earmarked $8 billion for project investment in the decade through 2015. BP, which expects biofuels to account for 11 percent to 19 percent of the world’s transport-fuel market by 2030, supplied about 10 percent of global biofuels last year, according to company estimates.
Biofuels ‘done right’ can curb greenhouse gas emissions and provide other benefits
Biofuels derived from renewable sources can be produced in large quantities and address many problems related to fossil fuels, including greenhouse gas emissions, but only if they are made from certain sources, according to a new article by a team of scientists and policy experts that included several Princeton researchers.
“The world needs to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but recent research findings have thrown the emerging biofuels industry into a quandary,” said David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, a noted ecologist and lead author of the paper. “We met to seek solutions. We found that the next generation of biofuels can be highly beneficial if produced properly.”
New Geothermal Heat Extraction Process To Deliver Clean Power Generation
A new method for capturing significantly more heat from low-temperature geothermal resources holds promise for generating virtually pollution-free electrical energy. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will determine if their innovative approach can safely and economically extract and convert heat from vast untapped geothermal resources.
The goal is to enable power generation from low-temperature geothermal resources at an economical cost. In addition to being a clean energy source without any greenhouse gas emissions, geothermal is also a steady and dependable source of power.
TVA gives ‘high’ hazard rating to 4 ash disposal sites
The Tennessee Valley Authority informed federal officials yesterday that four of its coal ash impoundments could cause fatalities and serious environmental damage if they rupture.
In a letter to U.S. EPA, TVA officials said that an assessment of wet storage coal combustion impoundments at 12 utility plant sites revealed that four present a “high” hazard potential, meaning that a containment failure would likely result in loss of human life and severe damage to the nearby environment.
Anda Ray, senior vice president of TVA’s Office of Environment and Research, wrote that the reclassification is based on recommendations made by Stantec Consulting Services Inc., an independent engineering firm that was contracted to evaluate the integrity of the utility’s facilities after an impoundment at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tenn., ruptured in December 2008, spilling 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash.
Mountaintop Mining Legacy: Destroying Appalachian Streams [report]
“¦When mountains are demolished with explosives to harvest their coal seams, the millions of tons of crushed shale, sandstone, and coal detritus have to go somewhere, and the most convenient spots are nearby valleys. Mining operations clear-cut the hillsides and literally “fill” mountain hollows to the brim “” and sometimes higher “” with rocky debris. At the mouth of the hollow, the outer edge of the fill is typically engineered into a towering wall resembling a dam.
“¦ Of all the environmental problems caused by mountaintop projects “” decapitated peaks, deforestation, the significant carbon footprint “” scientists have found that valley fills do the most damage because they destroy headwater streams and surrounding forests, which are crucial to the workings of mountain ecosystems.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
May be of note….
Higher tides affecting East Coast, especially mid-Atlantic
Scientists are closely watching unusually high tides along the entire East Coast, especially in mid-Atlantic states including Virginia, where average daily levels are running between 6 inches and 2 feet above predicted norms.
“This is a little taste of the future,” he said. “It basically exposes our vulnerabilities to high water.”
Atkinson said people who live or work away from local creeks and rivers might not notice the change. But “ship captains can tell, and the insurance companies know what is going on,” he said.
Scientists do not think the unusually high tides are due to sea level rise because, as Szabados explained, “these have happened suddenly, not slowly over time.”
Useful data and concept…buy a virtual bag today rather than a real one tomorrow…
http://sandbag.org.uk/new_map
http://sandbag.org.uk/carbondata/data
“Should we deliberately move species?”
NO.
A 1.9% reduction in coal-burning from the level of a few years ago is encouraging, but it’s pretty obvious that this is the result of the depressed state of the economy and not any fundamental shift away from coal in the long-term. Let’s not make the same mistake that climate change advocates are always condemning the deniers for, which is “cherry-picking” a piece of short-term data out of the statistics and focusing on that as if it were a long-term trend.
NO! so-called “farming” is nothing but a reprehensible handout to greedy, tasty animals and plants. homo sapiens was built to scavenge and scrounge — every generation we ignore our noble hunter-gatherer duty is another generation sliding down the greased pole of moral turpentine. let the freerider “crops” make their living in the food cycle wilderness IF THEY CAN.
BTW in 2006 peter schwartz (in a debate about fission power) predicted that by the time we go as far forward from now as we’ve come from the start of farming, we’d be flying (and gardening) spaceship earth with beauty and skill.
(wow almost 100,000 comments!)
I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from planting trees, especially as opposed to, say, ripping through a forest in a quad, but this idea – which is similar to plans I have read about to move other species, such as butterflies, proposed by scientists – seems completely unscientific and is baffling to me.
The underlying premise assumes that species will accept assisted migration to higher elevations or northern latitudes, based on a linear rise in temperature (itself pure conjecture and most likely specious), and completely ignores the influence of all the other components of the environment, such as moisture, soil composition, extreme weather, and most essentially the interwoven web of an ecosystem.
There are complex relationships that have developed over long periods of time between species – mushrooms and trees, birds disseminating fruit and nuts and seeds, the understory plants of forests and their need for the proscribed amount of light filtered by the leaves. It goes on and on and I am smart enough to know that I don’t really know a thing about it, other than it is incredibly complicated and virtually IMPOSSIBLE to replicate artificially.
So if I know that, how come trained, educated scientists propose such ridiculous solutions to extinction?
Maybe because they’re also human, and can’t bear to surrender to the objective truth.
Lobster size is being effectively controlled by only allowing one to two foot long ones as keepers; bigger ones are to be thrown back.
JoeR,
You aren’t getting comments so much on the daily wrap-ups, which might mean readership is low, relative to your more specific posts.
I really think it would be more informative if you put up the headlines all together, eliminating content unless clicked on, so people can see right off the bat which topic they wish to pursue. Otherwise it’s tempting to ignore the whole rundown, rather than take the time to scroll past and see what might be included.
Just sayin!
Nay, David B Benson.
I don’t claim expertise to much, other than lobsters.
When the Europeans first arrived in America the beaches were crawling with them. They were considered such trash food that our hallowed forefathers passed a law that indentured servants could only be fed lobster a few specified days/per week.
Lobsters are not wild, anymore, they are farmed. Lobstermen throw out feed, and cultivate the population.
Eat and enjoy!
Funny, a week or two ago I saw a very, very similar statement regarding salmon in Sweden. Makes me think it’s getting into “urban myth” territory — at least the part about a law being passed regarding feeding indentured servants.
C’mon Doug, close enough:
http://octopus.gma.org/lobsters/allaboutlobsters/lobsterhistory.html
not that hard to google it!
The study about fishes is here (summary) : http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/07/17/0902080106.abstract :
Understanding the ecological impacts of climate change is a crucial challenge of the twenty-first century. There is a clear lack of general rules regarding the impacts of global warming on biota. Here, we present a metaanalysis of the effect of climate change on body size of ectothermic aquatic organisms (bacteria, phyto- and zooplankton, and fish) from the community to the individual level. Using long-term surveys, experimental data and published results, we show a significant increase in the proportion of small-sized species and young age classes and a decrease in size-at-age. These results are in accordance with the ecological rules dealing with the temperature–size relationships (i.e., Bergmann’s rule, James’ rule and Temperature–Size Rule). Our study provides evidence that reduced body size is the third universal ecological response to global warming in aquatic systems besides the shift of species ranges toward higher altitudes and latitudes and the seasonal shifts in life cycle events.