"Stern now believes he should have been more ‘blunt’ about threat to economies from temperature rises" -- UK Guardian

Another day, another climate expert explains the deadly combination of inaction and faster-than-expected impacts.

This time the man ringing the bell is Lord Nicholas Stern, the author of the famous Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. The UK Guardian reports:

Stern … said: “Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.”

The Stern review, published in 2006, pointed to a 75% chance that global temperatures would rise by between two and three degrees above the long-term average; he now believes we are “on track for something like four “. Had he known the way the situation would evolve, he says, “I think I would have been a bit more blunt. I would have been much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise.”

That would be 4° to 5°C aka 7° to 9°F aka the end of civilization as we know it (see World Bank Climate Report: ‘A 4°C [7°F] World Can, And Must, Be Avoided’ To Avert ‘Devastating’ Impacts). Stern continues:

“This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for many people are existential.”

Stern was not alone in raising concerns at the World Economic Forum:

Stern’s comments came as Jim Yong Kim, the new president of the World Bank, also at Davos, gave a grave warning about the risk of conflicts over natural resources should the forecast of a four-degree global increase above the historical average prove accurate.

“There will be water and food fights everywhere,” Kim said as he pledged to make tackling climate change a priority of his five-year term.

The time to act was a long time ago but now is infinitely, existentially better than later.

Related Post:

• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

A rechargeable lithium-ion battery, in BMW’s Mini E electric car. (Photo: Reuters)

Lithium-ion batteries are an extremely common form of rechargeable battery often found in consumer electronics such as laptops and cell-phones. At those smaller scales the batteries’ technology is reliable and well-understood, but at larger sizes there have been challenges.

The electrolyte component in the batteries is typically liquid and quite flammable, and the batteries as a whole are prone to shorts, overheating and catching fire. Boeing’s new Dreamliner 787 fleet was recently grounded worldwide after two separate incidents in which the on-board lithium-ion battery, which supplies the planes with auxiliary and back-up power, caught fire.

Improvements in larger lithium-ion batteries would be a big step forward for technologies such as electric cars or electrical grids, and thus for sustainable transportation and energy. To that end, a group of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have just published preliminary work on a new form of battery that relies on a solid electrolyte. According to a piece in today’s Climate Wire, as well as a recent report in Technology Review, the new batteries promise to be lighter, safer, and able to store five to ten times more energy than the batteries on Boeing’s 787:

The ORNL researchers, in work published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemistry Society, have an easy method for making a nanostructured form of one solid electrolyte. The nanostructure improves the material’s conductivity 1,000 times, enough to make it useful in lithium-ion batteries. The researchers also showed that the new material is compatible with high-energy electrodes.

The solid electrolyte isn’t as conductive as liquid electrolytes, but the researchers say they can compensate for this by making the electrolyte very thin, among other measures. Even then, the batteries might not charge as quickly or provide the same boost of power possible with liquid electrolytes, but this would be okay in many applications, such as in electric cars, where the sheer number of battery cells makes it easy to deliver adequate bursts of power.

The solid electrolyte not only makes batteries safer, it could also enable the use of higher energy electrode materials. As a result, while the rate at which these batteries deliver power may be less than today’s lithium-ion batteries, the total amount of energy they can store would be far higher. A much smaller battery could then be used—saving space and weight on airplanes and greatly reducing the cost of electric vehicles.

The team restructured the solid electrolyte to be porous at the nanoscale, which yielded the far higher level of conductivity. The solid electrolyte also helps prevent shorts, and unlike the liquid counterparts won’t degrade electrodes. That’s particularly important for building better lithium-sulfur batteries, which can store tremendous amounts of energy but have safety problems and o far haven’t been able to recharge enough times to make them useful for something like an electric car.

The ORNL team’s work is still in the embryonic stage: The tests have only been carried out with cells about the size of a coin, and the research into compatibility with lithium-sulfur batteries specifically remains unpublished.

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

In April of 2012, 49 former NASA employees sent a letter to the current NASA administrator requesting that he effectively muzzle the climate scientists at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). None of those former NASA employees have conducted any climate science research, but based on their own lack of understanding of the subject, they objected to the conclusions drawn by the climate experts at NASA GISS. This letter drew media attention because folks who have worked at NASA are well-respected (and rightly so), but there was really no substance to it, or any particular reason to lend it credence. Astronauts and engineers are not climate experts.

Now in January of 2013, a group of 20 “Apollo era NASA retirees” has put together a rudimentary climate “report” and issued a press release declaring that they have decided human-caused global warming is not “settled” and is nothing to worry about. This time around they have not listed the 20 individuals who contributed to this project, but have simply described the group as being:

“…comprised of renowned space scientists with formal educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of these scientists have Ph.Ds.”

The project seems to be headed by H. Leighton Steward, a 77-year-old former oil and gas executive. The press release also links the NASA group to his website, “co2isgreen”, which also has an extensive history of receiving fossil fuel industry funding.

This story can be summed up very simply: a group of retired NASA scientists with no climate science research experience listened to a few climate scientists and a few fossil fuel-funded contrarian scientists, read a few climate blogs, asked a few relatively simple questions, decided that those questions cannot be answered (though we will answer them in this post), put together a very rudimentary report, and now expect people to listen to them because they used to work at NASA. It’s purely an appeal to authority, except that the participants have no authority or expertise in climate science.

Answering the NASA Retirees’ Questions

Most of the group’s report is devoted to summarizing some basic aspects of climate science, such as the greenhouse effect. At the end it lists seven “conclusions”, most of which are questions they claim “are still to be resolved”, but in reality are generally simple to answer.

1) How really well known is the global temperature of the earth over the past century?

Quite really well known. The accuracy of the surface temperature record has been confirmed by many different studies using a variety of different approaches, including by natural thermometers and satellites. There is very little difference between the results of different groups analyzing the surface temperature data (Figure 1).

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Republican River at zero flow (via US Geological Survey)

Irony can be so ironic.

Last week, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R) approved a revised route for the Keystone XL pipeline through his state. The math is simple: “Keystone XL Pipeline = Tar Sands Expansion = Accelerated Climate Change.” And that equals a hotter and drier Great Plains, especially in the summer and fall.

So if Obama were to actually defy my prediction and approve the pipeline, then Nebraska would be giving new meaning to the phrase “red state” — since its current brutal drought would be on track to become its normal climate in the coming decades:

On January 3, 2012, none of the state was in extreme or exceptional drought (and less than 1% was in moderate or severe drought).  By January 2013, over 96% of the state was experiencing extreme or exceptional drought – and most of that (over 77%) was exceptional drought.

What happened? Just the hottest and driest year in Nebraska’s recorded history.

Here is a graph of more than a century’s worth of precipitation data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center:

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by Robert Stavins, via Harvard

In his inaugural address on January 21^st, President Obama surprised many people – including me – by the intensity and the length of his comments on global climate change.  Since then, there has been a great deal of discussion in the press and in the blogosphere about what climate policy initiatives will be forthcoming from the administration in its second term.

Given all the excitement, let’s first take a look at the transcript of what the President actually said on this topic:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.  The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition.  We must lead it.  We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries.  We must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure, our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow capped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.

Strong and plentiful words.  Although I was certainly surprised by the strength and length of what the President said in his address, I confess that it did not change my thinking about what we should expect from the second term.  Indeed, I will stand by an interview that was published by the Harvard Kennedy School on its website five days before the inauguration (plus something I wrote in a previous essay at this blog in December, 2012).  Here it is, with a bit of editing to clarify things, and some hyperlinks inserted to help readers.

The Second Term: Robert Stavins on Energy and Environmental Policy

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The towboat Nature's Way Endeavor banks a barge against the western bank of the Mississippi River. (Eli Baylis / Vicksburg Post / January 27, 2013)

There’s a new oil spill on the Mississippi River, after two oil barges collided with a bridge near Vicksburg, Mississippi early Sunday morning. [LA Times]

The barges, laden with crude oil, were being pulled by the tow boat Nature’s Way Endeavor when they hit the Vicksburg Railroad bridge and were damaged, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a release.

One of the barges began spewing oil into the river, officials said. It was unclear how much oil was spilled. The U.S. Coast Guard said the source of the spill, a leaking tank filled with 80,000 gallons of crude oil, had been “contained.”

The U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Vicksburg is in charge of the cleanup, and a stretch of the river was closed after the spill. A spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, Lt. Ryan Gomez, told the Associated Press that oil booms had been set up around the barges.

Brazil plans to launch a four-year census of trees in the Amazon to examine the impacts of deforestation, climate change, conservation efforts, and rain forest biodiversity. [The Guardian]

Britain launches a new long-term loan program to encourage homeowners to make their households more energy efficient and cut costs. [BBC News]

New technology and methods from AltaRock Energy, a Washington state-based company, could bring down the cost of constructing a geothermal plant by half. [Clean Technia]

The number of offshore wind turbines built in European is lagging behind targets by nearly 1,000 megawatts, or the equivalent of around 330 turbines, according to an industry report showed on Sunday. [Reuters]

Global investment in smart grid technologies climbed seven per cent last year to $13.9 billion, driven mainly by strong demand in the US and China. [BusinessGreen]