Energy and Global Warming News for August 13th: “Historical estimates suggest that global warming could boost the number of hurricanes” — Nature

The Nature news story (subs. req’d) whose subhead I quoted above:

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and the study’s lead author, says that the results suggest that the annual number of hurricanes will continue to increase as a result of global warming….

Mann says that if sea surface temperatures continue to rise as a result of global warming, the world can expect to see more hurricanes….

Chris Landsea, a hurricane researcher at the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida, says that other research has shown that 3 or 4 hurricanes were missed in annual counts from the late nineteenth century. This would “nullify” the peak in activity seen over the past ten years, he says.

But Mann says that the statistical model used in his study takes into account the possibility that historical hurricane counts could have been inaccurate, yet the results still show a peak in activity over the past decade.

Here is the study itself:  “Atlantic hurricanes and climate over the past 1,500 years” (subs. req’d).

For a key 2008 study, see “Nature: Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer “” and it’s going to get much worse.  As Nature explained last year:

“¦ scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide.

That study means we face four more potential city-destroying super-hurricanes per year by mid-century.

Here is the NYT spin in this study and another one:

An ‘Increase’ in Big Storms May Just Be Better Detection

Since the mid-1990s, hurricanes and tropical storms have struck the Atlantic Ocean with unusual frequency “” or have they? Two new studies suggest that the situation may not be so clear.

One, by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that the high number of storms reported these days may reflect improved observation and analysis techniques, not a meteorological change for the worse. The second, by researchers at Pennsylvania State University and elsewhere, suggests that there were as many storms a thousand years ago, when Atlantic Ocean waters were unusually warm, as today….

And if today’s ocean warming creates the conditions that prevailed a thousand years ago, Dr. Mann said in a statement, “it may not be just that the storms are stronger, but that there may be more of them as well.”

Why ‘clunkers’ program won’t take some of the most polluting cars

Nearly 5 million of the nation’s most polluting vehicles were quietly excluded from the popular “cash for clunkers” program after lobbyists for antique auto parts suppliers and car collectors persuaded the government to shut out cars built before 1984.

The restriction has prevented consumers nationwide who own older cars and trucks from cashing in on the $3-billion federal program even though many don’t consider their jalopies to be collectors’ items.

When the federal government announced the rebates of up to $4,500, Chris Hurst said, it looked like the perfect time to unload his gas-guzzling 1981 Ford F-150 pickup. Hurst, who lives in the Sierra foothills north of Fresno, was surprised to discover his truck was too old to qualify.

Mich. lawmakers want to tweak ‘clunkers’ rules

Two Michigan Republicans are asking the Obama administration to rewrite the rules to allow “cash for clunkers” vouchers to be used toward the purchase of cars and trucks not yet on dealer lots.

Reps. Fred Upton and Candice Miller contend the recent car-buying binge created by the scrappage program has left many popular trade-in candidates scarce. “[T]he inventories of some automakers and dealers have been so depleted that the program’s extension may be limited in its effectiveness,” they wrote Monday in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Price drop could be sharpest in 50 years

Slumping demand for electricity has led to one of the steepest declines in power prices in recent years, offering at least a temporary respite for businesses and consumers who just over a year ago faced massive energy bills.

The nation’s largest wholesale power market is expected to announce this week that electricity demand fell 4.4 percent in the first half of the year, a trend that has helped depress spot market prices — those reflecting one-time open market transactions for near-term use — by 40 percent over the same period.

Wholesale electricity — power purchased in bulk by utilities and large businesses — cost an average of $40 a megawatt-hour in the region, down from $66.40 a year ago. Those declines come on top of a 2.7 percent decline in energy use between 2007 and 2008.

Airlines will be first U.S. industry to confront cap and trade

The first U.S. industry to face a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions is not, as may be expected, the coal-burning power utilities. It’s not the oil refineries, churning through crude. It’s not the automakers, manufacturing again.

It’s the airline industry.

Sometime this month, the European Union will release a list of airlines it will regulate under its existing cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide. Beginning in 2012, all international flights landing in the region must abide by the regulations. And several airlines on that list will have a decidedly New World feel: Delta, United and American.

They are not alone. A preliminary version of the list released earlier this year included more than 700 airlines registered in the United States, out of some 2,800 airlines total. While this number is expected to dwindle — weaning out small-scale operations — all large U.S. carriers flying into Europe expect to be on the finalized list.

Will ‘Energy Crops’ Become the Next Kudzu?

U.S. policies are subsidizing new energy crops that are likely to spread off the farm and wreak economic and ecological havoc, a federal advisory board cautioned yesterday.

For years, researchers have worked to develop “advanced” biofuel feeds from unconventional crops such as grasses and algae.

The goal is to enable a switch away from corn- and soy-based biofuel to cellulosic energy crops that don’t compete on the food or feed market and have a smaller carbon footprint. A 2007 energy law, in fact, requires a total of 160 billion gallons of the plant-based cellulosic fuels by 2022 that these crops would produce.

How Green Is Rail Travel?

Eurostar, the high-speed train service that connects London with Paris and Brussels, advertises a tenfold reduction in each traveler’s carbon footprint by comparison with an airplane trip over similar distances.

In Britain, government officials have described the investment of billions of pounds in a new high-speed rail network as a green initiative. The Obama administration has budgeted billions of dollars to build similar networks in the United States, partly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But do all forms of train travel really offer such dramatic gains?

According to a study by Mikhail V Chester and Arpad Horvath of University of California, Berkeley, some train systems should be seen as nearly on a par with travel in large aircraft in terms of greenhouse gases emitted for each mile a passenger travels. Both air and train also produce fewer emissions for each mile of passenger travel than cars or buses (although, of course, planes generally go much farther than trains, buses or cars, so their overall emissions will be higher).

Wave Power Setbacks in California

Stroll through San Francisco and you can’t miss Pacific Gas & Electric’s latest ad campaign. Posters plastered around town read: “Wave Power: Bad for sandcastles. Good for you.”

But P.G.& E. recently dropped one of its two 40-megawatt wave-farm projects planned for the Northern California coast, according to documents filed with the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission.

“During the past year, P.G.& E. undertook agency consultation and public outreach and commenced an examination of the technical and environmental feasibility of the proposed project,” Annette Faraglia, an attorney for the utility, wrote in a June 9 letter to the commission. “Based on the results of this examination, P.G.& E. has concluded that the harbor at Fort Bragg, Noyo Harbor, is not suitable for certain aspects of the project.”

Turning Algae Into Oil, with Help from Fish

There are two big problems associated with extracting liquid fuel from algae: getting the algae out of the water, and then getting the oil out of the algae. The pumps and centrifuges required to do this consume a lot of energy.

A California company, LiveFuels, is trying out a new, less energy-intensive approach: It is feeding the algae to small fish “” and letting them do the job of harvesting.

After the fish fatten up, workers catch them in nets and process them for oil (as well as protein for animal feed). This is a bit like gathering whale oil, but the fish are closer in size to minnows. The resulting oil is a lot like the Omega 3 oil packaged into capsules and sold in supermarkets as a diet supplement. But it can be used to run cars and trucks, according to the company.

Rainforest Nations hopeful over Copenhagen deal

The stand-off over emission reduction targets may remain stuck in deadlock, but UN climate change talks in Bonn this week are delivering progress towards a deal on how best to halt tropical deforestation.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Federica Bietta, deputy director of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), said that talks to condense the 20 pages of draft negotiating text that cover the so-called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) programme were proceeding well.

Austin Davis put these press clips together.