Monday, August 17, 2009

Fw: Climate Progress


Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Energy and Global Warming News for August 14th: US marines in Afghanistan launch first war-zone energy efficiency audit — to save lives

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 09:22 AM PDT

[JR:  I participated in a recent Defense Science Board study of the military's energy use -- and it became quite clear that wasteful use of energy in a war zone means more convoys of fuel trucks, perhaps the prime target for roadside bombs/attacks, which meant more American lives lost.]

http://cryptome.info/afpak-archive/afpak-fun-0b14.jpg

US marines in Afghanistan launch first energy efficiency audit in war zone

The US Marines Corps ordered the first ever energy audit in a war zone today to try to reduce the enormous fuel costs of keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent.

US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. That's a higher burn rate than during an initial invasion, and reflects the logistical challenges of running counter-insurgency and other operations in the extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan….

He said he was looking to his energy auditors to find ways of cutting back energy consumption at operating bases, and also to pare down the equipment carried by each individual marine. An average marine carries about 9lbs of disposable batteries in their kit to power equipment such as night vision goggles and radios.

One immediate target of the auditors is likely to be climate control. Some 448,000 gallons alone are used to keep tents cool in the Afghan summer, where temperatures reach well over 40C, and warm in the winter, said Michael Boyd, an energy adviser to the Marine Corps.

The marines have been exploring ways to reduce that consumption by spraying tents with a foam coating.

"That's a huge saving and you are no longer putting trucks on those roads, and tanker drivers in harm's way and everyone else involved on the way," Boyd said.

Scientists Warn Restoration-based Environmental Markets May Not Improve Ecosystem Health

While policymakers across of the globe are relying on environmental restoration projects to fuel emerging market-based environmental programs, an article in the July 31 edition of Science by two noted ecologists warns that these programs still lack the scientific certainty needed to ensure that restoration projects deliver the environmental improvements being marketed.

Markets identify the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, called ecosystem services, and associate them with economic values which can be bought, sold or traded. The scientists, Dr. Margaret Palmer and Dr. Solange Filoso of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, raise concerns that there is insufficient scientific understanding of the restoration process, namely, how to alter a landscape or coastal habitat to achieve the environmental benefits that are marketed.

Congress' approach to energy research: There's no place like home

Congress gave a lukewarm reception to Energy Secretary Steven Chu's plan to create eight "innovation hubs" focused on developing breakthrough technologies. Lawmakers responded far more warmly to requests to fund energy research in their own backyards.

Members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees who wrote legislation financing the Department of Energy and water projects tucked into those bills at least $75.2 million in earmarks for research at schools back home.

Obama Admin Breathes New Life Into Long-Delayed Great Lakes Restoration Program

Decades of languishing industrial pollution, combined with emerging threats like invasive species and a spike in a new chemical compounds known as endocrine disrupters, have rendered large sections of the Great Lakes inhospitable to both humans and wildlife.

Yet, years of accumulated knowledge on such problems has not translated into real solutions for the lakes, whose stature as a national and even global source of freshwater has grown in recent years as climate change and other environmental stresses threaten to dry up freshwater resources in other regions.

Recognizing the clock is ticking on the lakes' recovery prospects, U.S. EPA is rolling out a new package of restoration programs that could begin shifting the Great Lakes back toward ecological health. The program, known as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, is backed by a $475 million pledge from the White House and House of Representatives, which approved full funding for the program in June.

India depleting key water source, study finds

Excessive irrigation and the unrelenting thirst of 114 million people are causing groundwater levels in northern India to drop dramatically, a problem that could lead to severe water shortages, according to a study released Wednesday.

Levels have dropped as much as a foot a year between 2002 and 2008, for a total of 26 cubic miles of water that vanished — enough to fill Lake Mead, the largest manmade reservoir in the United States, three times.

China says rich up pressure on poor over climate

China accused rich nations at U.N. climate talks on Thursday of increasing pressure on the poor to do more to combat global warming while shirking their own responsibility to lead.

"There has been a general feeling of unhappiness about the level of efforts that (developed nations) say they will take," China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters on the sidelines of August 10-14 climate talks in Bonn.

"What is even more worrying is a continuation and even a strengthening of the tendency of trying to shift the burden to the developing countries," he said. "That must change."

French Winemakers Sound Alarm Over Climate Change

Leading figures from the French wine and food industries are urging their government to push for a strong global agreement at a United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December, warning that failure to cut greenhouse gases will devastate their sector.

"The jewels of our cultural heritage, French wines, elegant and refined, are today in danger," a group of 50 winemakers, sommeliers and chefs wrote in an opinion piece published on Aug. 12 in the newspaper Le Monde and addressed to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

As Prices Slump, Solar Industry Suffers

A run of poor earnings has dampened confidence in once-booming solar companies.

Shares in LDK Solar, a Chinese solar manufacturer, fell by 18 percent today after the company reported a larger than expected second-quarter loss.

Shares in JA Solar, another Chinese company, fell nearly 8 percent today after its earnings report on Wednesday; the company's revenue dropped by 51 percent compared with a year earlier.

For manufacturers, the problem largely boils down to a sharp drop in panel prices amid increased supply and tighter demand. Panel prices have fallen by close to 40 percent from their peak last spring, estimates Chris Whitman, the president of U.S. Solar Finance, which helps arrange bank financing for solar projects.

"Obviously a ton of production, mostly Chinese, has come online in the last year and year and a half," and the global recession has driven demand down, Mr. Whitman said.

Entrepreneurs Wade Into the 'Dead Zone'

Every spring, fertilizer runoff from the U.S. Mississippi River floods into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived "dead zone" where fish can't survive.

Now, this annual problem is getting new attention, not from marine scientists but from entrepreneurs looking for a new domestic source of fuel. And one start-up sees fish themselves being part of the process.

Climate Change Could Have Negative Effects On Stream And Forest Ecosystems

A rare April freeze in 2007 provided researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory with further evidence that climate change could have negative effects on stream and forest ecosystems.

As warm weather arrives sooner in many parts of the nation, forest plants and trees on the banks flourish, shading the stream from sunlight and causing an overall decrease in productivity in the late spring and summer. A new research paper describes how a small change in canopy cover can dramatically impact a stream.

Surviving in extreme conditions after typhoon

As Typhoon Morakot disappeared off China's east coast on Wednesday afternoon, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake, the nation's emergency relief teams were already preparing for their next challenge: Trying to prevent more secondary disasters.

… While many factors play a part, climate change is the biggest component to the volatile weather in China.

GM Shows Off Their New 230mpg Chevy Volt

Posted: 14 Aug 2009 06:14 AM PDT

Plug-ins and electric cars are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see "Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence").  I think the Volt was overdesigned (see "CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid"), but very much hope it succeeds.  Our guest blogger, Kate Tecku, Energy Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress, has the latest updates on the Vote (first posted here).  See also "So what is it like to actually drive the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid electric car?").

On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz from a viral media blitz, GM finally answered its own marketing spin, "What is 230?" Apparently, the new Chevrolet Volt – set to hit show room floors in 2010 – will achieve an astounding city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon.

GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson exclaimed in a press release on Tuesday that the Volt is sure to be a "game changer." He went on to note that "based on the results of unofficial development testing of pre-production prototypes, the Volt has achieved 40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving." This, taken in conjunction with the Department of Transportation's findings that nearly 8 in 10 Americans drive less than 40 miles per day, means that "many Chevy Volt drivers may be able to be in pure electric mode on a daily basis without having to use any gas" – unlike other hybrids such as the Toyota Prius.

The Volt, however, could cost about $40,000, putting it out of reach of many middle income consumers. GM believes that government incentives and battery warranties can make this new PHEV model an appealing option to climate- and cost-conscious consumers, despite the Volt's high production costs. Prime among these government measures is a $7,500 consumer rebate in the 2009 stimulus package for purchasing qualifying electric plug-in vehicles such as the Volt. The Volt will become more economically attractive when oil and gasoline prices rise during the worldwide economic recovery. In contrast to their conservative predictions in 2008, the Energy Information Agency now expects oil prices to increase to $110 a barrel by 2015.

Critics say the 230 mpg claim for GM's new plug-in is misleading – and even if it does live up to the hype, the Volt's fuel range will pale in comparison to Nissan's new plug-in model, the Leaf, due out in 2012. In a show of industry competition for most fuel economy supremacy, Nissan's EV Twitter feed posted this yesterday: "Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, no tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it'll be affordable too."

Japanese auto makers aren't the only competition GM will have in the PHEV market. China announced last December it's new plug-in, the F3DM, which will only cost an estimated $21,000 and has a battery range of an estimated 63 miles. Though it is unlikely that this model meets other U.S. safety standards, it is yet another sign that China wants to dominate the development and sale of clean energy technologies.

General Motors hopes the release of the Volt will signal to consumers the company is heeding the call for a new generation of super fuel efficient vehicles. The Center for American Progress hosted auto industry executives and independent engineers back in 2008 at an event to discuss the future of plug-in electric technology where GM Vice President Jonathan J. Lauckner acknowledged that "the automobile industry can no longer exclusively rely on oil as fuel for our vehicles."

GM and the Volt may notably affect the electric car battery industry as well. Bob Kruse, GM's executive director of global vehicle engineering, said on Friday that lithium-ion batteries – the kind that powers the Volt – are expected to come down in price and weight as the Volt is brought into mass production: "Getting the energy density up, getting the weight out, getting the cost out, that's all part of what we are going to be challenged to do," said Kruse.

Efforts to design the long range batteries of the future got a boost on August 5th when President Obama announced at a speech in Elkhart County, Indiana that the Department of Energy would invest $2.4 billion in advanced battery research. The funding is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and is expected to save or create tens of thousands of jobs in Indiana.

In addition, investments in a new smart grid will also be pivotal to the full scale deployment of PHEV's. Britta Gross, General Motors' manager of Hydrogen and Electrical Infrastructure Development spoke at length in an interview last November about the partnerships GM has built with utility companies such as Duke and Edison and her confidence that these companies are more than prepared for the wide-scale deployment of the Volt.

This announcement by GM is sure to please the White House, considering then-candidate Obama's pledge last August to put 1,000,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. The Volt and other super efficient cars are an essential element to meet President Obama's new fuel efficiency standards that the White House believes will "result in savings of 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in the next five years alone." Plug-in vehicles like the Volt are essential to cutting our nation's addiction to foreign oil and reducing global warming pollution. It may just be the "game changer" GM – and America — needs.

Related Posts:

Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: "Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier."

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 07:02 PM PDT

A BBC story on the new study, "The spatial and temporal evolution of Pine Island Glacier thinning, 1995 – 2006," (subs. req'd) explains:

Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

The rate of loss is fastest in the centre of the glacier and the concern is that if the process continues, the glacier may break up and start to affect the ice sheet further inland.

One of the authors, Professor Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, said that the melting from the centre of the glacier would add about 3cm to global sea level.

"But the ice trapped behind it is about 20-30cm of sea level rise and as soon as we destabilise or remove the middle of the glacier we don't know really know what's going to happen to the ice behind it," he told BBC News.

When we last left Antarctic research, it turned out that the great ice sheet's temperature had risen by up to about 3°C (5.4 °F) in the past 50 years, which is the fastest increase in the southern hemisphere (see "Antarctica has warmed significantly over past 50 years, revisited"):

antarctica2.jpg

Antarctica is disintegrating much faster than almost anybody imagined.  In 2001, the IPCC "consensus" said neither Greenland nor Antarctica would lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are.  As Penn State climatologist Richard Alley said in March 2006, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule."

http://www.open.ac.uk/port/images/z_Antarctica.gifPine Island Glacier is where the first "A" in "Antarctica" in the figure above [see figure on right, click to enlarge].  It is of special interest, as the BBC notes:

Pine Island glacier has been the subject of an intense research effort in recent years amid fears that its collapse could lead to a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The rest of this post will survey what we now know about the increasingly unstable West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) and the threat it poses to humanity — or is that the threat humanity poses to it? — if we continue on our current suicidal emissions path.  Regular readers can skip the rest of this post since I'm mostly excerpting, "Q: How much can West Antarctica plausibly contribute to sea level rise by 2100?" [A:  3 to 5 feet].

A 2007 study found "The current loss of mass from the Amundsen Sea embayment of the West Antarctic ice sheet [WAIS] is equivalent to that from the entire Greenland ice sheet" (see the new survey report Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment draft here).  And WAIS's 2007's ice loss was 75% higher than 2006's (see "The Antarctic ice sheet hits the fan").

The warming of the WAIS is most worrisome (at least for this century) because it's going to disintegrate long before the East Antarctic Ice Sheet does — since WAIS appears to be melting from underneath (i.e. the water is warming, too), and since, as I wrote in the "high water" part of my book, the WAIS is inherently less stable:

Perhaps the most important, and worrisome, fact about the WAIS is that it is fundamentally far less stable than the Greenland ice sheet because most of it is grounded far below sea level. The WAIS rests on bedrock as deep as two kilometers underwater. One 2004 NASA-led study found that most of the glaciers they were studying "flow into floating ice shelves over bedrock up to hundreds of meters deeper than previous estimates, providing exit routes for ice from further inland if ice-sheet collapse is under way." A 2002 study in Science examined the underwater grounding lines–the points where the ice starts floating. Using satellites, the researchers determined that "bottom melt rates experienced by large outlet glaciers near their grounding lines are far higher than generally assumed." And that melt rate is positively correlated with ocean temperature.

The warmer it gets, the more unstable WAIS outlet glaciers will become. Since so much of the ice sheet is grounded underwater, rising sea levels may have the effect of lifting the sheets, allowing more-and increasingly warmer-water underneath it, leading to further bottom melting, more ice shelf disintegration, accelerated glacial flow, and further sea level rise, and so on and on, another vicious cycle. The combination of global warming and accelerating sea level rise from Greenland could be the trigger for catastrophic collapse in the WAIS (see, for instance, here).

You can read every thing a laymen could possibly want to know about what the recent study on Antarctic warming does and doesn't show at RealClimate here.

A couple of new papers published by Nature in March have been portrayed as suggesting the WAIS as a whole may be stabler than was previously thought.  Yet the first paper, "Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations" (subs. req'), concludes:

Our data provide direct evidence for orbitally induced oscillations in the WAIS, which periodically collapsed, resulting in a switch from grounded ice, or ice shelves, to open waters in the Ross embayment when planetary temperatures were up to approx3 °C warmer than today and atmospheric CO2 concentration was as high as approx400 p.p.m.v.

We'll be at 400 ppm by 2020.  We're on track to be more than 5°C warmer by 2100.  So the first paper doesn't seem terribly reassuring.

The second paper by Pollard and DeConto (the one that got all the attention), "Modelling West Antarctic ice sheet growth and collapse through the past five million years," (subs. req'), notes, "Recent melt rates under small Antarctic ice shelves are inferred to be increasing dramatically" and concluded:

… the WAIS will begin to collapse when nearby ocean temperatures warm by roughly 5 °C. Global climate and regional ocean modelling is needed to predict when and if future ocean temperatures and melt rates under the major Antarctic ice shelves will increase by these amounts, and if so, for how long.

Are you reassured yet?

I would note that West Antarctica land temperatures have risen up to 3°C over the past 50 years — some 4 times what the planet as a whole has warmed. And both Hadley and MIT say the planet will warm more than 5°C by 2100, with a 10% chance of warming more than 7°C (see M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C and "Hadley Center warns of "Catastrophic" 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path.  And while the ocean warms less than the nearby land, the new study Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment warns: "UP TO one-third of all Antarctic sea ice is likely to melt by the end of the century."  So we may yet see polar amplifacation near the South Pole (see "What exactly is polar amplification and why does it matter?").

Dr. Robert Bindschadler of NASA, who has been an active Antarctic field researcher for the past 25 years, commented on the new study (here):

I'm familiar with the Pollard/DeConto work. They previewed it last fall at an annual science workshop I organize on West Antarctic research. Their model lacks the detail to get the fastest dynamic responses, so the 0.5m/century rate for sea level rise should only be viewed as a lower bound (and a poor one, at that).

Their model is better at getting the longer-term quasi-equilibrium response (it just takes their model a little longer to get there), so it 's very interesting that they demonstrate the sensitivity to the ocean temperature. That thinking is certainly where Antarctic scientists are being led by both data and models.

Moreover, the entire WAIS need not collapse for it to contribute to catastrophic sea level rise this century.

The Antarctic Peninsula alone contains "a total volume of 95,200 km3 (equivalent to 242 mm of sea-level; Pritchard and Vaughan, 2007), roughly half that of all glaciers and ice caps outside of either Greenland or Antarctica" (see Chapter 5 here)  — that would be more than 9 inches of sea level rise from a region of WAIS losing its protective ice shelves on both sides at an alarming pace.

But it is westernmost part of WAIS, that borders on the Amundsen Sea, and that includes Pine Island, that we need to worry most about, as AP reported earlier this year:

Glaciers in Antarctica are melting faster and across a much wider area than previously thought, a development that threatens to raise sea levels worldwide and force millions of people to flee low-lying areas, scientists said Wednesday.

Researchers once believed that the melting was limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a narrow tongue of land pointing toward South America. But satellite data and automated weather stations now indicate it is more widespread.

The melting "also extends all the way down to what is called west Antarctica," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

"That's unusual and unexpected," he told the Associated Press in an interview.

By the end of the century, the accelerated melting could cause sea levels to climb by 3 to 5 feet — levels substantially higher than predicted by a major scientific group just two years ago….

The biggest of the western glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is moving 40% faster than it was in the 1970s, discharging water and ice more rapidly into the ocean, said Summerhayes, a member of International Polar Year's steering committee.

The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving 83% faster than in 1992, he said.

The glaciers are slipping into the sea faster because the floating ice shelf that would normally stop them — usually 650 to 980 feet thick — is melting. And the glaciers' discharge is making a significant contribution to increasing sea levels.

So we have the serious potential for 3 to 5 feet of sea level rise just from WAIS this century — and that is on top of whatever we get from thermal expansion of the ocean and Greenland.  And on top of whatever we get from the melting of the inland glaciers, whose contribution was recently increased:

New research published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found that melting glaciers will add at least 7 inches to the world's sea level — and that's if carbon dioxide pollution is quickly capped and then reduced.

Far more likely is an increase of at least 15 inches and probably more just from melting glaciers, the journal said.

So it increasingly looks like we are facing a very serious risk of more than 5 feet of total sea level rise by 2100 on our current emissions path.

But this is almost not news anymore — see Startling new sea level rise research: "Most likely" 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100. Indeed, an important Science article from 2007 used empirical data from last century to project that sea levels could be up to 5 feet higher in 2100 and rising 6 inches a decade (see Inundated with Information on Sea Level Rise.  Another 2007 study from Nature Geoscience came to the same conclusion (see "Sea levels may rise 5 feet by 2100"). Leading experts in the field have a similar view (see "Amazing AP article on sea level rise" and "Report from AGU meeting: One meter sea level rise by 2100 "very likely" even if warming stops?").  Even a major report signed off on by the Bush administration itself was forced to concede that the IPCC numbers are simply too out of date to be quoted anymore (see US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely "substantially exceed" IPCC projections).

Did I mention the time to act is now!

Related Posts:

NASA: Second hottest July on record

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 12:44 PM PDT

Fast on the heels of the second hottest June on record, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that July is also the second hottest on record.

NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  NASS GISS is much more low-key than NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which issues a major report on the climate every month (see NCDC: Second hottest June on record — and once El Nino really kicks in, expect global temperatures "to threaten previous record highs").  I'll wait for that report (out in a few days) for a longer discussion of July.

What I think is interesting about the NASA month-by-month data is that you can compare it to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) data and see that it typically takes 3 to 6 months before an El Niño seriously starts warming up the whole planet (see page 24 here).  So we have a ways to go before we see the full effect of this El Niño.

Still it's interesting that the NCDC reported that the ocean temperature in June was the warmest on record — a full 0.11°F warmer than the 2005 record.  This certainly looks to be the new El Niño on top of the long-term warming trend.  If indeed this is a moderate to strong El Niño, then it looks like we will be seeing record global temperatures this year or next, as NASA predicted back in January (see here).

Related Post:  Must-read NOAA paper smacks down the deniers: Q: "Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?" A: "None at all."

China signals long-term plans to curb GHGs, Cabinet report finds "The large amount of greenhouse gases emitted through human activities is the main reason for global warming leading to extreme weather events"

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 10:55 AM PDT

Photo

This Reuters story is a good follow up to last week's CP post, "China softens climate rhetoric, commits to emissions peak (again), shows flexibility on Western reductions":

China signals long-term plans to curb greenhouse gases

China will make "controlling greenhouse gas emissions" an important part of its development plans, the government said, as pressure on the world's top emitter grows ahead of global talks on tackling climate change.

The broad intentions set down in a report from a cabinet meeting on Wednesday were made public as Beijing proceeds with negotiations seeking a new global pact to fight climate change.

The meeting, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, bluntly said global warming threatened China's environmental and economic health, newspapers reported on Thursday.

Warning of worsening droughts and floods and melting glaciers, the meeting stressed the "urgency" of tackling climate change and called for domestic objectives to control greenhouse emissions, though it made no mention of emissions cuts.

"Make objectives for controlling greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change an important basis for setting the medium and long-term development strategies and plans of government at every level," the Xinhua news agency said in a summary of the cabinet meeting….

China's climate change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, said recently that his country wanted to see output of carbon dioxide peak as soon as possible, a shift away from China's right to pollute as it develops.

The cabinet warned baldly of dire consequences from warming.

"The large amount of greenhouse gases emitted through human activities is the main reason for global warming leading to extreme weather events," the report on the meeting said. This, it said, was also "threatening the security of water supplies."

And this Bloomberg story is a good follow up to "China begins transition to a clean-energy economy":

Beijing to Triple Use of Renewable Energy by 2010

Beijing, China's second-largest city after Shanghai by population size, plans to triple the use of renewable energy including wind power by 2010 from 2005 to help fight pollution and climate change.

Renewable energy will account for 4 percent of the city's total consumption by next year and 6 percent by 2020, the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission said in a statement handed out to reporters at a briefing today.

China plans to invest at least 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) to more than double its wind-power capacity by 2010 from last year. Beijing, whose population exceeds 17 million, will boost the use of renewable energy to 2.6 million metric tons of coal equivalent by next year and 7.2 million tons by 2020, the city's economic planning body said in the statement….

China aims to increase the use of natural gas to 10 percent of total energy consumption by 2020 from about 3 percent. The country also plans to boost its solar generation capacity to 10 gigawatts by 2020 from a previous target of 1.8 gigawatts.

Related Posts:

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

Posted: 13 Aug 2009 10:35 AM PDT

cycloneThe 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.