Humans are good at thinking their way out of problems – but climate change is outfoxing us

The Conversation

Humans are a highly adaptive species. In the initial phases of global warming in the 20th century, we coped with the changes. But at some point, the pace and extent of global warming will outrun the human capacity to adapt. Already in Australia, there are signs we have reached that point. ...

Political and public resistance to climate mitigation is largely driven by professed concern about the price and reliability of electricity – that a transition to renewable energy will cause supply shortages and higher energy bills.

However a failure to act on climate change has itself put huge stress on the electricity system.

Hot summers have caused old coal-fired power stations to break down more frequently. And the increased use of air-conditioning has increased electricity demand – particularly at peak times, which our system is ill-equipped to handle.

Finally, the recent bushfire disaster destroyed substantial parts of the electricity transmission and distribution system, implying yet further costs. Insurance costs for electricity networks are tipped to rise in response to the bushfire risk, pushing power prices even higher.

So far, the federal government’s response to the threat has been that of a failed state.

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Lessons from the Dust Bowl w/ Ken Burns
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Can trees control algal blooms?
PHYS ORG

Professor Burford said investigating how leaf litter can play a role in limiting those impacts could aid management authorities and environmental managers such as Healthy Land Water and Seqwater in managing, monitoring and treating impacted water.

"Trees have an even greater role in preserving water quality than we previously thought," she said.

"Nutrients from the land—via fertilizers and soil erosion, for example—are a major cause of algal blooms, and planting trees along waterways is one way to reduce nutrient runoff.

"This is because trees take up nutrients from the soil in order to grow. But trees have another role, as we have recently found.

"Trees and other plants also deliver organic material into waterways. They drop their leaves, they fall in the water or they fall on the ground, so we get leaf litter everywhere."

5 Reasons Many See Trump’s Free Trade Deal as a Triumph for Fossil Fuels
Inside Climate News

But for now, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) helps three of the world's biggest energy trading partners defer such considerations at a time when science and the Paris Agreement on climate change call for an all-out effort to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

"It will help corporations export pollution and jobs, weaken climate policies, and extract more fossil fuels," said Ben Beachy, director of the Sierra Club's Living Economy Program. "It's a climate failure any way you look at it. How do you square that with the science telling us that we have 10 years to avoid a climate catastrophe?"

Fuel efficient tech may threaten climate, public health
EurekAlert

The gasoline direct injection (GDI) engine is one of the most prominent technologies car manufacturers adopted to achieve the fuel economy and carbon dioxide emission goals established in 2012 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The market share of GDI-equipped vehicles increased from 2.3% in model year 2008 to 51% in model year 2018. The EPA projects 93% of vehicles in the U.S. will be equipped with GDI engines by 2025.

While this technology is credited with boosting fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions, GDI engines produce more black carbon aerosols than traditional port fuel injection engines. A strong absorber of solar radiation, black carbon exhibits significant climate warming properties.

Preparing land for palm oil causes most climate damage
PHYS ORG

New research has found preparing land for palm oil plantations and the growth of young plants causes significantly more damage to the environment, emitting double the amount of greenhouse gases than mature plantations.

This is the first study to examine the three main greenhouse gas emissions across the different age stages of palm oil plantations. It was carried out by plant scientists from the University of Nottingham in the North Selangor peat swamp forest in Malaysia with support from the Salangor State Forestry Department. It has been published today in Nature Communications.

Palm oil is the most consumed and widely traded vegetable oil in the world. Global demand has more than tripled in the last eighteen years, from around 20 million tonnes in 2000 to over 70 million in 2018 and Malaysia is the world's second largest producer. The University of Nottingham researchers analysed five sites at four different stages of land use: secondary forest, recently drained but uncleared forest, cleared and recently planted young oil palm plantation and mature oil palm plantation.

Climate Costs Rise as Amazon, Retailers Compete on Fast Delivery
Inside Climate News

"Can you please explain this ridiculous surplus of packaging used to ship a tiny box of pointe shoe ribbons? WE CANNOT!!! TOLERATE! WASTE LIKE THIS!!" tweeted one Amazon user. ...

Across its operations, Amazon emitted 44 million metric tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide last year—roughly the same as Denmark. Emissions at logistics company UPS rose 6 percent last year to 14.6 million metric tonnes from a year earlier, in part because of increased reliance on aircraft.

"The problem isn't buying online—it's how the delivery is implemented and how packages come to our door," said Anne Goodchild, a transportation engineer at the University of Washington's Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center.

Climate Change—and Ideas for Tackling It—Dominated Davos
The Wall Street Journal

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos showed climate change has become a top issue for many businesses and governments, but also demonstrated a yawning gap between how they view the scale of the challenge and what can be achieved without significant new policies.

It was a year in which the issue, which many people here believe has contributed to extreme weather-related events such as the Australian bush fires, appeared to shift from a fashionable talking point to a matter that is beginning to have real-world consequences for many banks and businesses.

“Davos turned into a climate-change conference this year,” Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said Thursday. But he said “the massive gap between ambition and concrete action to change the emissions trajectory remains glaring.”

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Symphony of Soil (1 hr 44 min)
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Arctic sea ice can't 'bounce back'
Science Daily

Arctic sea ice cannot "quickly bounce back" if climate change causes it to melt, new research suggests.

A team of scientists led by the University of Exeter used the shells of quahog clams, which can live for hundreds of years, and climate models to discover how Arctic sea ice has changed over the last 1,000 years.

They found sea ice coverage shifts over timescales of decades to centuries -- so shrinking ice cannot be expected to return rapidly if climate change is slowed or reversed.

The study examined whether past ice changes north of Iceland were "forced" (caused by events such as volcanic eruptions and variations in the sun's output) or "unforced" (part of a natural pattern).

At least a third of past variation was found to be "forced" -- showing the climate system is "very sensitive" to such driving factors, according to lead author Dr Paul Halloran, of the University of Exeter.

"There is increasing evidence that many aspects of our changing climate aren't caused by natural variation, but are instead 'forced' by certain events," he said.

"Our study shows the large effect that climate drivers can have on Arctic sea ice, even when those drivers are weak as is the case with volcanic eruptions or solar changes.

Scientists develop a concept of a hybrid thorium reactor
PHYS ORG

Russian scientists have proposed a concept of a thorium hybrid reactor in that obtains additional neutrons using high-temperature plasma held in a long magnetic trap. This project was applied in close collaboration between Tomsk Polytechnic University, All-Russian Scientific Research Institute Of Technical Physics (VNIITF), and Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of SB RAS. The proposed thorium hybrid reactor is distinguished from today's nuclear reactors by moderate power, relatively compact size, high operational safety, and a low level of radioactive waste.

"At the initial stage, we get relatively cold plasma using special plasma guns. We retain the amount by deuterium gas injection. The injected neutral beams with particle energy of 100 keV into this plasma generate the high-energy deuterium and tritium ions and maintain the required temperature. Colliding with each other, deuterium and tritium ions are combined into a helium nucleus so high-energy neutrons are released. These neutrons can freely pass through the walls of the vacuum chamber, where the plasma is held by a magnetic field, and entering the area with nuclear fuel. After slowing down, they support the fission of heavy nuclei, which serves as the main source of energy released in the hybrid reactor, " says professor Andrei Arzhannikov, a chief researcher of Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of SB RAS.

The main advantage of a hybrid nuclear fusion reactor is the simultaneous use of the fission reaction of heavy nuclei and synthesis of light ones. It minimizes the disadvantages of applying these nuclear reactions separately.

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Maybe this will wake more people up. The Climate Crisis has finally made it big time...

Climate Change Is Here—It’s Too Late for Pessimism
The Nation

Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously, a nine-part series about climate change that premiered last night, is essential viewing. The series documents the far-reaching consequences of climate change, ...

(The premiere episode opens with Harrison Ford flying a reconfigured-for-science fighter plane to gather pollution data), money (James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Weintraub are executive producers), and smarts. ...

As the series progresses, a team of actors, activists and journalists will lead viewers through a series of reports and dispatches from around the world. In two episodes, for example, Nation contributing editor and former Washington editor Chris Hayes files reports about Superstorm Sandy and rising ocean levels. On his show on MSNBC, Hayes noted the necessary immediacy of the series: climate change, he says, “is not some future thing. This is it 2014. It is here now. You can go to these places and see it.”