Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air with David MacKay

RICHARD HEINBERG: The Future of Energy Consumption

Sandra Postel: Are Americans Facing Reality About Water?

Richard Heinberg: Are Enough Americans Facing Reality?

Big Challenge

...here is what the International Energy Agency says will have to be built every year between now and 2050: 35 coal-fired and 20 gas-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage; 30 nuclear power plants; 12,000 onshore wind turbines paired with 3,600 offshore ones; 45 geothermal power plants; 325 million square meters-worth of photovoltaics; and 55 solar-thermal power plants.

Green Energy’s Big Challenge: The Daunting Task of Scaling Up

Read the whole thing.

Note the comments. Even among climate hawks there is serious dissension. For example, some are passionately against nuclear, but we will need nuclear in the mix if we're going to succeed. Will this dissension hamper progress? I hope not.

We are in another food price crisis

Pay attention to the land grab segment. This is the beginning of a Road Warrior scenario in my opinion.




Davos 2011

Bill Rees again

Bill Rees: The Vulnerability and Resilience of Cities

Aging population

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

This is just one of many issues we'll face as our population ages.

ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD | OFFICIAL RELEASE | 2011

HT Twilight Earth

Why we need to all become vegetarian

Davos 2011

Toward the end, business needs to recognize the energy they use.

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Growth driven by development, not getting bigger

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The Chinese, she said, "are not doing it just because they want to save the planet. They are doing it because it's good for the economy."

UN climate talks in focus at Davos forum

Why Energy Independence Is Crucial to America’s Future

Dire predictions

As many in the American empire longingly talk of "recovery" from the most devastating economic condition since the Great Depression, others have begun thinking in a very different direction, urging fellow citizens to prepare for the worst.
...
As the financial collapse runs its course, Orlov said, people can expect some imports to be cut off. Energy, above all cheap oil, will be the most important import to dry up. Transportation fuels will also become scarce, bringing on the next stage of social collapse: the commercial sphere, he noted.

"People will lose access to various products that they need," Orlov said.

Much has already collapsed in the commercial sphere. Vacant strip malls and deserted grocery stores clutter the landscape in many parts of the country.

Exclusive: US empire will fall due to lack of faith, not finances or war, author warns

Look around. Shuttered businesses, congested crumbling roads, huge numbers of foreclosures and horrific unemployment.

And continued inaction on mitigating climate change.  I have already lost faith in government.

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Read his blog piece comparing the Gulf Oil disaster to Chernobyl.
ClubOrlov

I don't really agree that the two disasters are comparable in the damage done, but they are in terms of how incompetence is what allowed them to happen. 

We are children playing with matches

Obama disappoints

The bottom line is to convert from fossil fuels to clean energy, and that addresses climate change even if he didn't mention climate change.

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He did mention clean coal, which is a mythical thing.



Stop eating our siblings... LOL





And we're gonna need nuclear too.

Let's not go here

National policies don't keep up with rhetoric

"When I look at the next 10 years," he said, "even if I take into consideration the pledges made after the Copenhagen meeting, the best case is that this could put us on a trajectory in line with 3.5 degrees Celsius."

To hit that 2-degree target and remain there, he said "decarbonization" needs to increase by 400 percent, "and mainly in the countries where climate change is not high on the agenda."

"Almost all the energy infrastructure that we'll be using in 2020 is either in place now, or in the final investment stage," he said.

Scenario to Cap World Emissions by 2020 Is Fading Fast, Warns IEA Economist

Comments are welcome

Berrien Moore III, an earth scientist who co-chaired a National Research Council committee several years ago on space-based observation of Earth, said climate change predictions based on mathematical models have failed to capture how quickly sea ice would decline. "Thank God for the [satellite] observations, because otherwise we wouldn't have known this is going on," said Moore, vice president for weather and climate programs at the University of Oklahoma.

Aging and failed satellites jeopardize efforts to collect data on climate change


HT globalwarn via twitter


It's all happening much faster than predicted. The scientists are scared! (see last night's post). What does that tell you folks?


Another don't miss at Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Smoking Gun: Greatest Extinction in History was a Volcanic, Coal fired, Greenhouse Event

Do you think climate change will be mentioned in Obama's State of the Union Address?

Wonderfest 2010: Dare We Try to Engineer Earth's Climate?

Scary stuff... but by burning fossil fuels, we have already geoengineered the planet.

TEQs

There's more

This new report from the Lean Economy Connection, commissioned by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, explores the vital role that an economy-wide tradable rationing scheme could play in addressing the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil.

This electronic system would guarantee that we meet our national emissions reductions targets, ensure fair access to energy for all and support the active participation and cooperation of citizens in rapidly reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

HT The Oil Drum

Fossil Fuels + Dependence = Security Risks?

GRITtv: Bill McKibben: Growing Global Movements

Can we stop it?

Changing Climate Means Changing Oceans



Do you think we can stop it?

HT Climate Progress

Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

HT Climate Portals via Facebook

GOP endangers our children and grandchildren

Top staff members for key House and Senate Republicans met in a closed-door session Tuesday with energy industry interests to work on strategy to handcuff the Obama administration’s climate change agenda.

With the backing of GOP caucus leaders, aides for House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) are seeking unwavering support from a host of industries for an all-out push to block federal and state climate rules.

GOP staff, energy lobby in closed-door talks


HT Think Progress

They claim these regulations kill jobs, but they do quite the opposite.
They ignore or deny the impending doom our children and grandchildren face if we do not curb our greenhouse gas emissions.

Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change

James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, New York

Scenarios and predictions

• Predictions of future sea level change are inherently difficult because, we assert, ice sheet disintegration is fundamentally a non-linear process. However, in addition, the climate forcing scenario is uncertain. When predictions are made, or statements that can be construed as predictions, it is important to be clear what climate forcing scenario is being considered.
• IPCC BAU (business-as-usual) scenarios assume that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase, with the nations of the world burning most of the fossil fuels including unconventional fossil fuels such as tar sands.
• An alternative extreme, one that places a substantial rising price on carbon emissions, would have CO2 emissions beginning to decrease within less than a decade, as the world moves on energy systems beyond fossil fuels, leaving most of the remaining coal and unconventional fossil fuels in the ground. In this extreme scenario, let's call it fossil fuel phase-out (FFPO), CO2 would rise above 400 ppm but begin a long decline by mid-century (Hansen et al., 2008).
• The European Union 2°C scenario, call it EU2C, falls in between these two extremes.
• BAU scenarios result in global warming of the order of 3-6°C. It is this scenario for which we assert that multi-meter sea level rise on the century time scale are not only possible, but almost dead certain. Such a huge rapidly increasing climate forcing dwarfs anything in the peleoclimate record. Antarctic ice shelves would disappear and the lower reaches of the Antarctic ice sheets would experience summer melt comparable to that on Greenland today.
• The other extreme scenario, FFPO, does not eliminate the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise, but it leaves the time scale for ice sheet disintegration very uncertain, possibly very long. If the time scale is several centuries, then it may be possible to avoid large sea level rise by decreasing emissions fast enough to cause atmospheric greenhouse gases to decline in amount.
• What about the intermediate scenario, EU2C? We have presented evidence in this paper that prior interglacial periods were less than 1°C warmer than the Holocene maximum. If we are correct in that conclusion, the EU2C scenario implies a sea level rise of many meters. It is difficult to predict a time scale for the sea level rise, but it would be dangerous and foolish to take such a global warming scenario as a goal.

Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change

emphasis mine.

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Update
See Climate Progress post on Hansen Sato paper.

BP Energy Outlook 2030

In a similar way, the Energy Outlook, which contains our projections of future energy trends, has been used only internally so far. However, we feel it is part of our responsibility as a company to make important information and analysis available for public debate – all the more so if the issue at hand is as vital to all of us as is energy, its relation to economic development on one side, and to climate change on the other.
...
The three fossil fuels are converging on market shares of 26-27%, and the major non-fossil fuel groups on market shares of around 7% each.
...
Taken together, the contribution of all non-fossil fuels to growth over the next twenty years (36%) is, for the first time, larger than that of any single fossil fuel.
Renewables (including biofuels) account for 18% of the growth in energy to 2030. The rate at which renewables penetrate the global energy market is similar to the emergence of nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s.
...

• Strong growth in non-OECD energy consumption, especially of coal, translates into continued growth of global CO2 emissions. The growth of global CO2 emissions from energy averages 1.2% p.a over the next twenty years (compared to 1.9% p.a. 1990-2010), leaving emissions in 2030 27% higher than today.
• The implementation of carbon abatement policies in the OECD reduces the level of emissions in 2030, but only by 10% relative to current levels.
• Non-OECD emissions grow by 2.2% p.a. on average, up 53% by 2030. Policies in non-OECD countries focus on reducing the carbon intensity of economic growth. Carbon per unit of GDP falls by 42% by 2030, and the rate of decline accelerates steadily. By 2020-30, non- OECD emissions are growing by only 1.3% p.a., compared to 5.2% p.a. growth over 2000-2010.
• Overall, this implies some progress towards climate change goals, but not enough to put the world on a path to stabilisation at 450 ppm.

BP Energy Outlook 2030

Tim Jackson's economic reality check

I'm sure I've posted this before... perhaps with other clips

We need a Martin Luther King of Climate. Of all the clips I've posted here, who would you nominate to the job?

Larry Brilliant makes the case for optimism

ARkStorm

EcoInteractive

This document summarizes the next major public project for MHDP, a winter storm scenario called ARkStorm (for Atmospheric River 1,000). Experts have designed a large, scientifically realistic meteorological event followed by an examination of the secondary hazards (for example, landslides and flooding), physical damages to the built environment, and social and economic consequences. The hypothetical storm depicted here would strike the U.S. West Coast and be similar to the intense California winter storms of 1861 and 1862 that left the central valley of California impassible. The storm is estimated to produce precipitation that in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to 1,000 years

Overview of the ARkStorm Scenario

HT EcoInteractive via twitter

Megastorm: California's Other "Big One"

This is ARkStorm from USGS Multi Hazards on Vimeo.

HT Climate Crock of the Week

Global warming, a radical idea? Back in 1975 it was!

Global warming, a radical idea? audio

Global warming, a radical idea?
Broadcast Date: April 21, 1975

"I think every single scientist… we've spoken to for the past year has been forecasting a cooling trend, maybe even an ice age. And you're saying quite the opposite," CBC's Barbara Frum tells W.S. Broecker of Columbia University. He predicts the planet is actually going to warm up soon thanks to all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Frum wonders: is this just an "academic interest" or is it really important? "Possibly, it could be terribly important," answers Broecker in this 1975 clip.

Climate Wars -audio

Climate Wars, Part 1

Climate Wars, Part 2

Climate Wars, Part 3

HT Some European at Climate Progress

Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization

Earth 2100: The Final Century of Civilization? Part 1

HT Susan Anderson's comment at Climate Progress

I have a dream

I have a dream. I see billions dying of starvation. I see wars over food and energy resources. I see millions...no billions attempting to migrate to countries that don't want them and can't feed them. I see a global collapse of economies. I see the world's governments struggling to keep it together. This is a nightmare.

But that's a nightmare. It isn't real. It is not happening. Yet.

I hope it's not too late. I have no science to support this hope. There is no science that supports a Lucifer's Hammer scenario either. But the scientists have been too reticent, too conservative. Those, like Lovelock, who are telling it like they see it are not 'mainstream'.

Even though there are many who do not believe carbon capture is feasible, it is, in my opinion, our only hope... and it will only help. The heat already present in the oceans will take centuries to dissipate. Ice will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise... but if we don't do something BIG, and do it SOON... the prognosis, from any realistic perspective, is horrific in our children's lifetime.

So hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
Remember, there is north and there is up. Higher altitudes will offer cooler temps.
I will do everything in my power to develop a safe haven for my family. I recommend you do the same.

James lovelock; climate change and mass human die-off

It cuts off, but I can't find any more.
But here:

Read it and weep

Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 "may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models"

Science stunner: On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter

Read the comments too.

Richard Heinberg: Peak Oil and the Globe's Limitations

Peak Oil and a Changing Climate
New videos each Wednesday.

Fen Montaigne explains how global warming affects Antarctic penguins and rising sea levels.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Fen Montaigne
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Do you live on a floodplain?

Homeowners living near rivers and the coast face losing up to 40 per cent of the value of their homes as flood risk makes them uninsurable.

More than a million homes and 300,000 businesses are at risk, including those in parts of London, Southend, Brighton, Reading, Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Middlesbrough, Blackpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Environment Agency says.

Rise in flood risk could make one million homes uninsurable


HT Climate Portals via Facebook

In the US, the federal government provides flood insurance... at a cost of course.

Connections

The butterfly effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere. Although this may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.

Butterfly effect

Quantum entanglement is a property of the quantum mechanical state of a system containing two or more objects, where the objects that make up the system are linked in such a way that the quantum state of any member of the system cannot be adequately described without full mention of the other members of the system, even if the individual objects are spatially separated.

In other words two objects that are entangled are aware of each other and respond to each other to keep the system in balance regardless of how far apart they are. In some dimension, they touch.


Quantum entanglement

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water, and sunlight.[1] It is all the organisms in a given area, along with the nonliving (abiotic) factors with which they interact; a biological community and its physical environment.[1]

Ecosystem

Non-technological cultures must understand the system of which they are a part to survive.

Some think only man has a soul. How that makes sense to anybody is beyond me, but such thinking blinds us to the fact that we are a part of an unbelievably complex system. We are not separate. In some dimension we touch everything and everything touches us.

We've gotten our planet into this climate change mess in part because we lost our connections. Time to get them back, no matter what the cost, or we will not survive.

Climate Warning

Climate Warning
See them all.

Simple Logic

DR. BILL REES WALKS OFF THE LIST


Negligence. Wanton or reckless disregard. Climate Zombies is not a strong enough word.

Why is Obama silent on Climate Change? This topic should be in every one of his weekly addresses
President Obama's Weekly Address

UBC Ecologist Bill Rees

Part 1 of 8
HT commenter Bob Lang over at Climate Progress

I tune into Climate Progress several times a day and read all the comments there. A fabulous fabulous resource.

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It's up to us.
What will the future look like? (UBC Prof. Rees)

Kathleen Dean Moore - "Moral Ground"

HT Climate Portals via Facebook

She asks us what have we, as individuals, done about climate change.

Koch heads are not the only ones responsible for what we bequeath to our children and grandchildren. We all are.

Time for a 300 million man march?

Everybody send this embedded in an email to Obama?

The Tyranny of Entitlement | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine

The Tyranny of Entitlement | Derrick Jensen | Orion Magazine

Tipping Point?

Long before the presidential election of 2000 Al Gore was already one of the strongest advocates for the environment. I remember seeing him testify before congress sounding as knowledgeable as anyone on the panel. He had already written a book called 'Earth in the Balance' that was widely read and praised. I remember thinking that the arguments he and other enviro-defenders made were surely going to lead to big changes in US energy and environmental policy

After his success as vice president the future looked pretty good going into the new millennium. Then came the fateful presidential election of 2000 and the future changed.

I think that the results of the 2000 election, determined by a Supreme Court decision, was the tipping point for the US on climate politics, and maybe for the world. Of course it is only speculation what would have happened had Gore been allowed to become president. I think Gore's leadership on climate issues would have had wide influence on politics and business. The spirit of the times would have seen actions being taken toward a different kind of future. Green company start-ups would have gotten the tax breaks instead of the very wealthy. We probably would have seen automobile MPG standards improve much more sharply easing our need for foreign oil. All of these developments would have changed the outcome of world wide climate and energy treaties like Kyoto...with China India and Brazil following to our leadership. The development of green energy and alternative technologies would have occurred a decade ago. Peak oil would not be so scary.

And so, it may be that the tipping point that may mean the end of the world as we know it has been crossed, and it had nothing to do with permafrost or methane.

Humor

Climate Progress is compiling a list of favorite cartoons for 2010

Wit's End composed her own... and it gets my vote
Kitchen Table Comic

The Future of Human Kind

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Martin Rees asks: Is this our final century?

A REALLY Inconvenient Truth: Dan Miller

This is old. I posted it before.
It's so much worse now.

Finally, a bit of good news

Bacteria managed to take in the methane before it could rise from the sea bottom and be released into the atmosphere, but the process contributed to a loss of about 1 million tons of dissolved oxygen in areas southwest of the well.
...
"Given observations about how slowly methane is normally consumed, we didn't think the (bacteria) population was up to the challenge at all ... we thought it would be a lot slower," Valentine said.

The fact the bacteria took in that large amount of methane could indicate that bacteria might absorb other large-scale deep ocean methane releases, the scientists said.

Bacteria gobbled methane from BP spill: scientists

Our natural systems are amazingly resilient... if we'd just stop torturing them

Calculating the True Cost Of Global Climate Change

Other experts see the hit to GDP as much greater. “We did a survey of top economists in the country, asking what they think about the costs and benefits of climate legislation,” says Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. “They said that climate change is a clear threat to America and the global economy.” Adds Berkeley’s Hanemann: “I don’t want to be Dr. Gloom, but our complacency in the U.S. is wrong.”
...
Harvard economist Martin Weitzman even suggests that the economic costs of a catastrophic event, however unlikely it might be, would be so enormous that it would overwhelm the whole analysis. “Perhaps in the end the climate-change economist can help most by not presenting a cost-benefit estimate for what is inherently a fat-tailed situation with potentially unlimited downside exposure,” he writes.

Calculating the True Cost Of Global Climate Change
by john carey


Read the whole thing

The direct economic damages from acidification are negligible. “We know the actual economic impacts are almost sure to be small because they involve fisheries, which are already pretty small, and they involve only ocean fisheries that are sensitive to carbon,” Nordhaus says.

Well now an economist thinks he's an oceanographer. This is common. People do not realize how much our very lives depend on a healthy ecosystem.

Acid Test: The Science of Ocean Acidification from Tristan Bayer on Vimeo.

Why are climate scientists ignoring peak oil and coal?

In the worst case, triple-digit oil prices and demand-destruction, political crises and wars, etc., will likely contract the GDP of industrial nations by a large amount. For example, a possible conflict with Iran could cause oil prices to soar rapidly. Also, the US Joint Forces Command 2010 report has warned that “surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear” by 2012 as well as warning of potential energy-based conflicts. Unfortunately, these factors are not included in the climate change projections made by bodies like the IPCC.

In a world of peak oil and of escalating political volatility, the fears and worries expressed by climate change scientists (such as those at the recent Cancun summit) concerning catastrophic climate scenarios, are looking less justified. However, as discussed above, a rapid decline in CO2 output can still potentially lead to a 2.8ºC global average temperature increase by the end of this century. Although, one could argue that even this level of CO2 growth may not come to fruition if conflicts break out over energy resources in the next few decades. This could end up forcing governments to ration energy to be used only for bare essentials

Why are climate scientists ignoring peak oil and coal

As seen here... They aren't

Peak Oil and a Changing Climate

HT The Oil Drum

The Green House Effect - almost 30 years ago

We were warned!

Alarming losses

Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United States, researchers reported on Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide

Researchers find "alarming" decline in bumblebees

Bees, Frogs, Phytoplankton


"We're insulting the environment faster than we can understand it"

I guess we've graduated from insults to mass murder.

You've got to be kidding!

Hurricanes could become more prevalent with climate change, but the economic pain they deliver might not be recognized as man-made for 260 years.

That means smashed homes and ruined roads may not be attributable to greenhouse gases for centuries, according to new research that suggests climate policies like adaptation should be designed without financial evidence of climate-enhanced windstorms.

Finding the Fingerprints of Climate Change in Storm Damage -- a Very Long Detective Story


The study is here

Abstract
Recent reviews have concluded that efforts to date have yet to detect or attribute an
anthropogenic climate change influence on Atlantic tropical cyclone (of at least
tropical storm strength) behaviour and concomitant damage. However, identification
of such influence cannot be ruled out in the future. Using projections of future tropical
cyclone activity from a recent prominent study we estimate the time it would take for
anthropogenic signals to emerge in a time series of normalized US tropical cyclone
losses. Depending on the global climate model(s) underpinning the projection,
emergence time scales range between 120 and 550 years, reflecting a large
uncertainty. It takes 260 years for an 18-model ensemble-based signal to emerge.
Consequently, under the projections examined here, the detection or attribution of an
anthropogenic signal in tropical cyclone loss data is extremely unlikely to occur over
periods of several decades (and even longer). This caution extends more generally to
global weather-related natural disaster losses.

OK guys, let's not worry about those broken records in heat, drought, flood etc. They don't mean a thing.
And that 5 degree C uptick expected (with BAU)  in the next 60 to 90 years? That's not going to have any measurable effect on tropical cyclones that can be attributed to AGW.
And forget the insurance companies reporting record payouts due to climate related disasters.

It's only just begun

FRANKFURT: The Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an "exceptional" year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing 130 billion dollars, the world's top reinsurer said Monday.

"The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

A total of 950 natural catastrophes were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.
...
The earthquake in Haiti was by far the worst disaster in terms of human cost, killing 222,570 people, Munich Re said. Some 56,000 died in a combination of heatwaves and forest fires in Russia, it said.

...
Last month, another major reinsurer, Swiss Re, reported that man-made and natural disasters generated worldwide economic losses of 222 billion dollars in 2010, more than three times the figure for the previous year

There is a debate, just not where you'd think

Opposing views held by Christians about climate change:


What does the Bible have to say about climate change?

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(November 10, 2010, Washington, DC) – At a critical moment in the global environmental debate, many of America’s top Christian leaders have joined with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation to produce an explosive new 12-part DVD series, Resisting the Green Dragon, which begins shipping today both in the United States and abroad. The series sounds the alarm about dangerous environmental extremism and brings a Biblical viewpoint on environmental issues and creation stewardship to evangelical churches, ministries, and schools.
The new video series – excerpts of which can be seen at www.ResistingTheGreenDragon.com –
comes at a time when environmental advocacy groups are frustrated that their top priority for the past two decades—a global treaty to curtail fossil fuel use to fight alleged catastrophic global warming—is losing steam.

Sounding the Alarm about Dangerous Environmental Extremism

Ho Ho Ho, Green Dragon

The Legal Underpinnings of EPA’s Climate Rules

all EPA has to do is to make a finding under some relevant provision of the statute that greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare

Legal Planet

That shouldn't be difficult...