Category: Energy

bookmark_borderTrade War! What Is It Good For?

Posted on by admin

By Daniel Brouse

International Economics 101
What do you think of when you hear the term “trade war”?
The costs and benefits to society are very similar to traditional warfare.
1) Financial Cost. A war is expensive. In a trade war, huge tariffs are placed on the purchase of imports. A tariff is a sales tax paid for by the citizen. Quite often this tax can be as high as 45% or the product even banned altogether. The tax is paid by the citizen to their government. The financial loss from the in-efficiency of paying large taxes is a tremendous burden on the country’s own citizens. In addition, there are usually large costs to the private sector. These costs can include high interest rates, inflation and loss of value to liquid assets. The standard of living declines.
2) Casualties / Loss Of Life. Millions of people are maimed or die in a trade war. The easiest examples in recent history would be the impacts on baby formula or pharmaceuticals. Hundreds-of-thousands of children, as well as, adults in need of medication died because these items were targeted in trade wars. Another example is maiming children by targeting vitamin A (causing childhood blindness.) Typically, trade wars impact the most vulnerable first — babies, the sick and the elderly.

bookmark_borderThe Demise Of The USA: Will China Takeover?

Posted on by admin

By Daniel Brouse

UNITED STATES — President Trump has done more to damage the environment in his first days of office than any President in history. He has pledged to withdraw from the Paris treaty. The Paris Treaty was the most extensive agreement to address climate change and the first time China and India joined-in. Also, in the first hour of his administration all references to global warming and climate change were removed from WhiteHouse.gov. In addition, the website promoted the increased use of fossil fuels. Then on his first full day in office, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

The TPP was a trade agreement negotiated by twelve countries: Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Vietnam, Chile, Brunei, Singapore, and New Zealand.

One of the largest benefits of the TPP would have been protecting the environment. Participating countries will need to adopt tougher pollution standards similar to the USA. “TPP includes the most robust enforceable environment commitments of any trade agreement in history,” according the United States. “TPP requires countries to play by fair environmental rules if they want to send their goods to the United States, and upgrades NAFTA by putting fully enforceable environment obligations at the core of the agreement.” In addition, TPP helps improve conditions on the ground in TPP countries by requiring them to:
* Fulfill their obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to protect and conserve iconic species, such as rhinos and elephants.
* For the first time in any trade agreement, prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies, including those that contribute to overfishing, and work to restrain new subsidy programs or enhancements to existing subsidy programs.
* Combat illegal fishing, promote sustainable fisheries management practices, and protect wetlands and important natural areas.
* Promote the long-term conservation of whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, and other marine species at risk.
* Combat wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and illegal fishing through enhanced national and regional actions.
* Protect the marine environment from ship pollution, including by implementing their obligations under MARPOL (an international agreement to prevent marine pollution).

Now that the USA is pulling out, world leaders are considering China to replace the USA — a move that would backfire in Trump’s face.

bookmark_borderEnergy, Heat and Global Warming

Posted on by admin

By Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee for Sidd’s Science Center

I ask:
Is there anything humans do with energy that results in less heat?

For example, furnaces generate heat, refrigerators generate heat, light bulbs generate heat, computers, cars, fans and even air conditioners create more heat.

Is there anything that we do that has a net loss of thermal energy or does the use of energy (period. both fossil fuel and renewable energy) by humans add to global warming?

Sidd replies:
Not just humans. Anytime energy is converted from one form to another and work is extracted by any agency, not just humans, some is lost as heat energy. That’s the second law of thermodynamics.

But to put it in perspective, lets say you burn a pound of coal, and take all the chemical energy out as heat. The amount of heat you directly obtain is several hundred times smaller than the heat trapped by the carbon dioxide generated over the next many thousand years that it remains in the atmosphere… so, don’t burn coal, oil or any fossil carbon.

Thus, for example conversion of AC to DC electricity can be very close to 100% efficient… but if you take out some of the energy and do work with it, you will lose some energy as heat.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.

The second law has been expressed in many ways. Its first formulation is credited to the French scientist Sadi Carnot in 1824, who showed that there is an upper limit to the efficiency of conversion of heat to work in a heat engine.

bookmark_borderCarbon Offsetting and Reduction

Posted on by admin

The United Nations has initiated the first “worldwide” pollution tax. The International Civil Aviation Organization’s global carbon offsetting system is aimed at slowing the growth of emissions from commercial flights.

Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA)

The role of a global MBM scheme is to complement a broader basket of measures to achieve the global aspirational goal (of carbon-neutral growth from 2020 onward.)

According to the Assembly Resolution, the average level of CO2 emissions from international aviation covered by the scheme between 2019 and 2020 represents the basis for carbon neutral growth from 2020, against which emissions in future years are compared. In any year from 2021 when international aviation CO2 emissions covered by the scheme exceed the average baseline emissions of 2019 and 2020, this difference represents the sector’s offsetting requirements for that year.

The CORSIA is implemented in phases, starting with participation of States on a voluntary basis, followed by participation of all States except the exempted States, as follows:

  • Pilot phase (from 2021 through 2023) and first phase (from 2024 through 2026) would apply to States that have volunteered to participate in the scheme; and
  • Second phase (from 2027 through 2035) would apply to all States that have an individual share of international aviation activities in RTKs in year 2018 above 0.5 per cent of total RTKs or whose cumulative share in the list of States from the highest to the lowest amount of RTKs reaches 90 per cent of total RTKs, except Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) unless they volunteer to participate in this phase.

States that voluntarily decide to participate the CORSIA may join the scheme from the beginning of a given year, and should notify ICAO of their decision to join by June 30 the preceding year.

It is important to note that, regardless of the phased implementation or exemptions under the CORSIA, all States with aircraft operators undertaking international flights are requested to compile and transmit aggregated emissions information of their operators to ICAO, as part of the activities included in the States’ implementation of a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system.

The CORSIA calls for international aviation to address and offset its emissions through the reduction of emissions elsewhere (outside of the international aviation sector), involving the concept of “emissions units”. One emissions unit thereby represents one tonne of CO2. Two main types of emissions units exist: “offset credits” from crediting mechanisms and “allowances” from emissions trading schemes.

Offsetting could be through the acquisition and redemption of emissions units, arising from different sources of emissions reductions achieved through mechanisms (e.g. UNFCCC’s Clean Development Mechanism), programmes (e.g. REDD+) or projects (e.g. substituting coal-fired stoves with solar cookers). The buying and selling of eligible emissions units happens through a carbon market. The carbon market is a commodity market with the underlying commodity being emissions units. Like any commodity market, it is driven by the law of supply (eligible emissions units offered from different sources) and demand (eligible emissions units purchased by aircraft operators to offset their international aviation emissions under the CORSIA).​​

bookmark_borderTrump to Trash the Environment

Posted on by admin

United States of America — The world watches in dismay as Donald Trump appoints Myron Ebell, a professional climate change denier, to head his EPA transition team. During his campaign, Trump said that climate change is a hoax. Slate magazine reports, “Trump had tweeted in 2012 that global warming “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He has also has previously called it a ‘hoax.'”

During his campaign, Trump also threaten to pull out of the Paris Climate Pact (which the US has already signed.) The Paris Accord is meant to prevent the world from reaching “the point of no return” — limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 2016 is already forecast to be the hottest year on record with the global average temperature 1.75°F above the 20th century average of 57.4°F.

Diplomats from around the world have voiced their concern. “A carbon tariff against the United States is an option for us,” Rodolfo Lacy Tamayo, Mexico’s under secretary for environmental policy and planning, said in a New York Times interview. He added, “We will apply any kind of policy necessary to defend the quality of life for our people, to protect our environment and to protect our industries.”

“I renew my offer to President-elect Trump to come to Fiji and see the effects of climate change,” said the island nation’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama.

Now, Trump has appointed a professional climate change denier to dismantle the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Activists at the United Nations’ Paris talks depicted Myron Ebell, a climate contrarian, as one of seven “climate criminals” wanted for “destroying our future.” Now, Trump has appointed Ebell as head of the EPA transition team.

Municipalities throughout the U.S. are scrambling to take action prior to Trumps’ inauguration. The Baltimore Sun reports:
he Hogan administration’s petition filed this week urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on 19 out-of-state, upwind coal-fired power plants that pollute Maryland’s air is certainly a welcome development. Maryland’s environment secretary had more or less promised such action earlier this year when he declined to join a multi-state lawsuit seeking similar enforcement by the federal agency.

The strategy might even prove productive if action is taken in the waning days of the Obama administration, which has expressed concern not only about toxic pollutants like sulfur dioxide that can be particularly harmful to people with asthma or other breathing problems, but carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Maryland is imperiled by all of the above and needs federal authorities to act given that as much as 70 percent of the state’s air pollution can be traced to upwind sources.

So why does it sound like Maryland is asking for Marquess of Queensbury rules in the face of a street brawl? Most likely because Donald Trump was elected president last week and, in his first act of environmental stewardship named Myron Ebell, a professional climate change denier, to head his EPA transition team. The appointment came as no surprise given how often Mr. Trump attacked EPA’s efforts to protect public health and safety during the campaign, but it surely set the stage for what is coming next.

Here’s another clue: Those offending coal-burning plants are located in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. What else do they all have in common besides dirty air? They all supported Mr. Trump. How did Maryland do in this regard? Hillary Clinton won 60.5 percent of the vote, one of her best showings in the nation.

More on Climate Change

bookmark_borderLiving Planet Report: the Decline of Wildlife

Posted on by admin

The World Wildlife Fund Reports — Global wildlife could plunge to a 67 per cent level of decline in just the fifty-year period ending this decade as a result of human activities, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report 2016. The report shows how people are overpowering the planet for the first time in Earth’s history and highlights the changes needed in the way society is fed and fuelled.

According to the report, global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles have already declined by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012, the most recent year with available data. This places the world on a trajectory of a potential two-thirds decline within a span of the half-century ending in 2020.

Fortunately, 2020 is also a year of great promise. In that same year, commitments made under the Paris climate deal will kick in, and the first environmental actions under the globe’s new sustainable development plan are due. If implemented, these measures, along with meeting international biodiversity targets set for 2020, can help achieve the reforms needed in the world’s food and energy systems to protect wildlife across the globe.

“Wildlife is disappearing within our lifetimes at an unprecedented rate,” said Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International. “This is not just about the wonderful species we all love; biodiversity forms the foundation of healthy forests, rivers and oceans. Take away species, and these ecosystems will collapse along with the clean air, water, food and climate services that they provide us. We have the tools to fix this problem and we need to start using them now if we are serious about preserving a living planet for our own survival and prosperity.”

The WWF report uses the Living Planet Index, provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), to monitor trends in wildlife abundance. This index reports how wildlife populations have changed in size, rather than the specific number of animals that have been lost or gained.

“Human behaviour continues to drive the decline of wildlife populations globally, with particular impact in freshwater habitats. Importantly however, these are declines, they are not yet extinctions – and this should be a wake-up call to marshal efforts to promote the recovery of these populations,” said Professor Ken Norris, Director of Science at ZSL.

Additional evidence of a man-made era
The top threats to species identified in the report are directly linked to human activities, including habitat loss, degradation and overexploitation of wildlife.

The report’s findings provide additional evidence that the planet is entering completely unchartered territory in its history in which humanity is shaping changes on the Earth, including a possible sixth mass extinction. Researchers are already calling this period the Anthropocene. Understanding why we are moving into this new epoch enables us to identify solutions for restoring the ecosystems we depend upon.

According to the report, food production to meet the complex demands of an expanding human population is leading the race in the destruction of habitats and overexploitation of wildlife. At present, agriculture occupies about one-third of the Earth’s total land area and accounts for almost 70 per cent of water use.

The Living Planet Report 2016 outlines solutions to reform the way we produce and consume food to help ensure that the world is well-fed in a sustainable way. The report also focuses on the fundamental changes required in the global energy and finance systems to meet the sustainability needs of future generations.

Pushing the planet to its limits
Living Planet Report 2016 draws on leading research about the scale and impact of human activity on our planet. One such framework, developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in collaboration with partners, demonstrates that humanity has surpassed four out of nine Planetary Boundaries – safe thresholds for critical Earth system processes that maintain life on the planet.

In a special foreword in the report, Planetary Boundaries lead researcher Johan Rockström underlines the need for an urgent transition to a world that works within Earth’s safe operating space.

The report also features research from the Global Footprint Network that shows that while we only have one Earth, humanity is currently using the resources of 1.6 planets to provide the goods and services we use each year.

“No matter how you add it up, the math does not look good. The more we continue to exceed Earth’s limits, the more damage we do to our own future,” said Lambertini. “We are at a decisive moment in time when we can seize the solutions to steer our food, energy and finance systems in a more sustainable direction.”

Charting the way forward
The WWF report demonstrates that we need to rethink how we produce, consume, measure success and value the natural environment.

Adequately protecting the environment alongside economic and social development requires an urgent system change by individuals, businesses and governments to move from a short-sighted approach to a visionary approach that values future generations.

In one example, the report shows how smallholder farmers in Kenya work with local authorities and the food industry to manage the natural resources of Lake Naivasha, the country’s second largest freshwater body, a biodiversity hotspot and a significant contributor to its GDP.

The report also illustrates the positive momentum that is building by highlighting recent global agreements on climate change and sustainable development. In particular, the report recognizes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as an essential guide to decision-making that can ensure that the environment is valued alongside economic and social interests.

“A strong natural environment is the key to defeating poverty, improving health and developing a just and prosperous future. We have proven that we know what it takes to build a resilient planet for future generations, we just need to act on that knowledge,” Lambertini added.

Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience in a new era is the eleventh edition of WWF’s biennial flagship publication. The report tracks over 14,000 vertebrate populations of over 3,700 species from 1970 to 2012.

bookmark_borderCities Sink Faster Than Seas Rise

Posted on by admin

Are sea levels rising due to global warming? Yes. Coastal cities are getting a double whammy.

NASA reports: a review article published by a team of scientists who recently assembled in New Orleans, La., and in Venice, Italy, to examine the problem. Extraction of groundwater or fossil fuels, and sometimes simply generations of farming, are causing large metropolitan areas in coastal zones around the world to subside surprisingly quickly—making the relative rise of adjacent seas an even greater potential hazard.

“Sea level rise is a problem, and subsidence is a huge problem, too,” said Cathleen Jones, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena who specializes in such hazards and is a member of the New Orleans team.

“There are areas where it is happening more rapidly than sea level rise,” she said. “I think it is not fully appreciated how much greater subsidence is in some of these areas, and how much it contributes to the loss of wetlands.”

Rapid subsidence makes many of these areas more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, especially those at elevations less than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level. Several of these qualify as “megacities,” with populations greater than 10 million.

The most threatened: large river deltas, home to an estimated 500 million people. The fastest subsidence rate, 250 millimeters or nearly 10 inches per year, was seen in China’s Huanghe Delta. Southeast Asia saw 30 to 60 millimeters (1.2 to 2.4 inches) per year, while Katrina-ravaged portions of New Orleans saw rates as high as 35 millimeters (1.4 inches) per year.

The article, published in July 2016 in Earth and Space Science News, reports the group’s findings from New Orleans, where they held the first of two workshops. The city is part of the subsiding Mississippi Delta, a cause of wetland loss and the degradation of barrier islands, which, in turn, poses a threat to coastal ecosystems—as well as risks to human populations and infrastructure. Groundwater extraction and drainage of peat-rich soils, the article says, are to blame.
Dropping delta

The Sacramento River Bay Delta, though not mentioned in the report, is another site of severe subsidence, Jones said.

“It’s a bigger problem than sea level rise in the Sacramento delta,” she said. “Subsidence is largely driven there by the lowering water table. You have crops to grow; whenever you dry out soil with high carbon content, it will oxidize. It gives off carbon dioxide, loses mass and compacts. There, sea level rise is just a minor influence on it at this time. I’m not saying to ignore it, but right now these areas are threatened more by subsidence.”

While both human and natural factors contribute to subsidence, the natural processes—apart from tectonic disturbances—mostly act over very long timescales. Human causes appear to be driving the most rapid subsidence rates.

Lead author Mead Allison of the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge, Jones and the rest of the 12-member science team advocate the creation of “supersites” around the world, like the one being assembled in New Orleans, to track a variety of contributors to subsidence.

At these sites, remote sensing would be combined with ground sensor networks to track subsidence over years. In New Orleans, that has in the past included use of the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) instrument aboard JPL’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) aircraft, gathering data there during 2009-2015.

“(We want) to try to start getting more of these supersites, where we try to differentiate all the different contributions,” Jones said. “So that instead of just measuring subsidence overall, we try to figure out what parts are sediment loading, what parts (are other factors). Whenever we know how much comes from each of these, we can begin to implement policy that would remediate the ones that are anthropogenic in origin.”

bookmark_borderClimate Change, Extreme Weather and Toxic Crops

Posted on by admin

by Daniel Brouse

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a report that examines how climate change is increasing the toxicity of crops.

Crop Toxicity
Extreme weather events, such as “drought and high temperatures, can trigger the accumulation in crops of chemical compounds that are toxic to animals and humans.”

The report goes on to say: Wheat, barley, maize (corn) and millet are among the crops most susceptible to nitrate accumulation, which is caused by prolonged drought. Acute nitrate poisoning in animals can lead to miscarriage, asphyxiation and death, ruining the lives of smallholder farmers and herders.

Heavy rains that break prolonged drought can also result in the dangerous accumulation of another toxic compound called hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid in crops like flax, maize, sorghum, arrow grass, cherries and apples.

Aflatoxins, which are fungal toxins that can cause cancer and stunt foetal growth, are another emerging problem in crops. The risk of aflatoxin contamination, especially in maize, is expected to increase in higher latitudes due to rising temperatures. A recent study predicts that this toxin will become a food safety issue for Europe, especially in the most likely scenario of a 2oC rise in global temperatures.

The report highlights two critical issues associated with climate change – loss and damage. Given the delays in the last 25 years in mitigating and adapting to climate change, scientific evidence suggests that losses and damages from climate change are inevitable, with profound consequences for ecosystems, people, assets and economies. This is already happening. The heat waves of 2003 are a good example of what happens when efforts to mitigate and adapt to changes in the climate fail: 30,000 people died, glaciers decreased, permafrost thawed and the European Union’s agricultural sector lost $14.7 billion.

bookmark_borderTemperature Reaches 123 Degrees in India

Posted on by admin

The temperature went over 123 degrees (50C) in India. This was the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

“Fishermen are advised not to venture into the sea along and off Tamil Nadu and Puducherry during the next 24 hours, along and off Andhra Pradesh coast during the next 48 hours and also and off the Odisha coast on 19th and 20th of May,” the IMD (India Meteorological Department) said in an advisory on Wednesday. –

Deutsche Welle reported, “The heat wave comes as India suffers its worst drought in decades, affecting around 330 million people. Drinking water is running short in many areas and poor rains have prompted the central government to send water trains to regions affected by drought. Hundreds of people have died and crops have been destroyed in several states.”

bookmark_borderAlaska Continues to Break Records

Posted on by admin

NOAA reports:
During the first third of the year, January–April, the average temperature for the contiguous United States was 4.0 degrees F above the 20th-century average, making this period the second warmest on record. Alaska continues to break records for the warmest year to date on record, while 34 states across the West, Great Plains, Midwest and Northeast were much warmer than average. The year-to-date average precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 0.45 inch above the 20th-century average.

The BBC reports:
April was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records, NASA figures show.

Last month smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever, the data show.

That makes it three months in a row that the monthly record was broken by the largest margin ever.

But in terms of its departure from the 1951-1980 temperature average used by Nasa, April was equal with January 2016.

“All of these record breaking temperatures and attendant implications that we have had, such as record breaking fires for example, and droughts in India are all reminders that we cannot afford to do anything except to accelerate the solution agenda – we absolutely have no other option but to accelerate.”