Climate Crisis: Our Last Chance
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What the super-rich think about an apocalyptic future…
Business-as-usual
Can we take this report from Australia as indicative of what others are doing?
22 of Australia’s largest companies, worth a combined $121bn and representing 7% of the value of the Australian stock exchange, are actively working to undermine the Paris agreement targets, betting shareholders’ money on strategies that assume global climate change action fails. The Market Forces report singled out “coal cowboys” Whitehaven and New Hope, which it said had plans to establish new coalmines, or expand existing ones, based on forecasts that assume the failure of Paris. Oil and gas companies Woodside, Santos and Oil Search had each “faced increased investor engagement over climate change in recent years, but this has done nothing to dissuade their plans to increase fossil fuel production”, the report said.
“A handful of Australian companies are undermining efforts to limit global warming by pursuing new fossil fuel projects, or basing their business plans on energy projection scenarios that would doom the Paris agreement to failure,” the report says. “These companies have now been given more than three years to align their business with the Paris goals, but have dismissed the notion.”
The study also determined that 199 ASX300 companies, representing 64% of total market capitalisation, faced heightened transitional climate risk but had not yet demonstrated business strategies consistent with the Paris agreement.There were 143 companies with policies “not overtly inconsistent with Paris”, and just eight had aligned their strategy with the agreement.
Around three-quarters of US coal production is now more expensive than solar and wind energy in providing electricity to American households, according to a new study. By 2025 the picture becomes even clearer, with nearly the entire US coal system out-competed on cost by wind and solar,
“Even without major policy shift we will continue to see coal retire pretty rapidly,” said Mike O’Boyle, the co-author of the report for Energy Innovation, a renewables analysis firm. “Our analysis shows that we can move a lot faster to replace coal with wind and solar. The fact that so much coal could be retired right now shows we are off the pace.”
Half of all US coalmines have shut down over the past decade.
“Coal is on its way out,” said Curtis Morgan, the chief executive of Vistra Energy, a major Texas-based coal plant owner. “More and more plants are being retired.”
Yet, projections are that US carbon dioxide emissions from energy will remain similar to current levels until 2050.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/25/coal-more-expensive-wind-solar-us-energy-study
Meanwhile, we have programme after programme on TV about endangered wildlife and how something must be done. The presenters are all sincere, well-meaning people but can’t see past the ‘do your bit’ mentality. Attenborough included. I feel like screaming at them.
Though I daresay any attempt to point to the real cause of the problems, and the real solution, if it occurred to them at all, would be quickly edited out of the script.
Further to the decline of coal, it is not all what it appears to be.
“…Globally coal use in power stations was up by nearly a third, and together gas and coal were responsible for nearly 70% of the growth in energy consumption, and Asia is now responsible for the majority of coal-fired power generation globally, and the average age of power plants there is now just 12 years, meaning they have decades to go before reaching their planned end of production in about 30 to 50 years.
Gas consumption in the US leapt by 10%, or the equivalent of the UK’s entire gas consumption in a year. Fracking has been a key driver, and oil production in the US also grew.
“We have seen an extraordinary increase in global energy demand in 2018, growing at its fastest pace this decade,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said. “Last year can also be considered another golden year for gas. But despite major growth in renewables, global emissions are still rising, demonstrating once again that more urgent action is needed on all fronts.” He called for greater development of non-fossil fuel energy sources, action from governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and investment in the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, as ways to reduce the impact of energy production on climate change….”
Yet again, one wonders where is the end of business-as-usual and the implementation of any urgency in policies, that underpins all those optimistic scientist projections?
As the planet heats up, much of the energy rise involves cooling it down.
(On a personal point, my air-con eats up electric and is simply unaffordable to run as we would wish.)
Getting to the nub of the question is an issue. Pix and mix research?
Another report on coal power stations contradicting the last message and confirming the previous.
The number of coal-fired power plants being developed around the world has collapsed in the last three years, according to a report. The number of plants on which construction has begun each year has fallen by 84% since 2015, and 39% in 2018 alone, while the number of completed plants has dropped by more than half since 2015.
The falling costs of renewable energy are pricing coal out of the electricity market, more than 100 financial institutions have blacklisted coal producers, and political action to cut carbon emissions is growing.
“It’s only a matter of time before coal is a thing of the past worldwide,” said one of the report’s authors, Neha Mathew-Shah, of the Sierra Club.
Christine Shearer, of Global Energy Monitor, said even emissions from the existing coal plants were incompatible with keeping global warming below 2C. “We need to radically phase down coal plant use over the next decade to keep on track for Paris climate goals,” she said.
However, the report warns of a possible coal plant resurgence in China, where satellite photos show developers have restarted work on dozens of suspended projects.
China and India have accounted for 85% of new coal power capacity since 2005, according to the Global Energy Monitor report. China permitted construction for the generation of less than 5GW of coal power in 2018, compared with 184GW in 2015. India permitted less than 3GW in 2018, compared with 39GW in 2010. India has added more solar and wind power capacity than coal over the last two years. However, a report by the China Electricity Council, which represents the power utilities, proposes allowing 290GW of new capacity, more than the entire US coal fleet.
Lauri Myllyvirta, of Greenpeace, said: “Another coal power construction spree in China would be near impossible to reconcile with the emission reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.”Yet another report that sides with the School Strikers that governments are underplaying the seriousness and the urgency required about climate change.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47723577
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that the physical and financial impacts of global warming are accelerating. Record greenhouse gas levels are driving temperatures to “increasingly dangerous levels”, it says. “We know that if the current trajectory for greenhouse gas concentrations continues, temperatures may increase by 3 – 5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and we have already reached 1 degree.”
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, wrote in the preface to the report, “There is no longer any time for delay,”
Is this hyperbole when he echoes the opinion of Extinction Rebellion?
Earlier this week the International Energy Agency published worrying data, indicating that in 2018 carbon emissions were up 1.7%, as a result of the fastest growth in energy use in the last six years.
Nevertheless, the UK government applauds its own success.
Emissions across the UK have fallen by 3% over the last year, the equivalent the government says, of taking 5 million cars off the road. Factors driving UK emissions down include the fact that coal was the source of just 5% of electricity in 2018. The government now says that carbon emissions are at their lowest level since before the turn of the 20th century, when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
But we know GLOBAL warming is a GLOBAL problem and requires a GLOBAL fix.
Half a billion more people could be at risk from mosquito-transmitted diseases within 30 years as a result of the warming climate, according to a new study.
Canada and parts of northern Europe could be newly exposed to the threat. People there could come into contact with yellow fever, Zika, dengue and chikungunya, as well as other emerging diseases.
The study, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, finds that humans could prevent the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes if they aggressively take actions to combat global warming.”“People who contract diseases from mosquitoes while traveling can return home and transmit them to local mosquitoes, spreading them further.”
I got told this over 40 years ago when I needed Yellow Fever shots and a little card to prove i have had them for travel. The nurse in conversation said it was not so much for my own benefit but to stop me coming back and contaminating local mosquitos.
Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer.
Earth is likely to take millions of years to recover from the destruction currently being inflicted by humanity, scientists have warned.
A “speed limit” on the rate of evolution means it will take at least 10 million years for the world’s diversity to return to pre-human levels, according to a new study.
More bad news
A new research paper by American and European climate scientists focused on Arctic warming published Monday reveals that the “smoking gun” when it comes to changes in the world’s northern polar region is rapidly warming air temperatures that are having—and will continue to have—massive and negative impacts across the globe.
The new paper—titled “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017″—is the work of scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen (GUES).
“Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America, and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions. Another example is the disruption of the ocean circulation that can further destabilize climate: for example, cooling across northwestern Europe and strengthening of storms.”
Is the world going to be following Norway’s example?
Looking at pics of climate change protests I notice the SWP have not lost their technique of flooding a march with their Socialist Worker placards
Ocean researchers are asking themselves if they’re witnessing the transformation of an ecosystem. The Bering Sea last winter saw record-low sea ice. Climate models predicted less ice, but not this soon, said Seth Danielson, a physical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“The projections were saying we would’ve hit situations similar to what we saw last year, but not for another 40 or 50 years,” Danielson said.
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