How Hard Is It to Quit Coal? For Germany, 18 Years and $44 Billion (excerpt): NYT

An open-pit coal mine and power plant

 in Schophoven, Germany, this week. 

Credit...Federico Gambarini/DPA/

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Germany announced on Thursday that it would spend $44.5 billion to quit coal — but not for another 18 years, by 2038.

The move shows how expensive it is to stop burning the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel, despite a broad consensus that keeping coal in the ground is vital to averting a climate crisis, and how politically complicated it is.

Coal, when burned, produces huge amounts of the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for global warming.

Germany doesn’t have shale gas, as the United States does, which

Resistance to the Adani Coal Mine in Australia

has led to the rapid decline of coal use in America, despite President Trump’s support for coal. Germany also faces intense opposition to nuclear power. After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, that opposition prompted the government to start shutting down the country’s nuclear plants, a transition that should be complete by 2022.

The money announced Thursday is to be spent on compensating workers, companies and the four coal producing states — three in the country’s east and one in the west. It followed months of negotiations between regional officials and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.

Germany’s timetable, though, could present challenges to the European Union’s efforts to swiftly cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as the bloc’s new leadership has announced. Countries around the world are watching how quickly the 28-country union, which, taken together is currently the third-largest emitter of planet-warming gases, can reduce its carbon footprint. Germany is the largest economy in the European Union.

Go to NYT article

By Somini Sengupta and Melissa Eddy, Jan. 16, 2020 

Related: The Observer view on the climate catastrophe facing Earth : The Guardian

 

NZ rated 'insufficient' on climate action, again (excerpt): Stuff

New Zealand abandoned policies that would have made a difference, 

like electrifying the Government fleet, notes the report.

"New Zealand won’t be carbon neutral by 2050 without much stronger policies, says an independent analysis by Climate Action Tracker.

The non-profit highlighted a lack of active policies for cutting methane, spurring electric vehicles and boosting renewable energy.

Despite capping emissions, reforming the Emissions Trading

methane

Scheme, and passing the Zero Carbon Act, the Government is well off track for meeting a climate goal of curbing heating below 2 degrees Celsius, let alone 1.5C (the goal of the Zero Carbon Act), the analysis says.

Our target under the Paris Agreement is rated “insufficient” – the same as last year. Climate Action Tracker says if all countries followed our example, the world would reach 3C hotter than pre-industrial levels.

New Zealand joins Australia, the European Union, Mexico and others in the insufficient group. India and the Philippines are among the small group rated compliant with a 2C goal or better.

On the positive side, a combination of new Government policies and lockdown brought New Zealand’s expected emissions in 2030 down 8-17 per cent from where they were headed last year, and the 2020 projections down 14-23 per cent."

Eloise Gibson10:41, Aug 05 2020

Related: Gillard on climate action: “It was done. And … we can do it again in the future”: RenewEconomy

New Zealand, carbon, Paris Agreement, #jailclimatecriminals, #climateaction, #bigbusiness, 

 

Video - Impact of climate change on Australian industries: CNBC

Sadly, at the federal government level in Australia, there is a lack of political will and action when it comes to climate change, Martin Rice, acting CEO at the Climate Council told CNBC. 

Subscribe to CNBC Life: http://cnb.cx/2wAkfMv 

Subscribe to CNBC International: http://cnb.cx/2gft82z

Related:

Australia's Climate Council- Worth Checking Out the Website

 

video, Great Barrier Reef, jobs, tourism, #drought, #renewables, energy storage, electricity, carbon, Climate Council, #stranded assets

 

 

 

False Solutions to Climate Change: Agriculture: Resilience

"A veritable cornucopia of false solutions is being pushed these days, not only by corporations and think tanks but by the UN’s IPCC, the international body responsible for research and action on climate.  We could have made a gentle transition if we had begun when we first became aware of this problem decades ago, but for various reasons we did not. There is no time left for barking up one wrong tree after another; no time to waste in false solutions. Hence this series pointing out the fallacies behind such proposals as electrifying everything, carbon trading, geoengineering or switching to “gas—the clean energy fuel!”

I’ve divided the issue into sectors: electricity generation, transportation, agriculture, buildings, and then there are two sections on false solutions that aren’t part of an energy sector—geoengineering schemes, and some other policy options. Finally, we look at real solutions. I am not an expert on anything except maybe gardening, so my hope is to spur discussion.

Part 3: The Agricultural Sector"

Read the excellent complete Resilience article

Stanford Study Says Renewable Power Eliminates Argument for Using Carbon Capture with Fossil Fuels: DESMOG

New research from Stanford University professor Mark Z. Jacobson questions the climate and health benefits of carbon capture technology against simply switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Carbon capture technology is premised on two possible approaches to reducing climate pollution: removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere anywhere in the world, an approach generally known as direct air capture, or removing it directly from the emissions source, such as the smoke stack of a fossil fuel power plant.

We can’t keep eating as we are – why isn’t the IPCC shouting this from the rooftops? The Guardian

by George Monbiot

"It’s a tragic missed opportunity. The new report on land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shies away from the big issues and fails to properly represent the science. As a result, it gives us few clues about how we might survive the century. Has it been nobbled? Was the fear of taking on the farming industry – alongside the oil and coal companies whose paid shills have attacked it so fiercely – too much to bear? At the moment, I have no idea. But what the panel has produced is pathetic. 

 

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production.

The second accounting method is more important. This could be described as the capital account: how does farming compare to the natural ecosystems that would otherwise have occupied the land? A paper published in Nature last year, but not mentioned by the IPCC, sought to count this cost. Please read these figures carefully. They could change your life."

Go to The Guardian article

Rapid permafrost thaw unrecognized threat to landscape, global warming researcher warns: PHYSORG

A "sleeping giant" hidden in permafrost soils in Canada and other northern regions worldwide will have important consequences for global warming, says a new report led by University of Guelph scientist Merritt Turetsky. 

Scientists have long studied how gradual permafrost thaw occurring over decades in centimetres of surface soils will influence carbon release to the atmosphere. But Turetsky and an international team of researchers are looking at something very different: rapid collapse of permafrost that can transform the landscape in mere months through subsidence, flooding and landslides.


"We are watching this sleeping giant wake up right in front of our eyes," said Turetsky, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Integrative Ecology.

Read the PHYSORG article

British MP calls for immediate climate emergency declaration by government.

Green Party of England & Wales

Published on Apr 2, 2019

"We need a green new deal.."

"It can't be dealt with tomorrow or the day after." 

"It is the number one issue. Not Brexit. Not economic growth."

Related: Urunga NSW: Very affected by sea level rise.

Be a patriot, eat less beef: grist

click to enlarge

As Josh Harkinson noted this week, cows are the United States’ single biggest source of methane — a potent gas that has 105 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide. That’s one major reason why beef’s greenhouse gas footprint is far higher than that of most other sources of protein, according to an EWG study. (Though it’s consumed at a fraction of the rate of beef or chicken, lamb is by far the most carbon intensive of the major meats, according to EWG, since the animal’s smaller body produces meat less efficiently but still produces a lot of methane.)

And EWG’s estimate of beef’s impact may actually be on the conservative side: A study released this week found the greenhouse gases associated with beef to be even higher.



So what should you eat instead of beef? One answer: Chicken, which has a carbon footprint roughly a fifth the size of beef’s.
Read grist article 

#veganism  #vegetarianism  #carbon footprint  #greenhouse gases  #meat  #chicken  #methane 

See also New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

CCR: COP24: Capricious foes, Big Sister and high-carbon plutocrats

"If you ignore rising emissions from aviation and shipping along with those related to the UK’s imports and exports, a chirpy yarn can be told. But then why not omit cars, cement production and other so-called “hard to decarbonise” sectors? In reality, since 1990 carbon dioxide emissions associated with operating UK plc. have, in any meaningful sense, remained stubbornly static.[1] But let’s not just pick on the UK. The same can be said of many self-avowed climate-progressive nations, Denmark, France and Sweden amongst them. And then there’s evergreen Norway with emissions up 50% since 1990.
Sadly the subterfuge of these supposed progressives was conveniently hidden behind the new axis of climate-evil emerging in Katowice[2]: Trump’s USA; MBS’s Saudi; Putin’s Russia; and the Emir’s Kuwait – with Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, quietly sniggering from the side-lines. But surely no one really expected more from this quintet of regressives. It’s the self-proclaimed paragons of virtue where the real intransigence (or absence of imagination) truly resides. When it comes to commitments made in Paris, the list of climate villains extends far and wide – with few if any world leaders escaping the net."

Read the full Climate Code Red article 

#carbonemissions  #Sweden  #France  #aviation emissions  #cementproductionemissions

A Carbon Capture and Storage Plant

#carboncapture #carbonemissions #renewableenergy #climatecriminals #climatedeniers

WEF: Climate change is making our food less nutritious

Vital crops from wheat to rice are at risk of becoming less nutritious due to rising carbon levels.

Image: REUTERS/Desmond Boylan DB/jk

"Rising carbon emissions could make vital food crops from wheat to rice less nutritious and endanger the health of hundreds of millions of the world's poorest, scientists said on Monday.

Certain staple crops grown in open fields with elevated carbon dioxide levels had up to 17 percent lower levels of protein, iron and zinc compared to those grown amid less of the gas, according to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change."

Read WEF article.

Video: What is climate change? - Met Office climate change guide

Met Office - Weather  Published on Mar 11, 2011

 

The Earth's climate has changed many times in response to natural factors. But over the course of the last century we have seen an unusual rise in the average global temperature that can not be explained by natural causes alone. Here we explain what aspects of our climate are changing and what may be causing these changes.  

 

More information can be found online at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-c...

New York Times: Can Dirt Save the Earth?

Agriculture could pull carbon out of the air and into the soil — but it would mean a whole new way of thinking about how to tend the land.

By MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFFAPRIL 18, 2018

"Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, agricultural practices and animal husbandry have released an estimated 135 gigatons — 135 billion metric tons — of carbon into the atmosphere, according to Rattan Lal, a soil scientist at Ohio State University. Even at current rates, that’s more than a decade’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from all human sources. The world is warming not only because fossil fuels are being burned, but also because soils, forests and wetlands are being ravaged."

Read New York Times article