Pledging Climate Fidelity

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Climate change/global warmers believers are swearing oaths and taking pledges to show fidelity to the UN IPCC and Paris accord.  The ceremony goes by the name We Are Still In.  Adherents sign this document:

Open letter to the international community and parties to the Paris Agreement from U.S. state, local, and business leaders (Full text here)

The creed asserts the following:
Fighting climate change brings significant economic and public health benefits, but
No mention of trillions of dollars of someone’s money to be spent
Ignores research showing warming saves lives.

Paris accord will avoid the most dangerous and costly effects of climate change, but
If all nations comply, it could mean only 0.2C less warming by 2100.

The U.S. will remain a global leader in reducing emissions, but
Presumes killing the economy as in last recession
Fails to credit fracking revolution
Exported energy emissions are charged to others.

The global effort will hold warming to well below 2℃, but
Up to 2℃ is net beneficial
Achieving NDCs, especially China’s and India’s won’t bend the curve.

The transition to a clean energy economy will accelerate, but
Renewables are not low-carbon, are costly and unreliable.

The following statement was released today by the presidents of 12 major U.S. research universities, commonly referred to as the “Ivy-Plus” group. (Full text here)

Affirmation of leading research universities’ commitment to progress on climate change 

The climate is changing largely due to human activity, but
No one has yet proven how much warming humans cause.

The consequences of climate change are accelerating, but
All metrics show climate effects are within normal ranges.

The imperative of a low carbon future is increasingly urgent, but
Changes to natural conditions are not accelerating.

Research will advance evidence-based understanding of the causes and effects of climate change on the environment, the economy and public health, and developing solutions, but
Presently our knowledge of the climate system does not allow us to predict its behavior.

Summary

The last point is the only difference between the “Wearestillin” crowd and the “Ivy-Plus”.  The latter leaves the door open to actually study how the climate changes naturally, that is, to gain knowledge of how internal natural processes cause multi-decadal effects upon temperature and precipitation.  So far the IPCC has willfully stayed ignorant of that need to know.

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June 21, 2017 at 09:18AM

Bacteria samples collected in Antarctica a century ago nearly identical to present day samples

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A pair of researchers with the Natural History Museum of London and the University of Waikato have found that bacteria living in a part of Antarctica have not changed much over the past century. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Anne Jungblut and Ian Hawes describe how they compared the […]

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June 21, 2017 at 09:06AM

Study finds: Corn better used as food than biofuel

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From the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN and the “don’t burn your food” department.

Corn is grown not only for food, it is also an important renewable energy source. Renewable biofuels can come with hidden economic and environmental issues, and the question of whether corn is better utilized as food or as a biofuel has persisted since ethanol came into use. For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois have quantified and compared these issues in terms of economics of the entire production system to determine if the benefits of biofuel corn outweigh the costs.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Praveen Kumar and graduate student Meredith Richardson published their findings in the journal Earth’s Future.

As part of a National Science Foundation project that is studying the environmental impact of agriculture in the U.S., the Illinois group introduced a comprehensive view of the agricultural system, called critical zone services, to analyze crops’ impacts on the environment in monetary terms.

“The critical zone is the permeable layer of the landscape near the surface that stretches from the top of the vegetation down to the groundwater,” Kumar said. “The human energy and resource input involved in agriculture production alters the composition of the critical zone, which we are able to convert into a social cost.”

To compare the energy efficiency and environmental impacts of corn production and processing for food and for biofuel, the researchers inventoried the resources required for corn production and processing, then determined the economic and environmental impact of using these resources – all defined in terms of energy available and expended, and normalized to cost in U.S. dollars.

“There are a lot of abstract concepts to contend with when discussing human-induced effects in the critical zone in agricultural areas,” Richardson said. “We want to present it in a way that will show the equivalent dollar value of the human energy expended in agricultural production and how much we gain when corn is used as food versus biofuel.”

Kumar and Richardson accounted for numerous factors in their analysis, including assessing the energy required to prepare and maintain the landscape for agricultural production for corn and its conversion to biofuel. Then, they quantified the environmental benefits and impacts in terms of critical zone services, representing the effects on the atmosphere, water quality and corn’s societal value, both as food and fuel.

In monetary terms, their results show that the net social and economic worth of food corn production in the U.S. is $1,492 per hectare, versus a $10 per hectare loss for biofuel corn production.

“One of the key factors lies in the soil,” Richardson said. The assessment considered both short-term and long-term effects, such as nutrients and carbon storage in the soil.

“We found that most of the environmental impacts came from soil nutrient fluxes. Soil’s role is often overlooked in this type of assessment, and viewing the landscape as a critical zone forces us to include that,” Richardson said.

“Using corn as a fuel source seems to be an easy path to renewable energy,” said Richard Yuretich, the NSF program director for Critical Zone Observatories. “However, this research shows that the environmental costs are much greater, and the benefits fewer, than using corn for food.”

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The National Science Foundation supported this research through the Grants for Intensively Managed Landscapes Critical Zone Observatory.

 

The paper “Critical zone services as environmental assessment criteria in intensively managed landscapes” is available online

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June 21, 2017 at 09:05AM

Britain’s Dependence On Russian And Norwegian Gas Increasing

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
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Already buffeted by political chaos at home and abroad, the U.K. gas market must now operate without its biggest stabilizing force: the giant Rough gas storage facility under the North Sea.

The planned permanent shutdown of the Centrica Plc site, able to meet 10 percent of peak demand in winter, means Britain is becoming even more reliant on imports of liquefied natural gas or pipeline fuel from Russia and Norway. That sets up the possibility that traders would have to outbid Japan, the world’s biggest LNG buyer, and others to keep millions of homes warm.

Political uncertainty is making the supply game even riskier, with rules for international gas pipelines clouded in mystery as the U.K. negotiates an exit from the European Union. And the diplomatic crisis this month involving Qatar, the nation’s largest LNG supplier, caused gas prices in Britain to jump the most since January as two tankers were diverted.

“It takes two weeks for a cargo of LNG to arrive from Qatar, which is not a politically stable place right now,” Graham Freedman, principal analyst for European gas and power at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in London, said by phone.“That does raise the political implications quite a lot, along with Brexit. So it’s a perfect storm in terms of security of supply for the U.K.”

Last winter as much as 94 percent of the country’s gas came from sources other than storage. More than half of that was imports, mainly through pipelines from Norway. Statoil ASA, Norway’s state-owned producer, has repeatedly said it doesn’t plan to significantly boost exports, but can divert more fuel to Britain if needed.

The U.K.’s LNG imports may increase by 39 percent next year as new plants will come online, according to Energy Aspects Ltd. Its May forecast already took into account the expectation that Rough wouldn’t return to service.

Yet predictions of a wave of LNG coming to Europe have previously proven to be premature. Supply was expected to build up last year but demand in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America raised prices in those areas and diverted cargoes.

Japan Prices

Japan paid more than $16 per million British thermal units for LNG in 2012 through 2014, a premium of more than 60 percent to U.K. prices. The share of LNG as a percentage of total winter gas supply in the U.K. actually fell more than 50 percent over the past two winters, to 4 percent of the total, according to National Grid Plc data.

To gain a sliver of the supply, the U.K. would have to start competing on price, according to Deepa Venkateswaran, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd.

The closure of Rough would put “greater upward pressure on gas prices to divert LNG cargoes to the U.K.” during a cold snap, she said.

LNG cargoes also take time to arrive, which can hurt during severe cold snaps. Earlier this month, two cargoes to the U.K. were suddenly diverted to a longer route around Africa, nearly doubling the journey time. Qatar Petroleum said it’s business as usual.

If all imports were to suddenly stop, the U.K. would only have access to 10 days worth of natural gas, compared with 24 days when the Rough was operating. By comparison, Germany and France each have more than 100 days of fuel stored, according to Wood Mackenzie.

“This leaves U.K. pretty exposed,” Freedman said.

U.K. domestic production accounted for nearly 40 percent of winter gas supply in Britain last winter, according to the National Grid. Output has been falling since 2000 because fields in the continental shelf are being depleted, also increasing the need for foreign supply.

In previous years, the U.K. has also relied on Europe’s largest gas field, Groningen, located in the Netherlands to meet shortages. Output from that field has been slashedbecause production is causing earthquakes that are endangering nearby residents.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com

June 21, 2017 at 08:44AM