BOM: Hiding Australia’s Very Hot Past
via Principia Scientific International
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In the US, NOAA hides the heat of the 1930’s by tampering with data, but BOM takes a different approach. They simply erase all pre-1910 temperatures.
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via Principia Scientific International http://ift.tt/1kjWLPW
June 9, 2017 at 07:09AM
WaPo: US Solar Industry Is Much More Afraid Of China Than Of Trump
via Climate Change Dispatch
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President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement isn’t nearly as much of a problem for the U.S. solar industry as Chinese trade practices, The Washington Post reported Friday. Stiff competition from heavily subsidized Chinese-made solar panels is hurting U.S. solar panel makers. When compared to this issue, WaPo says that Trump’s withdrawal from […]
via Climate Change Dispatch http://ift.tt/2jXMFWN
June 9, 2017 at 06:48AM
Canada Shows Commitment To Fighting Global Warming By Asking China To Invest In Its Oil Industry
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com
Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr hopes that Chinese investment into oil sands development will reboot the struggling sector after losing $22.5 billion in foreign capital in the last six months, Reuters reported.
“We think there are opportunities and we laid out, along with experts from industry, what we believe to be opportunities for them,” Carr told reporters on a Thursday conference call.
“We would welcome investment from any nation that’s interested in the oil sands,” Carr said. “The trend of capital flows over the last little while has been international investors have been looking at their opportunities and decided to spread their resources, whereas Canadian investors have stepped up.”
Alberta’s oil sands reserves are the third largest in the world, but aren’t economical to produce at $50 a barrel. Oil sands have also been targeted by environmental activists bent on keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
In fact, the Obama administration denied the building of the Keystone XL pipeline on the grounds it would tarnish America’s image as a leader in the fight against global warming. Keystone XL would have shipped Albertan oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com
June 9, 2017 at 06:39AM
Coal As ‘Clean’ As Natural Gas?
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
http://www.thegwpf.com
A Japanese company claims to have developed a new coal-burning technology that boosts coal’s energy efficiency by 30 percent while reducing its carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 40 percent. Unlike conventional plants, which burn coal at around 700 degrees Celsius, the Osaka Coolgen plant roasts coal at more than 1,300 degrees Celsius while simultaneously blowing oxygen over it to convert the solid fuel into a gas. The plant also uses exhaust heat to generate power, and it extracts hydrogen from the gas to use in fuel cells to create electricity.
Using conventional technologies, burning enough bituminous coal to produce 1 million british thermal units (BTUs) emits 205 pounds of carbon dioxide. If the new technology reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent, that would cut emissions to roughly 123 pounds. Getting the same energy yield from natural gas emits 117 pounds of carbon dioxide.
Last year the electricity generated from natural gas accounted for the largest share of total U.S. electric power generation (33.8 percent), surpassing coal’s share (30.4 percent) for the first time ever. In fact, America’s electric power sector burned 677 million tons of coal in 2016, the lowest amount since 1984.
Meanwhile, the American price of coal per million BTUs has recently fallen below that of natural gas. Could this new technology spark a resurgence of coal mining and a boost in employment for miners?
Probably not for now. Osaka Coolgen estimates that its new plants would cost 20 percent more to build than conventional coal-fired facilities. In the United States, the levelized cost for conventional coal plants ranges between $60 to $143 per megawatt/hour; for gas combined cycle plants, by contrast, the range is $48 to $78. Given these costs, power generation companies are unlikely to build new coal-fired plants in the U.S. using the new Japanese technology.
Coal mining productivity rose from 1.93 tons per miner-hour in 1980 to 6.28 short tons per miner-hour in 2015. Thanks largely to automation, employment in the industry fell from 242,000 in 1980 to 102,000 in 2015. So even if demand for coal increases, the effect of on mining employment in the U.S. would be small.
On the other hand, countries like China and India, which have abundant supplies of coal, could find the new power generation technology useful if they intend to lower the rate of increase in their carbon dioxide emissions, fulfilling their pledges under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) http://www.thegwpf.com
June 9, 2017 at 06:32AM
