Thoughts on 10 Questions about Climate Change from Australia

Over recent weeks one of the major Australian newspapers (The Melbourne Age) has asked readers to submit questions on climate change and at the same time opened a poll so that all readers could vote on the questions they most wanted to see answered. The newspaper pledged to investigate and attempt to answer the top ten questions. The poll closed last weekend and the questions are now in. As promised, The Age has started to answer them. Without getting too lengthy and also drawing on many previous postings (so excuse the links), here are some thoughts from me on the ten questions (with abbreviated questions as headings – but click here to see the full questions:

1. Can Australia make a difference by taking action?

While it is true that Australian emissions are small on a global scale and that therefore even reducing them to zero wouldn’t be sufficient to affect levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, this isn’t a reason not to take action. Climate change is a collective issue, a tragedy of the commons, which requires collective action to solve. No one country, region or industrial sector can solve this unilaterally. Even if the big three, China, the USA and the major EU economies acted alone (with China reaching a plateau in the short term and then reducing by 50% by 2050 and the US and EU reducing by 80% by 2050), global emissions would plateau at best assuming that the rest of the world emissions grew by no more than 1.5% per annum over the next 40 years (in fact they have been growing at well over 2% p.a. over recent decades). So this issue needs a response from all nations, including Australia.

Will Australia inspire other nations? This isn’t the primary motivation of acting and in any case many nations around the world are beginning to move on this issue and take action. The responses still vary widely, but they are underway. For example, Canada is developing legislation to stop the further construction of coal fired power stations, unless carbon capture and storage is utilised. China is now very close to introducing a carbon price into some parts of its economy and California is starting up a cap-and-trade system. The list is long and growing, even though the sum total of global efforts fall short of the necessary level of ambition.

2. What about agricultural emissions?

There is no doubt that agricultural emissions are important. As such, they featured in some detail in a recent study released by WWF and Ecofys which looks at the feasibility of a near zero emissions world by 2050. Although the primary focus of the report is energy, there is much said about agriculture because of the growing interaction with the energy system. For example, see page 62 of the report for a series of recommendations that relate to food and agriculture.

3. Isn’t it true that the magnitude of future warming is not “settled science”, but in fact highly uncertain?

Climate change is all about uncertainty, but a great deal of work has been done in this field. The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change focuses considerable effort on communicating the risk and uncertainty (The Greenhouse Gamble) related to climate change. But importantly it also demonstrates that a policy led approach to managing emissions can shift the risk and offer benefits over the long term.

4. Shouldn’t we just go nuclear?

At least for the time being, there is no single solution to this issue. We will need a broad range of solutions. Even in France where nuclear has grown to dominate (~80%) the electricity sector over the last 40 years, emissions have only fallen by 14% (from 435 MT to 374 MT from 1971 to 2008 according to the IEA).

5. Are climate skeptics funded by industrial concerns so as to maintain the status quo?

The origins of climate skepticism and the driving force behind it is examined in great detail by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their book “Merchants of Doubt”. This is an excellent read and turns up some surprising answers, linking those who question and challenge the issue of climate change with the same people and groups who challenged tobacco as a cause of cancer, acid rain and the destruction of forests, chlorofluorocarbons and the thinning of the ozone layer and so on.

6. Why is there so little investigative journalism into the science and its flaws.

This is because the science isn’t flawed. Yes, there remains uncertainty, but new research is refining and improving our knowledge of the Earth’s climate system and how it is expected to respond to increasing levels of CO2. I discussed the science in some detail in a recent post.

7. Renewables are viable now, so why do we need coal and uranium for baseload power?

A number of renewable technologies offer a great deal of potential and some are being widely deployed, such as onshore wind. But there are limits to the rate at which these new technologies can be fully developed and deployed. As such, we will need a broad range of energy technologies for a long time to come. My colleagues in the Shell scenarios team wrote about these limits in an article published in Nature late in 2009 and I discussed it in a posting at that time.

8. Is it possible to have a fruitful debate on the science given existing belief structures?

As mentioned above, I discussed the science at some length in a recent posting. But we do seem to live in a world today that is becoming detached from science, despite our increasing dependency and love of technology. I wrote a post on this last year. Perhaps belief structures are getting in the way, an issue which is also discussed by Naomi Oreskes in the book mentioned above.

9. How do the Liberal Party’s policies compare with other centre-right policies around the world?

I don’t think there is such a strong link between political leaning and climate policy, despite the rhetoric on this subject. Policy approaches vary widely around the world as do the governments that set them. For example, in the EU where there are 27 Member States with governments covering a broad range of the political spectrum, including many centre-right governments, there is a comprehensive climate change policy framework now in place which includes emissions trading, long term targets and tough energy efficiency goals. This policy framework goes beyond any of the party proposals under consideration in Australia today, but equally it has been in development for nearly ten years. It started out very modestly. In North America where there has been little progress on climate legislation at the federal level, many US States and Canadian Provinces, again covering a broad range of the political spectrum, have implemented far reaching emissions management policies. In the United States it was the Republican Party (centre-right) which introduced cap-and-trade (emissions trading) to the world when they decided to use that policy instrument to manage sulphur emissions from power stations in the 1980s.

10. Why should we believe the science when there is no observed relationship between climate and atmospheric CO2?

There is really no question of a relationship between climate and atmospheric CO2. This was shown over 100 years ago and explains very clearly and without challenge why the surface of the planet is temperate where a simple heat / radiation balance calculation shows that it should be frozen. The issue is therefore how much more change will occur as we double or triple the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Zero Touch Energy Audit: Will it Change the Game?

What new energy efficiency technologies will change the game? I’d like to use this space on occasion to explore that question and get your feedback on companies that I profile.

This week’s company is FirstFuel Software, which it appears could make the conventional energy building audit go the way of the buggy whip.

FirstFuel ‘audits’commercial buildings from afar. No human ever needs to set foot in the building and no monitoring or measurement devices are installed on the premises, hence the audit is “zero touch.”

The Massachusetts-based company relies on a Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Internet, and a proprietary algorithm to remotely analyze a building’s energy use. The program requires some data from the utility, but not a lot: the address of the building and one year of hourly interval electric and gas billing information. It combines this information with building characteristics mapped through GIS and high frequency weather and climate data.

After running all of the information through its algorithm, FirstFuel comes up with a series of specific recommendations to improve the buildings efficiency, the cost and the expected savings.

FirstFuel, which has financial backing from Battery Ventures and Nth Power, describes its work not so much as auditing, but as mining useful data to make sense of a building’s energy profile.

“We sell information. We provide the intelligence about the performance of buildings,” said Swapnil Shah, co-founder and CEO, in an interview. Shah is the veteran of three software startups that have gone to IPO or acquisition: Open Environment, WebSpective Software and mValent.

FirstFuel’s work doesn’t end with the audit; the platform continues monitoring and measuring the building to see if the energy efficiency upgrades are working and how the building stacks up against other like structures. The information flows via a portal that serves as home to a relationship the platform attempts to cultivate between the utility and customer. The goal is to get the customer engaged and motivated about energy efficiency.

What’s interesting is the scale FirstFuel appears to offer. Many states have energy efficiency targets, some with financial penalties if utilities fail to make the grade. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has set a goal to reduce energy use in commercial buildings by 20 percent over the next decade. Given that commercial buildings consume 20% of our energy, and there about five million commercial buildings in the US, how does a utility get to all of them in its territory with an on-site energy audit? How does it even decide which buildings should get priority because they offer the most bang for the buck?

Shah thinks FirstFuel’s platform offers the solution: “We can do hundreds of buildings in the time it takes to do one energy audit” Shah said.

The software is being tested in about 50 buildings. A Department of Energy-funded project earlier this year evaluated the accuracy of the system against data from 50 submeters at a 312,000 square-foot LEED Platinum National Grid building in Waltham, Massachusetts. FirstFuel took about 19 hours to complete its zero touch analysis of the building and came up with results close to that of the submeters, according to the study, conducted by Fraunhofer CSE.

In another case study, FirstFuel analyzed the energy usage of five municipal buildings in Lexington, Massachusetts, and found ways to save 7.3% of the buildings $1.6 million budget with no investment required by the building owner. FirstFuel identified operational problems that if fixed could save energy without installation of any new equipment in the building. For example, lights were on in the building when no one was there and thermometers were not set at best temperatures.

So is FirstFuel a game changer? How will this technology affect the conventional energy auditing business?

View the original article here

As climate change affects biodiversity

Climate change It has become one of the main threats to the balance of nature and this means in particular that what is at stake is something as vital as the biodiversity and the maintenance of the ecosystems. In this issue we turn this article from Erenovable.

Climate change is the set of changes that are occurring in the Earth's climate system. Among them we can mention:

the increase in temperature, changes in precipitation, which become more extreme climates, increases in the level of the sea, changes in water resources

This set of imbalances affecting the flora and fauna in multiple ways: individual agencies, entire populations, the geographical distribution of species, to the functioning of ecosystems, etc.

In future, if they continue aggravating these climatic imbalances many species will be in a critical situation. In these situations the survival depends largely on the ability to adapt to new conditions: that is migrating to another Habitat, changing patterns of behaviour or through genetic modification.

But not all the species have this capability or these possibilities. The most vulnerable populations are due to its location (Islands, mountains and Peninsulas) are more difficult to migrate and those that are already weakened and have few individuals.

When this cannot be achieved the consequences will be serious. Reduction of population, decline in biodiversity in many areas and even the extinction of a worrying number of species. Future forecasts reflect this and are certainly alarming: the third part of the natural habitats are at risk of change or even disappear by the end of the 21st century (anticipation of the World Wide Fund for nature - WWF).

As I said many species will be affected by climate change and - therefore - this will have impact in biodiversity.. Here we have some cases already documented:

The golden toad native Costa Rica suspected that it was already extinct, the cause is the lack of ability to adapt to the temperature change that occurs in its Habitat.

Some birds being altered their behaviour, as for example with the Blue charas that they live in Arizona and that they are playing ahead of time.

Many plants in habitats mountain are migrating, i.e., moving to higher latitudes to find a less warm environment, and has been, for example in the Austrian Alps.

The mammals in the Arctic are the decrease of the ice, among them one of the most affected is the polar bear.

Due to the increase in the surface temperature of the seas, coral populations are shedding the algae responsible for give color to the coral. The result is bleaching of corals and the alteration of its production of nutrients.

In many areas of the Antarctic , there are serious reductions in populations of penguins, which in some cases have declined by 33%.

View the original article here

Climate Change: Affect Forests In The Basque Country

neiker-tecnalia has carried out a study on trends in the future distribution of habitats in the mountains of the Basque country. One of the conclusions thrown in his research indicates that climate change may alter the conditions for the growth of one of the most iconic trees of the region: the oak.

The research was carried out on the basis of scenarios more pessimistic and serious of the climate change into the future. From this hypothesis, stated for the 2080, forests of oak in the Basque country will be subject to a significant or near-total reduction of their habitat. This is due to that in the Basque country, already not meet variables of temperature and humidity necessary for their development. Experts believe that this study shows the trend of the mediterraneización of the forests in the Basque country.

On the basis of the results, and assuming that the scattering power of this tree allows it, it is possible to be a trend to the migration of the forests of Oaks to the North of Europe. The study shows that the oak would lose potential Habitat to make way for other Mediterranean species, such as the Mediterranean Alcornoque.

The Mary River turtles threatened by climate change

The turtle River Mary (Mary River) - Elusor macrurus - are a particular species limited to a single river system in Australia. Recent studies consider that they will suffer from multiple problems whether future temperatures increase envisaged because of climate change reach.

Scientists have incubated eggs of the Mary River turtles at temperatures of 26, 29 and 32 ° C. Young turtles that took place in high temperatures (32 °) showed a decline in the ability of swimming and - therefore - a preference for shallow water.

This combination of physiological effects and behavior may have consequences for the chances of survival of the offspring. Deeper waters, not only offer the young turtles protection from predators, but is also where his food. These results are worrying given that the predictions of climate change for the area suggest that the temperature of the nest likely to reach 32 ° C in the coming decades.

It the Mary River Turtle is endangered according to The IUCN Red List and the population has suffered a great decline in recent decades. Some known factors that have affected the population include the capture of eggs for the trade and the introduction of predators such as foxes and dogs.