6 July 2017, The Guardian, Hopes of mild climate change dashed by new research. Planet could heat up far more than hoped as new work shows temperature rises measured over recent decades don’t fully reflect global warming already in the pipeline. Hopes that the world’s huge carbon emissions might not drive temperatures up to dangerous levels have been dashed by new research. The work shows that temperature rises measured over recent decades do not fully reflect the global warming already in the pipeline and that the ultimate heating of the planet could be even worse than feared. How much global temperatures rise for a certain level of carbon emissions is called climate sensitivity and is seen as the single most important measure of climate change. Computer models have long indicated a high level of sensitivity, up to 4.5C for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. However in recent years estimates of climate sensitivity based on historical temperature records from the past century or so have suggested the response might be no more than 3C. This would mean the planet could be kept safe with lower cuts in emissions, which are easier to achieve. But the new work, using both models and paleoclimate data from warming periods in the Earth’s past, shows that the historical temperature measurements do not reveal the slow heating of the planet’s oceans that takes place for decades or centuries after CO2 has been added to the atmosphere. “The hope was that climate sensitivity was lower and the Earth is not going to warm as much,” said Cristian Proistosescu, at Harvard University in the US, who led the new research. “There was this wave of optimism.” The new research, published in the journal Science Advances, has ended that. “The worrisome part is that all the models show there is an amplification of the amount of warming in the future,” he said. The situation might be even worse, as Proistosescu’s work shows climate sensitivity could be as high as 6C. Read More here
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5 July 2017, The Guardian, Climate Change Authority loses last climate scientist. Imagine, if you will, a government board to champion Australian arts without any artists on it, or an agency to advise on medical research without any medical researchers. Or perhaps even, imagine a government authority set up to provide expertise on climate policy without any actual climate scientists. Well you don’t have to imagine that last one, because that’s what we now have – the government’s Climate Change Authority is now sans climate scientist. Prof David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, has just finished his term on the authority’s board – the only member to stick it out for the full five years. Karoly says without someone to replace him, the authority will struggle to fulfil its legal mandate. He told me: I think that it is critically important that at least one member of the Climate Change Authority is an expert and experienced climate change scientist. Such a member is needed to provide information and interpretation on the latest climate change science publications and data. In my view, it can only do that with a climate change scientist as a member, to provide expert assessment of the effectiveness of proposed greenhouse gas emission reductions nationally and globally, and the projected impacts on Australia from current and future climate change. The Climate Change Authority Act 2011 states that, in conducting a review, the authority must have regard to environmental effectiveness among a number of other matters. I asked the Department of the Environment and Energy if there were any plans to replace Karoly with another climate scientist. The department said: Government appointments to the CCA are a matter for the Government under the CCA’s legislation. The Chief Scientist is an ex officio Member of the Authority and can assist on scientific matters and in providing access to the scientific community, including climate scientists. So in other words, it won’t replace Karoly and will instead just rely on the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to act as a go-between, which of course is much more efficient and logical than actually having a climate scientist right there in the room. That would be silly, right? Read More here
30 June 2017, Renew Economy, Another blow to CCS, as EU power giants bow out of Dutch project. European power giants Engie and Uniper have withdrawn from a test project to capture and store carbon dioxide generated by one of several major new coal plants in the Netherlands, dealing yet another blow to the prospects of “clean coal” technology, in which the Australian government and fossil fuel lobbyists still hold much stock. Reuters reported this week that the two companies – one of which, Engie, the majority owner of Australia’s Loy Yang B brown coal-fired power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, and who recently closed Hazelwood, – had told the Dutch government they no longer intended to participate in the CCS project, the biggest of its kind in Europe. Holland’s economic affairs Minister Henk Kamp said in a statement he would “examine whether legal steps can be taken to recoup” unspecified subsidies paid to the companies if they had not changed their minds by mid-September. The minister also said that the companies’ withdrawal from the project “changed nothing” in the government’s resolve to develop large-scale CCS demonstration projects. Read More here
29 June 2017, Renew Economy, Coal on limited lifespan as CCS hopes go up in smoke. The coal industry is facing a new crisis point as a group of leading scientists call for the construction of new coal generators to cease within three years, and as the industry’s flagship “clean coal” and carbon capture and storage project went up in smoke in the US. As reported elsewhere on this web site, the US energy utility Southern Co finally gave up on its much-vaunted Kemper coal gasification and CCS project, after costs soared from $US1.8 billion to more than $US7.5 billion ($A10 billion), and it realised it wasn’t going to work. On Wednesday, US time, it announced it would cease operations immediately on the coal component of the project, and just use the asset as a gas generator. Shareholders already saddled with $US3.1 billion of losses face a further $US3.4 billion write down if Southern Co can’t convince regulators to pass those costs on to consumers bills. The spectacular failure of the Kemper facility – more than $US7.5 billion for a 582MW plant, the most expensive in US history per MW – comes amid a renewed call for new coal generation to be stopped in its tracks, and for existing coal generation to be wound back rapidly. In an article in Nature magazine, more than 60 scientists and prominent leaders, including the former UNFCCC secretary Christiana Figures, and former ACTU president Sharan Burrow, now general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, say the world has three years to set emissions on the right course. It recommends a six-point plan, including no new coal generators post 2020, accelerating wind and solar and other renewables, retiring all coal-fired generators and boosting electric vehicles. “The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020,” writes co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Read More here