Category: Energy/Environment

Global Warming Allows “Visionary Entrepreneurs” to Grow More “Superb” Sparkling Wine

(p. D4) . . . England, now in its third decade as a sparkling wine producer, is demonstrating that its bubbly output can be superb.
. . .
The early pioneers of English sparkling wine were bold, though idiosyncratic in the way of visionary entrepreneurs.
. . .
The growth in English sparkling wine is apparent all over the south of England. From Kent in the east through East and West Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset and as far west as Cornwall, new vineyards for sparkling wine are being planted at a dizzying rate. Winemakers who once imagined they were bound for France or Australia are instead staying home in England to make sparkling wine.
. . .
Nobody would mistake an English vineyard for one in Champagne. Walking through Gusbourne’s Boot Hill Vineyard with the winemaker Charlie Holland on a blustery, misty fall day, I noted that the rows of vines were far wider than one would find in Champagne, and the vines trained higher on their trellises.
In order to achieve ripeness in the colder English climate, the vines need to be planted less densely than in France, Mr. Holland said, to minimize the competition. And the vines need to have a denser canopy of leaves to promote photosynthesis, so the rows have to be wider apart so the leaves in one row won’t shade the fruit in another.
“It’s not the same parameters as in Champagne, and not the same ripeness levels,” Mr. Holland said.
Indeed, the Champagne region was once considered a marginal climate, on the blurry edge of the line at which grapes could reliably ripen. Thirty years ago, it was a struggle. Now, with climate change, the issue is whether Champagne is getting too warm.
The edge has now moved up to the south of England, where everybody agrees that the 2018 vintage was the biggest and best ever for sparkling wine.
“It was a fantastic, happy year for English wine,” said Tamara Roberts, chief executive of Ridgeview Estate in Sussex, a family operation that planted its first vines in the South Downs in 1995. It was so good that many estates spent the harvest scrambling for vats and tanks to hold the unexpected volume of wine.

For the full commentary, see:
Eric Asimov. “THE POUR; Great Bubbly From England, Believe It or Not.” The New York Times (Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2018): D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 20, 2018.”)

Low Interest Rates May Have Favored Investment in Solar Energy

(p. A17) For the three years straddling the 2015 Paris conference, carbon-dioxide emissions were more or less flat. Then they resumed their upward trend–up 1.6% in 2017 and a projected 2.7% this year.
. . .
Explaining why the efforts thus far hadn’t bent the curve of rising emissions, the Potsdam Institute’s chief economist, Ottmar Edenhofer, said the fundamental reality was an oversupply of fossil fuels, making it harder for renewables to be cost-competitive with coal. An underappreciated factor, he suggested, is monetary policy. Zero interest rates act as an artificial stimulus to renewable energy, which is much more capital-intensive than gas and coal. To students of Austrian economics, it’s a classic malinvestment: When interest rates are suppressed below the natural rate, too much of the wrong sort of investment leads to a boom, then a bust.
As interest rates rise, renewable energy can’t compete without carbon pricing–economists’ magic bullet to solve global warming. Therein lies the biggest cause of despair at Katowice. Thanks to French President Emmanuel Macron’s carbon-tax folly, politicians of all stripes are likely to treat carbon pricing like the plague.

For the full commentary, see:
Rupert Darwall. “Defeat in the Air at the Climate Conference. Reality has a way of fighting back. Ask Emmanuel Macron..” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2018): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Dec. 18, 2018.)

Entrepreneurial Farmers Benefit from Global Warming

(p. A1) LA CRETE, Alberta–The farm belt is marching northward.
Upper Alberta is bitter cold much of the year, and remote. Not much grows other than the spruce and poplar that spread out a hundred miles around Highway 88 north toward La Crete. Signs warn drivers to watch for moose and make sure their gas tanks are filled. Farms have produced mostly wheat, canola and barley. Summers were so short farmer Dicky Driedger used to tease his wife about wasting garden space growing corn.
Today, Mr. Driedger is the one growing corn. So are many other northern-Alberta farmers who are plowing up forests to create fields, which lets them grow still more of it. The new prospect of warmer-weather crops is helping lift farmland prices, with an acre near La Crete selling for nearly five times what it fetched 10 years ago.
One reason is the warming planet and longer growing seasons. Temperatures around La Crete are 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average annually than in 1950, Canadian federal climate records show, and the growing season is nearly two weeks longer.
“A few degrees doesn’t sound like much,” said Mr. Driedger, 56, who has farmed for three decades in the area roughly as far north as Ju-(p. A6)neau, Alaska. “Maybe it doesn’t make such a big difference on wheat or canola, but on corn, it sure does.”
. . .
Agricultural giants such as Bayer AG , Cargill Inc., DowDuPont Inc. and Bunge Ltd. are pushing to develop hardier crops, plan new logistics networks and offer new technologies designed to help farmers adapt. DowDuPont, maker of Pioneer brand seeds, said its scientists are developing crops that mature faster and in drier conditions for farmers in regions growing hotter. It is marketing weather services to help farmers better anticipate storms and weather-driven crop disease.
. . .
“I look for places that don’t yet grow soybeans, that will eventually grow soybeans,” said Joelle Faulkner, chief executive of Area One Farms, a Toronto investment firm that buys land in partnership with farmers.
On Area One land where farmers have planted soybeans, farmers’ profitability has grown 30% over three to five years, boosting the land’s value by roughly the same amount, she said. The spread of warmer-weather crops, she said, represents “the less negative effect of climate.”
. . .
Seed and pesticide giant Bayer, which bought U.S. seed purveyor Monsanto this year, is breeding corn plants to be faster-maturing to produce crops in cooler climates. Those efforts help farmers in borderline areas take advantage of climatic shifts.
A decade ago, Monsanto’s fastest-growing corn needed about 80 days to mature for harvesting, said Dan Wright, who oversees Bayer’s Canadian corn and soybean research from Guelph, Ontario. Next year, he aims to begin selling corn that will mature in 70 days, targeting farmers in places like Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Red Deer, Alberta. For corn and soybeans, the company’s two biggest crops by sales, he said, such areas represent the “edge opportunity.”

For the full story, see:
Jacob Bunge. “Warming Climate Pushes Corn North.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Nov. 25, 2018): A1 & A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 26, 2018, and has the title “A Warming Climate Brings New Crops to Frigid Zones.”)

Scientists Optimistic That Great Barrier Reef Is Resilient to Global Warming

(p. A12) Among the threatened corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world that has been ravaged by global warming, researchers have found a reason for optimism — or at least a reason not to despair completely.
Coral reefs, which by some estimates support a quarter of all ocean life, are harmed by warming oceans. The effects can be seen in the loss of their vibrant colors, a phenomenon known as bleaching. But after ocean temperatures surged in 2016 around the Great Barrier Reef, causing severe damage, researchers found that the corals that survived were more resistant to another period of extreme warmth the following year.
“It’s one enormous natural selection event,” said Terry Hughes, an expert on coral reefs at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a study published Monday [December 7, 2018] in the journal Nature Climate Change. In effect, the 2016 heat wave killed off many of the most heat-sensitive corals and selected for the corals that could handle higher ocean temperatures.
“So when the heat returned in 2017, the susceptible corals had been substantially depleted,” Dr. Hughes said. “The new coral assemblage, if you like, at the beginning of the second heat waves, was made up predominantly of the more heat-tolerant species, the more robust ones.”
. . .
The study provides a measure of hope that coral reefs may be able to survive as oceans warm over the coming decades.

For the full story, see:

Kendra Pierre-Louis. “What Doesn’t Kill Reefs May Make Them Stronger.” The New York Times (Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018): A12.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 10, 2018, and has the title “Scientists Find Some Hope for Coral Reefs: The Strong May Survive.”)

The official citation to the print version of the article mentioned above, is:
Hughes, Terry P., James T. Kerry, Sean R. Connolly, Andrew H. Baird, C. Mark Eakin, Scott F. Heron, Andrew S. Hoey, Mia O. Hoogenboom, Mizue Jacobson, Gang Liu, Morgan S. Pratchett, William Skirving, and Gergely Torda. “Ecological Memory Modifies the Cumulative Impact of Recurrent Climate Extremes.” Nature Climate Change 9, no. 1 (Jan. 2019): 40-43.

Entrepreneurial Alfalfa Farmers Increase Profits by Recreating Alkali Bee Habitat

(p. C3) Remedies for bee decline can be as simple as planting flowers and reducing pesticide use, but the results are often transformational. With the right mix of flowers and nesting habitat, nearly any patch of ground can be turned into a bee garden and provide everything small bees need to forage, nest and reproduce over the course of a season. For larger, farther-ranging bee species, such gardens are important flower and nectar resources, like pit-stops scattered across the landscape.
For a glimpse of what is possible on a larger scale, bee campaigners everywhere look to a small community in rural Washington state. For three generations, alfalfa farmers in the Touchet Valley have been raising more than a valuable seed crop. Scattered across their blooming fields are wide, barren plots of salted earth, specially tended and irrigated to mimic the nesting habitat of a tiny burrowing bee. Honeybees don’t like alfalfa, but the native alkali bees thrive on it, and with the farmers’ help their numbers have skyrocketed. As the local saying goes, “You get more flowers, you get more bees.” And every bee brings increased yields and profits.

For the full essay, see:
Thor Hanson. “‘The Plight of the Humble Bee.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 30, 2018): C3.
(Note: the online version of the essay has the date June 29, 2018.)

Hanson’s essay is closely related to his book:
Hanson, Thor. Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees. New York: Basic Books, 2018.

U.S. Population Growth Rate Is Slowest in 80 Years

(p. A13) The population of the United States grew at its slowest pace in more than eight decades, the Census Bureau said Wednesday [December 19, 2018], as the number of deaths increased and the number of births declined.
Not since 1937, when the country was in the grips of the Great Depression and birthrates were down substantially, has it grown so slowly, with just a 0.62 percent gain between July 2017 and July 2018. With Americans getting older, fewer babies are being born and more people are dying, demographers said.
The past year saw a particularly high number of deaths — 2.81 million — and relatively few births, 3.86 million.

For the full story, see:
Sabrina Tavernise. “Growth Rate In Population Is at Lowest Since 1937.” The New York Times (Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018): A13.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 19, 2018, and has the title “Fewer Births, More Deaths Result in Lowest U.S. Growth Rate in Generations.”)

Environmentalists Seek to Reduce Cow Burps and Ethanol

(p. A8) . . . a sweeping new study issued Wednesday [December 5, 2018] by the World Resources Institute, an environmental group . . . warns that the world’s agricultural system will need drastic changes in the next few decades in order to feed billions more people without triggering a climate catastrophe.
. . .
. . . the authors are not counting on a major worldwide shift to vegetarianism.
“We wanted to avoid relying on magic asterisks,” said Timothy D. Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and the World Resources Institute and lead author of the report.
. . .
The authors . . . pointed to possible techniques to reduce the climate impact of existing farms. For instance, new chemical compounds could help prevent nitrogen fertilizers from producing nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. And scientists are exploring feed additives that get cows to burp up less methane, another big contributor to global warming.
. . .
But, Mr. Searchinger said, many of the recommendations in the report, such as breeding new, higher-yielding crop varieties or preventing soil erosion, could also help farmers adapt to climate change.
. . .
. . . , the report’s authors call for a limit on the use of bioenergy crops, such as corn grown for ethanol in cars, that compete with food crops for land.

For the full story, see:
Brad Plumer. “Can We Grow More Food On Less Land? We Must.” The New York Times (Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018): A8.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 5, 2018, and has the title “Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? We’ll Have To, a New Study Finds.”)

The report summarized above, is:
Searchinger, Tim, Richard Waite, Craig Hanson, Janet Ranganathan, Patrice Dumas, and Emily Matthews. “Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Feed Nearly 10 Billion People by 2050.” World Resources Institute, 2018.

Environmentalists Support Logging to Reduce Infernos

(p. A3) FRENCH MEADOWS RESERVOIR, Calif.–Obscured amid the chaos of California’s latest wildfire outbreak is a striking sign of change that may help curtail future devastating infernos. After decades of butting heads, some environmentalists and logging supporters have largely come to agreement that forests need to be logged to be saved.
. . .
The Camp Fire and the 98,400-acre Woolsey Fire in Southern California were fueled by fierce winds in unusually dry weather, which turned much of the state into a tinderbox.
Another dangerous factor, land-management experts say, is that forests have become overgrown with trees and underbrush due to a mix of human influences, including a past federal policy of putting out fires, rather than letting them burn. Washington has also sharply reduced logging under pressure from environmentalists.
Now, the unlikely coalition is pushing new programs to thin out forests and clear underbrush. In 2017, California joined with the U.S. Forest Service and other groups in creating the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative, which aims to thin millions of trees from about 2.4 million acres of forest–believed to be the largest such state-federal project in the country.

For the full story, see:
Jim Carlton. “Deadly Fires Shift View of Logging.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018): A3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the same date and has the title “Facing Deadlier Fires, California Tries Something New: More Logging.” The last quoted sentence is the slightly shorter version that appeared in the print version.)

Rising Sea Not Due to Global Warming

(p. A17) It is generally thought that sea-level rise accelerates mainly by thermal expansion of sea water, the so-called steric component. But by studying a very short time interval, it is possible to sidestep most of the complications, like “isostatic adjustment” of the shoreline (as continents rise after the overlying ice has melted) and “subsidence” of the shoreline (as ground water and minerals are extracted).
I chose to assess the sea-level trend from 1915-45, when a genuine, independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred. I note particularly that sea-level rise is not affected by the warming; it continues at the same rate, 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. I therefore conclude–contrary to the general wisdom–that the temperature of sea water has no direct effect on sea-level rise. That means neither does the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide.
This conclusion is worth highlighting: It shows that sea-level rise does not depend on the use of fossil fuels. The evidence should allay fear that the release of additional CO2 will increase sea-level rise.
But there is also good data showing sea levels are in fact rising at a constant rate. The trend has been measured by a network of tidal gauges, many of which have been collecting data for over a century.
The cause of the trend is a puzzle. Physics demands that water expand as its temperature increases. But to keep the rate of rise constant, as observed, expansion of sea water evidently must be offset by something else. What could that be? I conclude that it must be ice accumulation, through evaporation of ocean water, and subsequent precipitation turning into ice. Evidence suggests that accumulation of ice on the Antarctic continent has been offsetting the steric effect for at least several centuries.

For the full commentary, see:
Fred Singer. “The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change; There is nothing we can do about it, except to build dikes and sea walls a little bit higher.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, May 16, 2018): A17.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 15, 2018.)

Hurricane Costs Rise Mainly Due to Rising Coastal Population

(p. A6) Counties along the U.S. shoreline that endured hurricane-strength winds from Florence in September experienced a surge in population from 1980 to 2017, with an increase of 95 people per square mile–more than double the density. Overall, Gulf and East Coast shoreline counties, those vulnerable to hurricane strikes, increased by 160 people per square mile, compared with 26 people per square mile in the rest of the mainland, over the same period.
“Coastal population and exposure growth is certainly the predominant driver of increased damage costs associated with hurricanes,” says Steve Bowen, director and meteorologist at consulting firm Aon ‘s Risk Solutions division.

For the full story, see:
Kara Dapena. “‘When Videogames Can Help.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Oct. 4, 2018): A6.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 29, 2018, and has the title “The Rising Costs of Hurricanes.” Unlike the print version, the online version was much longer, sometimes had different wording, and listed an author. Where wording differed in the passages quoted above, the online version was used.)