Category: Global Warming

Air-Conditioning Is “a Critical Adaptation” that Saves Lives

(p. A3) Air-conditioning is not just a luxury. It’s a critical adaptation tool in a warming world, with the ability to save lives.
. . .
In our continuing research, my colleagues and I have found that hot days in India have a strikingly big impact on mortality. Specifically, the mortality effects of each additional day in which the average temperature exceeds 95 degrees Fahrenheit are 25 times greater in India than in the United States.
. . .
The effect of very hot days on mortality in the United States is so low in part because of the widespread use of air-conditioning. A recent study I did with colleagues showed that deaths as a result of these very hot days in the United States declined by more than 80 percent from 1960 to 2004 — and it was the adoption of air-conditioning that accounted for nearly the entire decline.

For the full story, see:
Michael Greenstone. “‘India’s Air-Conditioning and Climate Change Quandary.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 27, 2016): A3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 26, 2016.)

The Greenstone study mentioned above on heat mortality in the U.S., is:
Barreca, Alan, Karen Clay, Olivier Deschenes, Michael Greenstone, and Joseph S. Shapiro. “Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the Us Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the Twentieth Century.” Journal of Political Economy 124, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 105-59.

Most Novels Portray Businessmen as Either Foolish or Evil

(p. 8) The last book that made you furious?
Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” It uses all the tricks of a fire-and-brimstone preacher to sell a message of despair and pessimism based on a really shaky, selective and biased understanding of the science of climate change.

Your favorite antihero or villain?
Harry Potter’s uncle, Vernon Dursley — a much misunderstood man who stands for all the businessmen that novelists have denigrated, while living off the wealth they created. I am being a bit facetious, but I did use to enjoy pointing out to my children that businessmen only ever appear in fiction as foolish or evil or both, when clearly they generally do the world enormous good.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
The prime minister? “The Hockey Stick Illusion,” by Andrew Montford. It’s a great piece of detective work on a key scientific blunder, based around the work of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, and it forensically dismantles the mistakes that led to people believing they had at last found evidence that current climate change is unprecedented in rate or scale in this millennium. It may yet prove to be so in the future, but it is not so yet.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t?
Easy. The Bible. Not even the fine translations of William Tyndale, largely adopted by King James’s committee without sufficient acknowledgment, can conceal the grim tedium of this messy compilation of second-rate tribal legends and outrageous bigotry.

For the full interview, see:
SIMON PARKIN. “By the Book: Matt Ridley.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., OCT. 18, 2015): 8.
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date OCT. 15, 2015, and has the title “Matt Ridley: By the Book.” The online version has added questions and answers, that were left out of the published version. The passages quoted above, were in both versions, except for those on recommended presidential reading, which only appeared in the online version.)

Ridley has a courageous and illuminating discussion of environmental issues, in:
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: Harper, 2010.

Wind Turbines Kill Bats

(p. D2) Wind power can help the world fight climate change, but it’s not so great for bats.
A new study of wind turbines in Britain found that each turbine killed one to two bats each month on average, with some killing more than 60. The researchers said that the efforts that are required in many countries to assess the environmental effect of planned wind farms have proved faulty and inadequate in measuring the risk to bats.

For the full story, see:

JOHN SCHWARTZ. “Kind to the Planet, Not to Bats.” The New York Times (Tues., Nov. 15, 2016): D2.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date NOV. 7 [sic], 2016, and has the title “When Bats Look for Meals Near Wind Power, Bats Die.” The online version is much longer than the print version, and differs somewhat, even where they overlap. The passage quoted above is from the online version.)

The “study” summarized in the passage above, is:
Lintott, Paul R., Suzanne M. Richardson, David J. Hosken, Sophie A. Fensome, and Fiona Mathews. “Ecological Impact Assessments Fail to Reduce Risk of Bat Casualties at Wind Farms.” Current Biology 26, no. 21 (Nov., 7, 2016): R1135-R1136.

“The Stone Age Did Not Come to an End Because We Ran Out of Stone”

(p. A11) Far from recovering a sense of hopefulness during the relative peace of the 21st century, gloominess has become the default position of the intellectual classes in the Western world.
. . .
Ronald Bailey begs to differ. As his book demonstrates, a careful examination of the evidence shows that, at least in material terms (which is not unimportant, particularly for the world’s poor), life is getting better. The overriding reason for this, according to Mr. Bailey, is continuing technological progress, facilitated–and this is crucial–by the global triumph of market capitalism.
Among the scares examined by Mr. Bailey in “The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century” are overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources (particularly oil), the perils of biotechnology and genetic modification, and global warming.
. . .
No doubt the age of oil will one day come to an end. But as my old friend Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Yamani used to point out, the Stone Age did not come to an end because we ran out of stone.
. . .
“The End of Doom” is not quite in the same class as Matt Ridley’s classic, “The Rational Optimist,” but it is a good book and deserves to be widely read.

For the full review, see:
NIGEL LAWSON. “BOOKSHELF; Apocalypse Later; Despite an explosion in population greater than Malthus could have ever imagined, global living standards are higher than ever.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 27, 2015): A11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 27, 2015.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review, is:
Bailey, Ronald. The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2015.

After Global Warming Hits Vietnam: “We Live Better Now”

(p. A9) On a chilly January day recently, Do Van Duy slugged back another shot of rice liquor. It had been a good year for raising fish in the Red River delta of northern Vietnam. He and other villagers in Nam Dien had gathered to toast their success as the Lunar New Year approached–and question whether climate change is such a bad thing after all.
“We live better now,” said Mr. Duy, 31 years old, who now farms grouper, shrimp and crab in the brackish waters of the delta after giving up rice a few years ago. “If you can make the switch there’s a lot more money to be made.”
Nearly three-quarters of households in Nam Dien have abandoned rice farming, said Bui Van Cuong, a fisheries official with the People’s Commune in Nam Dien, as salt water flows farther into the delta’s farmland. “The changes are very apparent over the past 10 years,” Mr. Cuong said.
The shift is focusing attention on a difficult question: Is it better to invest resources in fighting the effects of climate change, or in helping people adapt?
. . .
“Their competitive advantage is changing,” said Le Anh Tuan, a director at the Institute for Climate Change Studies at Can Tho University. “The delta might not always be the best place to grow rice, but people can raise shrimp instead.”

For the full story, see:
JAMES HOOKWAY. “Vietnam’s New Tack in Climate Fight.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Feb. 25, 2016): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has title “Vietnam Tries New Tack in Climate-Change Battle: Teach a Man to Fish.”)

“Negligible Temperature Impact” of Paris Agreement

(p. A11) The Paris Agreement will cost a fortune but do little to reduce global warming. In a peer-reviewed article published in Global Policy this year, I looked at the widely hailed major policies that Paris Agreement signatories pledged to undertake and found that they will have a negligible temperature impact. I used the same climate-prediction model that the United Nations uses.
. . . , consider the Obama administration’s signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan. The U.N.’s model shows that it will accomplish almost nothing. Even if the policy withstands current legal challenges and its cuts are totally implemented–not for the 14 years that the Paris agreement lasts, but for the rest of the century–the Clean Power Plan would reduce temperatures by 0.023 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
. . .
The costs of the Paris climate pact are likely to run to $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually throughout the rest of the century, using the best estimates from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum and the Asia Modeling Exercise. Spending more than $100 trillion for such a feeble temperature reduction by the end of the century does not make sense.

For the full commentary, see:
BJORN LOMBORG. “Obama’s Climate Policy Is a Hot Mess; The president hails the Paris Agreement again–even though it will solve nothing and cost trillions.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 1, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 30, 2016.)

The academic version of Lomborg’s argument, is:
Lomborg, Bjorn. “Impact of Current Climate Proposals.” Global Policy 7, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 109-18.

“The Ideological Insistence on Renewables and an Irrational Fear of Nuclear Power”

(p. A25) Berkeley, Calif. — CALIFORNIA has a reputation as a leader in battling climate change, and so when Pacific Gas & Electric and environmental groups announced a plan last week to close the state’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, and replace much of the electricity it generates with power from renewable resources, the deal was widely applauded.
It shouldn’t have been. If the proposal is approved by the state’s Public Utilities Commission, California’s carbon dioxide emissions will either increase or decline far less than if Diablo Canyon’s two reactors, which generated about 9 percent of the state’s electricity last year, remained in operation. If this deal goes through, California will become a model of how not to deal with climate change.
. . .
Nearly every time a nuclear plant has been closed, its energy production has been replaced almost entirely with fossil fuels, including in California. In 2012, when the San Onofre nuclear plant closed, natural gas became the main replacement power source, creating emissions of carbon dioxide equivalent to putting two million cars on the road.
. . .
Even if by some miracle California did manage to replace 100 percent of Diablo Canyon’s output with renewables, why would a state ostensibly concerned with climate change turn away from its largest single source of clean energy? The answer, as is perhaps obvious, is the ideological insistence on renewables and an irrational fear of nuclear power.
The only countries that have successfully moved from fossil fuels to low-carbon power have done so with the help of nuclear energy. And the backlash against antinuclear policies is growing. Increasingly, scientists and conservationists in the United States are speaking out in defense of nuclear power.
If California indeed closes Diablo Canyon, emissions will either rise or fail to fall as quickly as they could, and the antinuclear agenda will be exposed as anathema to climate protection.

For the full commentary, see:
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER. “How Not to Deal With Climate Change.” The New York Times (Thurs., June 30, 2016): A25.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Colorful Coral Reef Is Thriving in Hot Water

(p. D1) In 2003, researchers declared Coral Castles dead.
On the floor of a remote island lagoon halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, the giant reef site had been devastated by unusually warm water. Its remains looked like a pile of drab dinner plates tossed into the sea. Research dives in 2009 and 2012 had shown little improvement in the coral colonies.
Then in 2015, a team of marine biologists was stunned and overjoyed to find Coral Castles, genus Acropora, once again teeming with life. But the rebound came with a big question: Could the enormous and presumably still fragile coral survive what would be the hottest year on record?
This month, the Massachusetts-based research team finished a new exploration of the reefs in the secluded Phoenix Islands, a tiny Pacific archipelago, and were thrilled by what they saw. When they splashed out of an inflatable dinghy to examine Coral Castles closely, they were greeted with a vista of bright greens and purples — unmistakable signs of life.
“Everything looked just magnificent,” said Jan Witting, the expedition’s chief scientist and a researcher at Sea Education Association, based in Woods Hole, Mass.
. . .
(p. D6) If Coral Castles can continue to revive after years of apparent lifelessness, even as water temperatures rise, there might be hope for other reefs with similar damage, said another team member, Randi Rotjan, a research scientist who led and tracked the Phoenix Islands expedition from her base at the New England Aquarium in Boston.
No one actually knows what drives reef resilience or even what a coral reef looks like as it is rebounding. In remote, hard-to-get-to places, our understanding of coral is roughly akin to a doctor’s knowing only what a patient looks like in perfect health and after death, Dr. Rotjan said.

For the full story, see:
KAREN WEINTRAUB. “In Splash of Colors, Signs of Hope for Coral Reefs.” The New York Times (Tues., AUG. 16, 2016): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date AUG. 15, 2016, and has the title “Giant Coral Reef in Protected Area Shows New Signs of Life.” The print version gave incorrect affiliation for Jan Witting. The version above is the online version.)

Iceland Project Turns 95% of Carbon Dioxide into Calcite Rock

(p. A6) For years, scientists and others concerned about climate change have been talking about the need for carbon capture and sequestration.
. . .
Among the concerns about sequestration is that carbon dioxide in gaseous or liquid form that is pumped underground might escape back to the atmosphere. So storage sites would have to be monitored, potentially for decades or centuries.
But scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and other institutions have come up with a different way to store CO2 that might eliminate that problem. Their approach involves dissolving the gas with water and pumping the resulting mixture — soda water, essentially — down into certain kinds of rocks, where the CO2 reacts with the rock to form a mineral called calcite. By turning the gas into stone, scientists can lock it away permanently.
One key to the approach is to find the right kind of rocks. Volcanic rocks called basalts are excellent for this process, because they are rich in calcium, magnesium and iron, which react with CO2.
Iceland is practically all basalt, so for several years the researchers and an Icelandic utility have been testing the technology on the island. The project, called CarbFix, uses carbon dioxide that bubbles up naturally with the hot magma that powers a geothermal electrical generating plant 15 miles east of the capital, Reykjavik.
. . .
Early signs were encouraging: . . .
. . .
The scientists found that about 95 percent of the carbon dioxide was converted into calcite. And even more important, they wrote, the conversion happened relatively quickly — in less than two years.
“It’s beyond all our expectations,” said Edda Aradottir, who manages the project for the utility, Reykjavik Energy.
. . .
. . . the researchers say that there is enough porous basaltic rock around, including in the ocean floors and along the margins of continents.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Project in Iceland for Storing Carbon Shows Promise.” The New York Times (Fri., June 10, 2016): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JUNE 9, 2016, and has the title “Iceland Carbon Dioxide Storage Project Locks Away Gas, and Fast.”)

The research mentioned above was detailed in an academic paper in Science:
Matter, Juerg M., Martin Stute, Sandra Ó Snæbjörnsdottir, Eric H. Oelkers, Sigurdur R. Gislason, Edda S. Aradottir, Bergur Sigfusson, Ingvi Gunnarsson, Holmfridur Sigurdardottir, Einar Gunnlaugsson, Gudni Axelsson, Helgi A. Alfredsson, Domenik Wolff-Boenisch, Kiflom Mesfin, Diana Fernandez de la Reguera Taya, Jennifer Hall, Knud Dideriksen, and Wallace S. Broecker. “Rapid Carbon Mineralization for Permanent Disposal of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” Science 352, no. 6291 (June 10, 2016): 1312-14.

Ozone Hole Shrinking

(p. A4) Nearly three decades after the world banned chemicals that were destroying the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer, scientists said Thursday that there were signs the atmosphere was on the mend.
The researchers said they had found “fingerprints” indicating that the seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica, a cause of concern since it was discovered in 1984, was getting smaller.
. . .
“This is just the beginning of what is a long process,” said Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of the study, published in the journal Science.
. . .
Ozone depletion is a complex process that is affected by variables like temperature, wind and volcanic activity. So Dr. Solomon and the other researchers looked at data from satellites and balloon-borne instruments taken each September. That made it easier to separate the effects of the decline in chlorine atoms from the other factors. They also compared the data with the results of computer models.
The study found that the ozone hole had shrunk by about 1.5 million square miles, or about one-third the area of the United States, from 2000 to 2015.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Ozone Hole Shows Signs of Shrinking, Study Shows.” The New York Times (Fri., July 1, 2016): A4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JUNE 30, 2016, and has the title “Ozone Hole Shows Signs of Shrinking, Scientists Say.”)

The academic paper in Science, mentioned above, is:
Solomon, Susan, Diane J. Ivy, Doug Kinnison, Michael J. Mills, Ryan R. Neely, and Anja Schmidt. “Emergence of Healing in the Antarctic Ozone Layer.” Science (June 30, 2016) 10.1126/science.aae0061.