Arguments
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #33, 2020
Posted on 19 August 2020 by Doug Bostrom
Two epic review reports
AMS have released State of the Climate 2019 (50MB pdf), a comprehensive review of Earth's climate as it stood in 2019.
With much less fanfare Walsh et al have produced Extreme weather and climate events in northern areas: A review, 55 pages of scrupulous literature synopsis, synthesis and cautious projection supported by 20 pages of citation references. A true "don't miss" publication. The reference section is a goldmine for further exploration.
Both items are open access.
RCP8.5 is normal
In this week's "nudges" Schwalm et al remind us of the stubbornly droopy nature of the Keeling Curve:
Climate simulation-based scenarios are routinely used to characterize a range of plausible climate futures. Despite some recent progress on bending the emissions curve, RCP8.5, the most aggressive scenario in assumed fossil fuel use for global climate models, will continue to serve as a useful tool for quantifying physical climate risk, especially over near- to midterm policy-relevant time horizons. Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100.
95 Articles
Observations of global warming & effects
AMS State of the Climate 2019 (open access)
Extreme weather and climate events in northern areas: A review (open access)
Snow cover variations across China from 1951–2018 (open access)
Climate change dominated long?term soil carbon losses of Inner Mongolian grasslands
Temporal variability of seasonal warming rates in China
Asymmetric trends of extreme temperature over the Loess Plateau during 1998?2018
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate & global warming
A linear model to derive melt pond depth on Arctic sea ice from hyperspectral data (open access)
Present-day radiative effect from radiation-absorbing aerosols in snow (open access)
Modeling & simulation of global warming & global warming effects
Human-induced changes to the global ocean water masses and their time of emergence
Increasing threat of coastal groundwater hazards from sea-level rise in California
Effective radiative forcing and adjustments in CMIP6 models (open access)
Irreversibility of Marine Climate Change Impacts under Carbon Dioxide Removal
Robust longitudinally?variable responses of the ITCZ to a myriad of climate forcings
Projected End-of-Century Changes in the South American Monsoon in the CESM Large Ensemble
Seasonal Dependency of Tropical Precipitation Change under Global Warming
Are the Transient and Equilibrium Climate Change Patterns Similar in Response to Increased CO 2 ?
Long term trends of mesopheric ice layers: A model study
Future Projections of Winter Cold Surge Paths over East Asia from CMIP6 Models
Climate model advancement
Optimal Estimation of Stochastic Energy Balance Model Parameters
An idealized protocol to assess the nesting procedure in regional climate modelling
Cryosphere & climate change
Review Article: Earth's ice imbalance (open access)
Greenland climate simulations show high Eemian surface melt (open access)
Less climatic resilience in the arctic
Biology & global warming
Climatic changes and the fate of mountain herbivores (open access)
Climate-driven changes in the composition of New World plant communities
Research challenges and opportunities for using big data in global change biology
Survived but not safe: Marine heatwave hinders metabolism in two gastropod survivors
Focus on recent, present and future Arctic and boreal productivity and biomass changes
A changing climate is snuffing out post?fire recovery in montane forests
Tree growth sensitivity to climate is temporally variable
GHG sources & sinks, flux
Historical CO2 emissions from land use and land cover change and their uncertainty (open access)
Diel variability of methane emissions from lakes (open access)
Labile carbon limits late winter microbial activity near Arctic treeline (open access)
Decadal?scale Recovery of Carbon Stocks After Wildfires Throughout the Boreal Forests
Using a natural experiment to foresee the fate of boreal carbon stores
Asymmetric response of soil methane uptake rate to land degradation and restoration: Data synthesis
CO2 removal science & engineering
Small?scale capillary heterogeneity linked to rapid plume migration during CO2 storage
Irreversibility of Marine Climate Change Impacts under Carbon Dioxide Removal
Geoengineering climate
Climate change communications & cognition
Global Warming Risk Perceptions in India
Agronomy & climate change
Economics & finance of climate change & mitigation
Making sense of the politics in the climate change loss & damage debate
A sectoral approach allows an artful merger of climate and trade policy (open access)
Economic and social constraints on reforestation for climate mitigation in Southeast Asia
The financial impact of fossil fuel divestment (open access)
Climate change mitigation & adaptation public policy research
Research priorities for supporting subnational climate policies
Climate change adaptation
An agent-based model for community flood adaptation under uncertain sea-level rise
Searching for Grouped Patterns of Heterogeneity in the Climate–Migration Link
Humans dealing with our global warming
A demographic approach to understanding the effects of climate on population growth
A decision support tool for climate-informed and socioeconomic urban design
Other
Book Review: Beyond Global Warming: How Numerical Models Revealed the Secrets of Climate Change
Determining the most accurate program for the Mann-Kendall method in detecting climate mutation
Informed opinion & nudges
Review Article: Earth's ice imbalance (open access)
Less climatic resilience in the arctic
RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions (open access)
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Previous edition
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The Guardian had an interesting article on how the natural gas industry is fighting regulation of gas use. People like 350.org are trying to switch to electrical use from gas. Then renewable energy can be used for heating and other uses that gas is used for now. The gas lobby has been very successful in stopping laws that reduce gas use. They are currently getting states to pass laws preventing cities from restricting gas use.
If we want to get to zero emissions we need to stop all fossil fuel use. That includes gas use. Somehow the gas lobby has to be countered.
Vote climate!
micheal sweet,
I agree that the use of Natural Gas has been, is being, incorrectly promoted.
The simple argument against Natural Gas is that it is half as bad a coal. It is non-renewable and harmful to the future of humanity. Being half as bad is not Good, it is still Bad.
That said, every coal burner in the USA should have long ago been converted to burn natural gas until the renewables were rapidly built out to replace the fossil fuel burners. It can still be done starting now, but with the realization that there is even less time for the converted power generator to run before it is shut due to the required rapid building of renewable capacity.
The hardest reality for people to come to grips with is that a recently built fossil fuel plant, or recently converted one, may need to be shuttered before its cost of construction has been recovered through operating profits and definitely before the investors get the full return on investment they thought they deserved. Converting Coal burners to Natural Gas is the right thing to do even if the costs will not be recovered by profit.
In "Capital and Ideology" Thomas Piketty presents many examples of wealthy people being compensated when their way of being wealthier than Others is determined to be harmfully unsustainable. That flawed belief could incorrectly result in investors in fossil fuel enterprises being rewarded if their gambles get shut down. And it is that hamful flawed hope that may be pushing the continued investment of attempts to profit from fossil fuels (government loss of money to convert coal burners to natural gas would be required but should not profit the coal burner investors)
Expanded awareness and improved understanding applied to achieve and improve on all of the Sustainable Development Goals is ultimately what is required. Correcting the understanding regarding Natural Gas is part of the required actions.
OPOF:
THe article in The Guardian did not discuss power plants. As I understand it, the argument about power plants is complicated.
The Guardian talked about cities making it illegal to connect new buildings to existing gas lines (or building new gas lines for new buildings). In the USA gas is currently very cheap. It is used in many locations for heating, cooking and heating water. If it is illegal to connect new buildings to the gas lines than those buildings will have to use electricity instead. That will be easy to convert to renewable electricity. It is expensive to convert buildings on gas lines to electricity.
Gas has been cheap in the USA due to a large supply from fracking. A lot of fracking companies will go bankrupt from Covid and the fact that they never make money. It will be interesting to see if gas prices in the USA go up to global prices. Renewable energy is already cheaper than gas in most of the USA.
Moving to electricity for heat depends hugely on how that electricity is generated. In Canada, Alberta and Sasatchewan both make heavy use of coal and other fossil fuels:
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/nrgsstmprfls/ab-eng.html
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/nrg/ntgrtd/mrkt/nrgsstmprfls/sk-eng.html
Nationally, Canada has a very different picture:
No prizes awarded for guessing which provinces have the largest number of people that are against things like carbon taxes or other actions to deal with GHG emissions.
The Guardian article mentioned that attempts to get rid of gas connections were resisted by multiple parties, so gas suppliers, plumbers and trade unions and home owners. Its possibly an example of well intended but an unrealistic strategy.
It might be better to push for electromethane, which is carbon neutral, and can use the existing piped network and gas heaters, and would get less resistance from plumbing lobbies and trade unions and consumers. However its presumably more expensive than natural gas so would still get resistance from gas suppliers, but maybe easier than trying to ban gas connections. It would probably come down to the size of the price difference between electromethane and natural gas. If its small, people might accept it for the sake of environmental values.
micheal sweet,
I understand that the article just focused on the aspect of natural gas use related to home heating and appliances like stoves.
The more generalized understanding is what I was bringing up. It relates to the incorrect belief taht natural gas use for heat and cooking is OK because that is the sales pich claiming an answer to climate change is natural gas use. And as Bob Loblaw has correctly pointed out the electric alternative to natural gas is questionable because it depends on how the electricity is generated. Probably better to keep the gas burning in homes until the renewables are on-line than to make electricity by burning gas then using it in homes to do the same things.
However, converting coal burning power plants to gas burning power plants is only complicated because of the changes of who makes money and what type of work is done to fuel it. Mind you now it is probaly better to just ramp up the pace of renewables in most locations.
OPOF:
Bob Loblaw's point is well taken. Heating new construction using fossil electricity does not help much compared to using fossil natural gas.
Taking the long view, if electricity is used now than in 10 years when more renewable electricity is produced buildings using electricity will automatically release less carbon. Those buildings on natural gas will require expensive retrofitting to reduce carbon emissions.
I think the argument that natural gas makes a good bridge fuel is mostly made by natural gas producers. People who want to reduce carbon support buiding more renewable energy systems.
I agree that building out renewables as rapidly as possible makes the most sense.
Making electromethane using fossil fueled electricity does not make sense. You have to first convert the electricity system to renewable energy before you start large scale electroconversions. In general, it takes much less energy to do work using electricity than to do the same work using electrofuels. Electrofuels only make sense for things like airplanes and marine transport that are very difficult to electrify. Heating a home with electromethane would require 10 times more primary energy than heating the same home using electricity.
Keep in mind that even if current electricity production is based on fossil fuels, it is probably easier in the next 30 years to replace electricity generation capacity with non-fossil-fuel-based systems than it is to convert tens or hundreds of thousands of gas furnances in individual houses to electrical heating.
We used to live in Saskatchewan, and looked seriously at ground source heat pumps to replace our old, inefficient gas furnace, Retrofitting, as opposed to build new, represents a huge extra cost. And because of Saskatchewan's heavy use of fossil fuels for eletricity generation, federal goverment incentives to install heat pumps and such were not offered in Saskatchewan. We went back to gas, but at least forked out for 96% efficiency. Our gas consumption was cut roughly in half (as we did other efficiency improvements as well as the furnace).
Ground source heat pumps make a huge difference in electricity consumption, but at high initial capital cost. It is another heating method th at is much easier to install when a house is built than it is to retrofit.
Many home owners do not want the extra cost of energy efficiency features on a new house, if they don't plan to stay for 10-20 years. This is where building codes are really needed (insulation levels, heating efficeincy, etc.)
We now live in Ontario, which has large nuclear and hydro capacity. I believe the former Liberal government had plans to not allow fossil fuel heating sources in new construction at some point in the future. The current Conservative government tends to not share the same ideals, though.
Here is the diagram for Ontario, from the same source as the previous charts.