Climate Change Blog 34
Facts on the Ground:
Due to the pandemic people are not flying, so they’re driving to state and national parks in huge numbers. Unfortunately, due to drought conditions, wildfires continue to burn. People in and around Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, were forced to flee rapidly advancing flames.
“This is the worst of the worst of the worst,” said Sheriff Brett Schroetlin of Grand County, where the East Troublesome Fire had burned about 170,000 acres. The fire destroyed ranches, second homes, businesses and cabins.
The fire grew by more than 100,000 acres in one night, a pace of 6,000 acres per hour, as it entered RMNP, forcing the closure of the park, and jumping over the Continental Divide.
“The fire marshal was running through the streets saying to get out,” said Daniel Lintz, who fled the town of Grand Lake. “It was snowing ash.” The fire threatened the resort town of Estes Park and led to mandatory evacuation orders there.
Also in October, fire crews in Boulder County fought two fires. Firefighters have battled for two months the Cameron Peak Fire north of RMNP, which became the largest wildfire in state history.
Evacuees jammed the roads as officials expanded evacuation orders. Hotels and motels across the area were totally booked with evacuees. On the clogged roads, officers waved people through intersections to try to get them out of harms’ way.
Wildfires have burned more than four million acres across California this year. Fire scientists said the wildfires this far into Fall shows how climate change is prolonging fire seasons.
Philip Higuera, an associate professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, described a landscape in Colorado poised to explode. He said moisture levels in deadfall like logs and other fuels were at record low levels while measurements of how fast and ferociously fires are expected to grow were at record highs.
“People have built and developed in these areas without recognizing the hazard they’re in, and climate change is notching that up every year,” he said. “It has me concerned for communities across the West that are in increasingly flammable landscapes.
Wildfires in the West caused by lightning have been growing bigger and occurring more frequently. If the weather extremes already brought by climate change are any indication, other parts of the country will start paying a price, too.
Wildfires have burned across much of the West in 2020, with enormous blazes not just in California and Colorado, but also in Washington and Oregon. Research suggests that lightning is an increasingly common cause of large blazes, and that climate change may cause an increase in lightning strikes over the continental US in coming decades. According to the US Forest Service’s wildfire database, 44% of wildfires across the Western US were triggered by lightning and were responsible for 71% of the area burned between 1992 and 2015, the most recent data available.
Looking at the unusually hot weather in California and its effect on vegetation and burning, David Romps, a scientist at UC Berkeley, cited the burning of fossil fuels that is heating up the planet. “This is all, of course, because of global warming.”
Climate change may bring more lightning in coming decades. By the end of the century, if humanity doesn’t slash greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change, “we might expect to get 50 percent more lightning,” said Dr. Romps, the director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center. “We don’t necessarily know what that means for wildfire, but we can make an educated guess,” he said.
Recent research suggests that combinations of extreme heat and drought that could make lush forests more prone to fire are occurring together more frequently — not just in the American West, but also in the Northeastern and Southeastern US too.
Craig Allen, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, warned that wildfire could be “coming soon to a landscape near you. Wherever you are.”
The Trump administration initially rejected California’s request for disaster relief aid for six fires that burned more than 1.8 million acres (including the Creek Fire, which is among the most destructive in state history damaging over 550 homes, threatening thousands more and forcing the evacuation of over 24,000 people), and caused at least three deaths. After a backlash, the administration reversed its denial.
Governor Newsome had estimated infrastructure damage from the fires had exceeded $229 million and recovery, due to “the severity and magnitude of these fires … remain beyond the state’s capabilities.”
According to Cal Fire, the state’s fire agency, managing wildfires has become an ongoing task for firefighters, officials and residents. In 2020, over 8,500 wildfires have burned over 4.1 million acres in the state. Statewide deaths related to these fires is at least 31, it said.
“We’re setting records year after year,” Tom Corringham, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, told The New York Times last month. “It’s a little early to say what the total impacts are going to be, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the damages are over $20 billion this year.”
Over the past 50 years, excluding the last four, wildfires averaged about the same in direct damages: a billion dollars per year, adjusted for inflation. But in three of the past four years, including this one, fires are on track to cause damages in excess of $10 billion. “We’ve seen an order of magnitude leap in damages in the last four years,” Mr. Corringham said.
Hurricane season too has lengthened. Also in October, Hurricane Delta, a Category 2 hurricane, made landfall some 20 miles from where Laura, a Category 4 hurricane and one of the most powerful storms the state has ever endured, touched down a few weeks earlier. Delta intensified the devastation the state has experienced during a brutal recored-breaking hurricane season further complicated by a resurgence of coronavirus infections.
“The town’s a mess,” Roberta Palermo said of Lake Arthur, La., a small town in Jefferson Davis Parish where she rode out Delta. “There’s debris everywhere and trash that didn’t get picked up from the first storm.”
“People are feeling a little despondent,” Nic Hunter, the mayor of Lake Charles, said. “To go through what we went through six weeks ago and have another punch in the gut like we received last night, is just unimaginable.”
Delta, the 10th named storm to make landfall in the US this year, arrived in the final weeks of an Atlantic hurricane season so busy that forecasters ran through an alphabet of names and moved on to calling storms by Greek letters. It had been 15 years since a season, which runs from June to November, has been this active.
The widespread power outages after Delta have also rekindled fears of one of the worst perils after Hurricane Laura, which killed more than two dozen people, as many of the deaths associated with that storm were from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the fumes from generators.
In some parts of the state, meteorologists said the storm dumped as much as 15 inches of rain. Nearly 600,000 customers in Louisiana lost power with thousands more reported in Texas and Mississippi.
Prior to reaching Louisiana, Hurricane Delta reached Category 4 status before reaching northeastern Mexico as a Category 2 storm with winds of 110 mph. Delta threatened to produce a “life-threatening” storm surge of 8-12’ along portions of the Yucatán Peninsula, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
“It’s ideal conditions for rapid intensification — warm water temperatures, negligible wind shear,” Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the US National Hurricane Center, said. Hotels along the Caribbean coast, including popular tourist destinations like Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, moved their guests to shelters.
Record flooding also struck Viet Nam, killing at least 114 people. Twenty-one people remain missing. More than a quarter of the deaths have been attributed to landslides. One killed at least 20 military personnel.
Scientists have pointed to climate change as the main driver of more frequent and deadlier storms around the globe. The authorities in Vietnam tend to be well prepared for natural disasters, but a surge in cyclones, rains and floods in October has overwhelmed some coastal provinces. According to the United Nations, 178,000 homes in central Vietnam had been flooded.
As rescuers try to reach other flood victims by land, air and sea, in the midst of the pandemic, Vietnam may be hit by a third major storm in three weeks. Typhoon Saudel was expected to make landfall in the same coastal areas where many villages are already underwater.
The amount of rainfall this month was “so extraordinarily out of the normal” that it far exceeded the government’s midrange predictions of how climate change might increase precipitation in central Vietnam by the end of this century, said Pamela McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University.
Other countries in Asia have seen record-breaking rainfall. Earlier this year, torrential rains submerged at least a quarter of Bangladesh. Unusually heavy rains wreaked havoc in central and southwestern China, leaving hundreds dead and disrupting the economy’s post-pandemic recovery. Flooding in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar and Nepal killed scores of people, destroyed homes and inundated entire villages.
Important Advances in the Use of Rooftop Solar and Electric Vehicles
Two key paths to Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050 is through solar power and Electric Vehicles. Although Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal (Indonesia), which plays an outsize role in its economy and politics, it has also quietly become a renewable energy powerhouse.
About one in four Australian homes have rooftop solar panels, a larger share than in any other major economy, and the rate of installations far outpaces the global average. The country is well ahead of Germany, Japan and California, which are leaders in clean energy. In California, which leads US states in the use of solar power, less than 10% of utility customers have rooftop solar panels.
Like the US, Australia is lead by a promoter of coal energy (Scott Morrison). And like in the US, in the absence of federal leadership, states have pursued and advanced renewable energy via incentives to buy solar panels and batteries to store power. Market forces are driving increased use of solar power as it is cheaper than using fossil fuel-based energy.
In two of the country’s most populous states, Queensland, largely conservative, and New South Wales, with more liberal Sydney, half the homes have solar panels.
“The future for New South Wales and indeed the country is one where our energy comes from sun, wind and pumped hydro, not just because it’s good for the environment but because it’s good for the economy” said Matt Kean, minister for energy and environment in New South Wales.
“That’s one of the reasons we’ve got the highest penetration of rooftop solar anywhere on the planet,” he added. “People are doing that because they want to save money.”
Those incentives kick-started the solar boom, and rooftop solar regularly provides about 5% of Australia’s electricity, compared with just under 1% in the US. The installation of a typical 6.57-kilowatt system for a home cost about $3,000 in Australia and reduced the user’s electric bill from paying $190/month to getting credited an average of $30/month.
Australian states have streamlined building codes to facilitate obtaining permits. In the US, municipalities tend to control codes and permitting, and too few have taken similar streamlining steps.
Both the US and Australian utilities suffer from periodic blackouts due to record heat and damage to utility equipment from wildfires. Customers like having their own source of power, but this complicates things for the grid which was designed to operate with the steady power supplied by coal-burning power plants. But electricity from such plants is too expensive and many, in both countries, will shut down (more than half of the roughly two dozen coal-fired plants operating in Australia are expected to close within 15 years). Renewables must step up and the grid must be modernized to accommodate sporadic users.
The next technological breakthrough must be battery technology. While improvements continue to be made and the cost of batteries likely will decline 10-15% this year, batteries can only supply power for about five hours before needing to be re-charged. Major investments must be made in this area.
Over 70,000 Australian homes had battery systems last year, and 28,000 more may be installed this year. Again, this is movement in the right direction, but way too slow. Federal commitment to this industry is essential, in both countries.
Mr. Kean, the New South Wales energy minister, said Australia had to make its electric system more reliable, reduce costs and address climate change with the help of solar, wind, batteries and other renewable technologies.
“This is the economically rational position to take,” he said. “Those people arguing for coal, gas and nuclear are actually arguing for more expensive, dirtier energy. The future is not those things.”
So too with EVs where battery prices are dropping faster than expected and yet not fast enough. Car sales collapsed in Europe because of the pandemic with one exception: EVs. And that is because the purchase price of an EV in Europe is falling close to the price for gas/diesel-powered cars. In parts of Europe, subsidies of EVs can cut the price by over $10,000. The EU has more strict CO2 emissions regulations than the US which EVs can meet. In Germany, the EV Renault Zoe can be leased for 139 euros a month, or $164.
US incentives trail those of the EU. Battery-powered cars account for about 2% of new car sales in the US, while in Europe the market share is approaching 5%. Including hybrids, the share rises to nearly 9% in Europe.
Infrastructure must keep up with sales of EVs. The EU has nearly 200,000 charging stations, far short of the three million that will be needed when EVs become ubiquitous, according to Transport & Environment, an advocacy group. The US has less than half as many chargers as the EU.
But European drivers report that their network is already dense enough that owning and charging an EV is not a problem even for those who can’t charge at home and depend on public infrastructure. For city driving, with lots of charging stations, there will be no need for heavy batteries (and advances are leading to faster charging times). But for long-distance driving, improvements in battery technology, falling cost and weight are essential. Presently, Tesla’s four models are the only widely available EVs that can go more than 300 miles on a charge, according to Kelley Blue Book.
Many buyers of EVs are motivated to reduce carbon emissions and price is not an obstacle. Tesla owners report great satisfaction in driving, and charging, their EVs. But for many prospective purchasers, price is key. The good news is that we are rapidly approaching the tipping point when, even without subsidies, it will be as cheap, and maybe cheaper, to own an EV than one that burns fossil fuels.
A few years ago, industry experts estimated that the tipping point would come in 2025. But more recent estimates are for 2024 or even 2023. The transition to EVs likely will arrive at different times for different segments of the market. High-end EVs are close to parity already. The Tesla Model 3 and the gas-powered BMW 3 Series both sell for about $41,000 in the US.
EVs may be cheaper to own than a traditional vehicle because it never needs oil changes or new spark plugs, there are far fewer moving parts under the hood of an EV, and electricity is cheaper, per mile, than gasoline. And EVs may be powered over night or during work. The Tesla Model 3 comes equipped with software that guides the driver to the company’s own network of chargers which can fill the battery to 80% capacity in about half an hour.
One goal in the EV industry has been to reduce the cost of battery packs, the rechargeable system that stores energy, below $100 per kilowatt-hour, the standard measure of battery power. That is the approximate point at which propelling an EV will be as cheap as it is with gasoline.
Current battery packs cost around $150 to $200/k-hr, depending on the technology. That means a battery pack costs around $20,000. But the price has dropped 80% since 2008, according to the US Department of Energy. China is investing heavily in battery research, seeing the shift to EVs as a chance for companies like NIO to break into the European and someday, American, markets. In less than a decade, the Chinese battery maker CATL has become one of the world’s biggest manufacturers.
“The traditional car industry is still behind,” said Peter Carlsson, who ran Tesla’s supplier network in the company’s early days and is now chief executive of Northvolt, a new Swedish company that has contracts to manufacture batteries for Volkswagen and BMW. “But,” Mr. Carlsson said, “there is a massive amount of resources going into the race to beat Tesla. A number, not all, of the big carmakers are going to catch up.”
Traditional carmakers have an advantage over start-ups in their expertise in supply chains and mass production and intend to produce economical EVs by the millions.
A key test of the traditional automakers’ ability to survive will be Volkswagen’s new battery-powered ID.3, which will start at under $35,000, after subsidies and is arriving at European dealerships now. By using its global manufacturing and sales network, Volkswagen hopes to sell millions of EVs within a few years. It plans to begin selling the ID.4, an electric sport utility vehicle, in the US next year. (ID stands for “intelligent design.”)
“We have been mass-producing internal combustion vehicles since Henry Ford. We don’t have that for battery vehicles. It’s a very new technology,” said Jürgen Fleischer, a professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany whose research focuses on batteries. “The question will be how fast can we can get through this learning curve?”
Peter Rawlinson, who led design of the Tesla Model S and is now chief executive of the electric car start-up Lucid, touts the advantages of the light-weight design which will enable the Lucid Air luxury car, unveiled on Sept. 9, to travel over 400 miles on a charge. Lucid’s first vehicle is a luxury car, but Mr. Rawlinson said his dream was to build an EV attainable by the middle class. In his view, that would mean a lightweight vehicle capable of traveling 150 miles between charges.
“I want to make a $25,000 car,” Mr. Rawlinson said. “That’s what is going to change the world.”
Washington:
The US Circuit Court for the District of Columbia is hearing the biggest case to reach a federal appeals court so far concerning Trump's attempt to dismantle Obama’s climate policy. The case was brought by the American Lung Association, several environmental groups, 20 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, in an attempt to block Trump's limited approach to climate change on grounds that it fails to adequately safeguard public health as the Clean Air Act requires.
Obama’s Clean Power Plan would have reduced power sector emissions by a third. Under Trump’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, they’d fall by less than 1%.
Jonathan Brightbill, principal deputy assistant attorney general, defended Trump's rule, saying Congress only gave the EPA authority to establish standards for power plant operators to achieve greater heat efficiency at individual power plants, thereby reducing emissions.
Brightbill faced tough questioning from the two Obama administration appointees on the three-judge panel, Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard. Judge Justin Walker, 38, a Trump appointee and protege of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said he viewed the Clean Power Plan as a major regulation, and therefore subject to less deference by the courts.
Walker, like many Trump appointees, was a member of the conservative Federalist Society, asked questions guiding the presentation of fellow Federalist, Lindsay See, the solicitor general of West Virginia, who was arguing in support of the EPA.
"Assume ... the world is warming, and the warming is manmade, and the costs are far costlier than those of this plan," Walker said. "None of that is relevant to how we interpret this statute. What do you think this case is about?"
See agreed that the case was about the meaning of the statute.
More than 100 parties had entered on either side of the case which was held online and far exceeded the three hours allotted for the case. This number of disputants, regardless of who prevails at the D.C. Circuit, virtually guarantees the case will be appealed to the Supreme Court. There, it could become a vehicle for a high court with three Trump appointees to shape future climate policy, regardless of who wins the election in November.
Environmentalists look at the case dealing with the meaning and reach of the Clean Air Act as a high-stakes battle even though Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden favors drafting a new law to address climate change.
The Trump administration is also slow-walking the mandatory National Climate Assessment by not seeking out scientists to work on it, according to Donald Wuebbles, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois who co-led the first volume of the fourth National Climate Assessment.
By law, Congress and the White House are to receive a report no less than every four years on the state of climate change and its impacts on humanity and the natural world.
The fourth version was unequivocal in its assessment of the problem. "Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities."
That sentiment contrasts with Trump’s views, who previously described climate change as a “hoax.” Administration officials then spent months preparing an adversarial review of its findings. That effort ultimately was scuttled by the campaign, but Trump told the architect of the scheme that he might revive it after the election (possibly as a prime-time television special).
The outcome of the presidential election likely will have a major effect on the next NCA. The report is used by policy planners and local governments to help make spending and infrastructure decisions.
The Trump administration, which has focused on weakening or ignoring climate science, would like to revamp the Assessment, according to William Happer, a former senior director in the National Security Council.
Happer said that the administration purposely released the NCA on the day after Thanksgiving to bury its findings, and that Trump was angry after it was released. Trump said he didn't "believe" the report. Happer claims the world is in a CO2 drought, also said he would like to be an author of the NCA.
The White House recently has recruited climate deniers to fill senior roles at NOAA, promising that they could shape the future direction of the agency.
David Legates was appointed NOAA's deputy assistant secretary of Commerce for environmental observation and prediction. For years he has made claims that contradict NOAA research, including a July op-ed in The Christian Post that read, "restricting carbon dioxide will have little impact on our climate."
NOAA, and all the world's top science agencies, long ago concluded that restricting CO2 is the primary way to mitigate human-caused climate change. The findings of the NCA are backed by hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and are in line with research produced by the world's top science agencies.
Outside advisers close to the White House said Legates was recruited to shape the next climate assessment.
Steve Koonin, who collaborated with Happer on the aborted attempt to challenge the last version of the NCA, said Legates is well positioned to produce a report that would present a version of climate science that was less alarming.
Koonin, a physics professor at New York University, said he pitched White House officials on the idea of incorporating an adversarial review into the NCA. The exercise could allow science critics to use discredited theories to challenge mainstream climate research, scientists have said.
With Trump’s re-election in doubt, cabinet departments are rushing to finish dozens of new rules affecting millions of Americans. EPA, which since the start of the Trump administration has been rapidly rewriting federal regulations, is expected to complete work in the weeks that remain in Trump’s term on two of the nation’s most important air pollution rules: standards that regulate particulates and ozone emitted by factories, power plants, car exhaust and other sources.
These two pollutants are blamed for bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer and other ailments, causing an estimated 7,140 premature deaths a year in the US, according to one recent study. The agency’s proposal to keep standards at their current levels, provoked protests from certain health experts and environmentalists who argue that the agency is obligated to tighten the standards based on new evidence of the harm the pollutants cause.
Scott Pruitt, who served as EPA administrator for the first 17 months of Trump’s tenure, set as a goal before he was forced from office to finalize these standards by December 2020, even though the agency had previously expected they would not be finished until 2022.
The agency also is rushing to complete a series of regulations that could make it harder for future administrations to tighten air pollution and other environmental standards, including a limit on how science is used in rule making and a change to the way costs and benefits are evaluated to justify new rules.
However, if Biden wins the presidency, he will easily reverse these late regulations under the Congressional Review Act. Pursuant to the Act, should Biden win the election, any regulation not finalized by April, 2020 (60 legislative days before the end of a presidential term) can be quickly overturned with a simple congressional vote that is not subject to filibuster or any other Senate rules to slow it down.
Finally, I have tried to keep editorializing to a minimum in this Blog. I’ve shared important facts and developments regarding climate change as I see them. I will try to make this last point going into the elections apolitical too. It is a fact that the vast majority of the world’s leading climatologists and scientists agree that climate change is an existential threat requiring immediate and profound change. As I’ve chronicled, the evidence is over-whelming.
In the final presidential debate, Biden pledged to “transition away from the oil industry,” to phase out longstanding tax subsidies for the oil industry and move toward renewable energy. That is what scientists say is essential to achieve net-zero carbon pollution by 2050.
Biden has proposed a $2 trillion program to promote clean energy, construct 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and create millions of jobs.
Trump has stopped using the word “hoax” and moderated his longtime climate denial by promoting tree-planting as an environmental solution, but has continued to support the coal and oil industries, rolled back climate regulations implemented by Obama and moved to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The clear message from the scientific community is that we absolutely cannot afford to waste four more years before converting to a carbon-free economy. The clock is ticking. Global temperatures have already risen 1C from preindustrial times. For that increase to stay well below 2C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that global CO2 emissions must be zero by mid-century. Exceeding that limit, the panel warned, could bring about a world of worsening food and water shortages, collapsing polar ice sheets and sea level rise, mass die-off of coral reefs, political strife and millions of environmental refugees.
Many states and cities in the US have taken important steps to reduce emissions, but the essential leadership role of the federal government is lacking. It is not hyperbole to say that the future health and well-being of the country and the planet will be enormously affected by the up-coming election.
The above views are my own.
Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee
Follow me on Twitter @Howard.Carl