What do I think, What can I do?

2020 pandemic year and climate change

21 01 03
Mask Image
Mask from Pixabay

In fact, I wrote a couple of posts many months ago with my first ideas about COVID19 and climate change but This pandemic year has changed all us after initial shock and our ideas with them. In this moment I feel moderately optimistic about getting better next year in the pandemic global challenge. The vaccine, the knowledge and the fast development of this kind of crisis help me in that hope.

But the climate crisis is different in many senses, the first is that the time scopes are not in the same range. Last year the term climate emergency gained strength. I like it because I agree we are approaching tipping points but emergency in climate is conceived in a decade and not in months or days.

In this moment it is clear that the CO2 emissions in 2020 will be significantly lower than previous year or expectations. The predictions say that 2020 emissions will be 34 GtCO2, 7% lower than in 2019. It is an important and unprecedented reduction, but will it be long lasting? Or the recovery will erase any improvement?

I do not know. Some news from China tell us that it is recovering activity and emissions at the same pace. However, there are some good news from China too, EU seems committed to low carbon recovery, coal is facing tough times and the change in USA presidency is clearly positive.

My list of positive expectations is:

  • Fossil fuel industries suffer more from demand reduction, renewables fuel is cheaper. This can be critical for many coal power stations in the western countries.
  • Many new trends like home office or telematic meetings are a form of efficiency. Some transportation needs can be reduced permanently. It is possible, will be done? We will see. I have saved this year many European project meetings. Some were are lost but others were easily translated to telematic form.
  • Many countries will give strong stimulus packets and those dollars, euros, pounds or so will in some cases be connected to low carbon economy.
  • Electric mobility is becoming more real, slowly but visibly.
  • Have we gain consciousness of our fragility? At least some have and this will help for climate.
  • The “debate” is dissapearing

And the list of fears:

  • The first one is that we try to forget too fast this nightmare by recovering the lost time and delaying emission cuts. It could be too late.
  • But maybe my biggest worry is that we do not act with enough energy and we do not reduce emission at the needed pace. The pace needed for a climate emergency.
  • And of course many other smaller ones about transport electrification, heating, energy,…

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Coronavirsu and Climate Change II

20 04 02

Virus image from Syaibatul Hamdi in Pixabay

After my previous post on this subject I have read many more writting about both great issues at the same time. I am surprised as there is not direct link but maybe the subjective link about great unibersal problems works not only for me. Also for others. One thing is clear, this pandemic has already changed the world in a incredible way. The hyperlinked and constantly travelling world has gone home literally, not even daring to go to next town. The increasingly important tourism and entretainment are simply closed. The families that are used to spend most of the day out of home are together all the day at home. The sport practise, profesional and personal dissapeared… We all hope to be short term but nobody really knows the medium or long-term effect in our economy, our jobs, our way of travelling, our way of staying with others, our view of differents,…

The virus is only the cause, the consequences in our health, our fear and the way we are going to get out psicologically from the lockdown can be quite surprising. We will see, hopefully in some weeks.

By the way to continue with the analogy / effect on climate change some bullet points:

The possible positive outcomes:

  • The reinforcement of scicence as the most valuable tool in epidemics knoledge may help to climate scientists
  • The acknowledgement of our weakness as society may lead us to more consciente of the dangers coming from climate change or other risks.
  • The experience of living with less and a simpler way may help to reduce excesive consumption and consequently gain energy efficiency as society.
  • The felling of acting together as a society, even a world society as all of us are in this pandemic to some extent can help us tackle other global problems like climate change.
  • Realizing that we can do great sacrifices when something important is at risk canbe extrapolated to climate change too.
  • I believe in home-working and tele-meetings and those options of doing things without going physically. Now we are forced, many companies and institutions are forced to that and this can show the posibilities to save some tons of CO2 in transport. I am not thinking in doing it all the time but it can be done with more frequency than now. It is a way of improving energy efficiency.

In the other hand there can be negative outcomes (the epidemics is by itself negative, for all the people dying and all the people suffering, in this case I am thinking in our long-term challenge with climate change):

  • Climate Change is a long term problem and Coronavirus is inmediate. We are better prepared to understand and react to short-term.
  • Many people mention the reduction of pollution and emissions. I am sure they are true but in energy consumption data I expected more differences considering the situation. This link to EU data surprises me with low energy reductions. We will se with more time, with year data for example.
  • Sometimes, after those kind of shocks the rebound is very hard and we can emit much more to compensate or to forget the problem that has gone.
  • A great crash in economy is, in my opinion, the worst way to face climate change. In the sort term reduces emissions but even more the efforts and investments neccessary to reduce them consistently in the future. This can happen dramatically.
  • We are producing a fast consumption of some goods as masks and gloves that will last and we are reducing mass transit use. As happened with Earth Hour last Saturday the urgency and worry makes us forget every other thing or challenge in our everyday life (it is normal). For example I went by car to my office the last days to avoid the train and reduce people’s contact.

In summary we have some time to think about, these are some of the links I read and enjoyed:

Stay home, stay healthy and try to be positive and enjoy the possible personal positive outcomes, the negatives are very visible.

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Climate Change and Coronavirus

20 03 08

Everything can be connected to everything nowadays but the connection between the world news of the moment (for good reasons) the coronavirus and one of the biggest challenges we have as society; climate change are indirect. Anyway it already has some headlines. The information and its treatment goes very fast nowadays.

Nevertheless, I must admit that I though about writing about it too. I have written seldomly in this blog the last month but I read and connect everything to climate change somehow. In this case, my toughs were related more to the societal feedbacks of climate change. The basic idea could be that maybe the lack of consumption due to some kind of cataclysm harms economy and reduces emissions. The kind of feedback can be considered a control mechanism. If we go to far in climate change many aspects of our civilization will suffer so they will be stopped or reduced and this will cause emission reduction and reduction of climate change. I think this will happen to some extent as it will be difficult to adapt human society and economy to the consequences of climate change and maintain a prosperous society. The problem is that this feedback can come late, too late. And after a lot of suffering, earlier mitigation will surely be much better for must of human beings (and other living forms) and it is the sensible thing to do.

By the way, the effects of cataclisms in the long term can be complex. For example it would seem that the reduction of traveling emissions due to coronavirus should be clear but it isn’t. In any case, it would be wonderful if we could avoid this global problem that is not closellye related with climate change, and the ones that clearly are, instead of suffering them and discussing the consequences.

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Interesting Consequences

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Sea Level Rise , “High Tide in the Main Street” book

19 04 22

rito Moreno Glazier in Argentina

Photo from Perito Moreno Glazier in Argentina

I have recently finished High tide in the Main Street book, by John Englander, both Oceanographer and great blogger. It is the perfect opportunity to talk about one of the most evident and important consequences of climate change: Sea Level Rise. In this post I am not going to review the book, the short summary is that I liked it because it is clear, short and well explained. So, highly recommended. Instead of talking about the book itself I prefer to make a short list of ideas/data about sea level rise, some are from the book but the list is like a personal compilation. So let’s go:

  • Sea Level Rise is one of the most clear and stronger consequences of climate change.
  • The reason for sea level rise is mostly the melting of land ice. The ice over water does not change seal level. So the places to watch are, in strict order, Antartica, Greenland and Glaziers around the world. The water thermal expansion is a small effect in comparison.
  • Meters (the key factor and the most difficult):
    • The total range of melting is quite impressive. If all that ice is melted the sea level can rise mode than 60 m. In the ice ages the sea level was almost 200 m lower than today. A rule of thumb from historical records is 10 m with a temperature 2ºC more than now.
    • Greenland ice alone is 7 m of sea level rise.
    • In this moment the measurements are in order of mm or cm.
    • The projections for this century are a bit uncertain and depend on what we do but are in the range of 0.5 m to 1 m.
    • Those meters are in vertical. The translation in area lost in the cost strongly depends on the particular case, but it can be much more in flat lands.
  • Time:
    • Sea level rise needs some time, the melting is not immediate but lasts for a long time and it can not be stopped.
    • There are important tipping points difficult to predict. When some parts of Greenland or Antartica start to melt they will go fast to the sea and sea level will accelerate. It is difficult to say at which temperature will occur and this adds a lot of uncertainty.
  • Consequences:
    • Most problems start before too much rising: Stronger storms, coastal flooding, high tides, freshwater salinization,…
    • Economical consequences will be huge and will start in the moment we get convinced of sea level rise.
    • Many beautiful and expensive coastal areas will loose their property value.
    • The most extreme case are the islands that will become inhabitable. Some countries will disappear. How do we value them?
    • Some coastal zones will be protected with dams or other means but that is quite expensive too and the grade of protection will depend on the amount of sea level rise.
    • Only countries or regions with enough money and vision will be able to prepare protection measurements.
    • Some zones just cannot be protected due to soil structure.
    • Many specific infrastructures will have to be adapted many times
  • We have developed our civilization with a stable sea level and many infrastructures like harbours are built very precisely for a sea level.
  • Our civilization is concentrated in the coastal areas, for many reasons. Their change will have a deep effect.

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Climate Activism

19 04 06

Time goes fast. Three weeks ago I was in the most intense #FridayforClimate, at least in my personal experience. I was with my older son and I finished with mixed feelings happy to see more people than expected, hopeful for the strength transmitted by young people and for the worldwide impact but worried by the lack of focus, at least in the demonstration I was. I wrote about it.

I am not able to make a reasonable prediction about this movement started by Greta Thunberg. Sometimes I see this personalization as a weakness sometimes as a strength, we all need models, and we all follow more easily people than ideas. The problem is when this model people is not able to meet the expectations. For the moment, Greta continues to get coverage and leads. For me the planet wide scope is key but the young people leadership is quite interesting too. They are going to live more time with the consequences of climate change, they have more personal reasons to be worried. Like in the judicial case of  “Juliana v US,” the lawsuit filed by youth plaintiffs against the United States claiming that climate change violates their rights. I do not think courts will solve this problem but those cases will generate political and social activism.

To get a successful climate change mitigation (the technical name to reduce the emissions and climate change) we need this activism because changing our energy production, transportation and industry will not be easy and will produce losers. This kind of sacrifices are intrinsically difficult for politicians, they can produce strong backfire like yellow vests movement in France. And activism helps for that, it helps a lot.

#EarthHour in 2019 (March 30th)

Another form of activism, not so young, was last Saturday’s #EarthHour, it is quite old, in fact, from 2004. 6 years ago I mentioned itand last Saturday I went to the local meeting with my family. We were not many this time, and I did not check if the power consumption effect was noticeable, but it still is another wolrdwide action, with many institutions involved and with a clear message in favour of energy use reduction, or, in other words, efficiency. I like this message, we need of concretion, and even more we need a world wide claim of concrete and urgent actions like a carbon tax, or stopping coal use, or reaching some reasonable co2 emissions per capita in a defined time. Undoubtedly, those campaigns can help, even more if they converge and maintain pressure until next cop meetings or elections.

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Green New deal and School strikes

19 03 19

From Pixabay (jplenio)

In the last times these two movements are attracting much attention in climate change.

Green New Deal is a strong political movement in USA. A couple of good explanations here: in New York Times and from Australia in Skeptical Science. USA and China are the two main economies David Appel likes it but he would prefer to separate climate change politics from other social politics. After reading it I partially agree but I prefer to connect with the next interesting movement.

On the other hand Greta Thunberg -the young girl that addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference and in January 2019, having just turned 16,  and was invited to talk to the World Economic Forum at Davos- has started and inspired a school strike against climate change. It has become a really strong young people movement worldwide and it deserves a post itself.

Both are important because have made mainstream climate change, both have helped feel the urgency of climate action that scientists are long ago explaining, both are reaching worldwide scope. At the same time they are different, Green New Deal is very political and School strikes are mostly social. Green New Deal comes from American politics and School strikes come from the cold northern Europe.

So I am very happy to hear in the news that climate change is a big problem and we have to act as humankind. This was really necessary both at political and social level. What I miss is concreteness in the message. It would be nice to focus on asking to close coal power stations, install yearly a good amount of renewables, support for governments speaking about end of fuel vehicles,… And it would be really great to ask a worldwide carbon tax that is one politics that would move many others. Concreteness is imperative as we need fast action.

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Off-Shore Wind Power

19 02 10

Wind Mills Image taken from Pixabay from Oimheidi

The wind is more powerful and constant in the sea. In fact, it has been used for many centuries to cross the oceans by brave sailors who knew quite well how to find favourable winds. But moving ships is one thing and harvesting wind cost-effectively another different one. I have always had doubts about off-shore wind power to become an important energy source because harvesting energy in ocean conditions is more difficult and transportation is an additional cost. But the data are telling me I was not right.

Last year, 2018, was not so good for climate change. However Europe installled 2,6 GW of new off-shore wind power, as shown in WindEurope statistic data. This is an increment of 18% in off-shore wind power capacity in 15 new parks. Quite good numbers that show a steady growing trend. UK plans to have 25 GW in 2030 and Germany 20 GW. Other countries (Poland, France, Belgium) in Europe also have plans. Europe has been leading this technology but in USA there are many projects currently and China is starting too.

Some concrete examples are:

  • The project called Gemini Wind park will be the first and important step to transform Duch fossil power generation into renewables and it is starting to be built.
  • Hywind in Scotland is quite special as it is a floating off-shore, for the moment floating off-shore is quite expensive compared to fixed one but it has a huge potential and it is expected to get cheaper.
  • Gode Wind 1 y 2 in Germany with more than 500 MW of power.
  • The news about the first off-shore wind power auction that did not need any subsidy was great and really significant although it has to be qualified as explained in the German post Germany to get free offshore wind! Wait, what?.

In this moment off-shore wind only represents 2% of electricity production in Europe, less in other important economies, but it is growing and growing steadily. The technology is becoming competitive and the resource is vast. Moreover, it is and opportunity for oil companies to “recycle” their activity. In my opinion this is good because it can soften the transition if some of the greatest losers (oil companies) get some compensation and besides their experience can be helpful for deploying off-shore wind and this can help reduce costs and times faster. Getting new renewable and competitive electricity sources is very important, it helps in the fast transition we need and diversification will help in the intermittency problem.

Even more, these examples and data were all about the “fixed” off-shore wind, however the floating wind mills would allow a further development, more wind in different locations and another jump.

 

 

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2018 year in Climate Change

19 01 29

 

Crossroad. Photo by James Wheeler from Pexels .

Last year I haven written much about climate change. But I continue reading, thinking and worrying. It has been grey year, disappointing for many things and hopeful for others. So let’s put in black and white my personal balance:

In the most significant part I would locate the IPCC Special Report on 1.5ºC. It deserves more explanation, but the main point, in my opinion, is that scientific community concretes to the world the time limit to act in order to be in the safe side of climate change and the time limit is narrow. We are close to the crossroad

In contrast, the world CO2 emissions have increased significantly. And this is by itself the bad news, but considering the crossroad concept it gets even harder to assume, it is like saying something clearly to the world and getting the wrong answer immediately. This way there is no way. Last year was the 4th hottest until now but next record will be here soon.

COP24 did not get a political serious compromise and thermosolar is not growing fast either.

In the positive trends, there are many hopeful signals:

  • Coal continues to decline in many countries and globally. Coal is the first fossil fuel to quit.
  • UK in its brexit decision turmoil continues to be a great example, reducing power consumption (decoupling from economy), coal and emissions.
  • Off-shore wind power seems to be a reality, in UK and in many other EU countries.
  • Electric mobility seems closer. Maybe not in numbers but the felling is that some governments and auto industry consider it feasible. Or at least more feasible that ten years ago.
  • Energy storage seems closer too. Battery costs go down steadily. This is a key factor to increase renewables in many electric systems.
  • Photo-voltaic and on-shore wind power are profitable without subsidies in many countries. This changes the game, even more for developing countries. They do not have to decarbonize, just do not have to carbonize.

Most of those sentences deserve a dedicated post. I will try.

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Climate Change Urgency

18 03 17

urgent

In the last couple of years my perception is is that climate change community is translating more and more the sense of urgency. Something has to be done but not tomorrow. This sense is applied to sea level rise, to the reasonable temperature limit, to extreme weather events, … In fact, changing the “acceptable” temperature increase limit from 2ºC to 1.5ºC is in itself quite stressing and makes climate change objective quite hard to achieve without immediate and strong international action. This urgent action need is becoming more and more general.

My felling about this urgency is a bit contradictory:

  • I completely agree that we are not doing enough. Emissions have not start to decrease consistently, and there are more that 20 years now that climate change was widely recognized as one of the worlds leading challenges. Even worse, the required changes are societal and economic challenges that need strong commitment for a long time. The solution will not be fast.
  • However, the urgency has a risk, some risks in fact. It can disturb the main long-term objective; it can distort the climate change history; and it can be very disappointing if no short-term success is achieved.

Maybe my felling is very related to the conflict between long-term and short-term in society, in my life and in climate change. Anyway, urgent action is needed, at least to start a long, difficult but necessary journey to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and avoid too much climate change.

 

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2016 in climate change

17 04 11

I have been quite absent from this blog last years but not from Climate Change news, so I dare to give an opinion about 2016.  2016 was the hottest year on record, it was confirmed by all agencies, NASA, NOAA, WMO,… It is true that “el Niño” effect helped a lot but breaking global temperature records in 2015 and 2016 confirms that Climate is changing and it is changing now and fast. And this, although expected, is really bad news because it means that we have less time left to reduce our CO2 (and some other GHG) emissions.

2016 Hottest year on record, figure from NASA.org

 

 

 

Maybe a positive influence is that skeptics do not know what to say after loosing their hiatus argument, they will come back with it in some time. Nevertheless they are happy because one of them in in the White House and nobody really knows how much he can hinder Climate Change fight (some even consider he can be positive). I think that having a man that doubts about climate change ruling the most powerful economy in the world in years that are critical to get a real and serious global climate agreement is, definitively,  a problem.

To end positively, two important good news: a record new renewable energy capacity was added last year (with lower costs); and coal was passed by renewables worldwide. A good example is brexit UK coal use reduction, historical in the country that started industrial revolution with it.

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Climate change and politics, skeptical about skeptics

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