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Archive for the ‘Climate change and politics’ Category

Green New deal and School strikes

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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climate activism, Climate change and politics

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2018 year in Climate Change

 

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 and politics, climate wars

Climate Change Urgency

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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Climate change and politics

2016 in climate change

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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Pope and Climate Change

Last days the most commented climate change news are the words coming from catholic church’s leader Pope Francis in a encyclica called Laudato Si.  It is everywhere,

  • in climate change webs it is celebrates and extensively commented: climate progress, carbon brief, skeptical science, quark soup…
  • In skeptic webs it is criticized: whatupwhiththat, or this one.
  • In general newspapers it is mentioned profusely. For example, New York Times has 22 news in their climate change channel last week (12-19th June), 17 are about Pope’s encyclica, including an editorial. relationship with poverty, american politics reactions, or critics to current global market. Many others like BBC, El Pais (in Spanish),… It is well described in this post.
  • In Google a simple “Laudato Si” search gives 2.000.000 answers.

So,is this document a turning point in climate change? I agree with Carbon Brief‘s post that explains it is very positive and influential but just that. There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world but the two great actors (USA and China) are not Catholic and most influential catholic states are among the “convinced” in climate change (Italy, Brazil, Spain). Even more,  if this document is clear and with a lot of media attention, the opinion of catholic church with respect to climate change was not different with previous Popes. Nevertheless, in my opinion the three most positive points of the encyclica are:

  1. The moment is crucial. We need commitment and clear ideas in the governments and public opinion to start a way now that will avoid greater problems in 50 years. This document helps in this sense, to gain commitment. This year COP in Paris is a great opportunity to start a serious change.
  2. Many people in several western countries listens contradictory words about climate change, or they do not get a sense of urgency. The Pope will be a new word for them, as it is a highly respected opinion for many people and can help them inform more or get conscious about climate change. Every people’s opinion counts in this issue, at least to some extent.
  3. Finally Pope Francis connects the fact of the poorest with climate change. Climate change is becoming a great problem for them in many ways and this is the way it will become an humanitarian problem to the eyes of many people.

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Climate change and politics

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My wishes for 2014

Last months I haven’t written anything in the blog due to a combination of lack of time in my personal life and spending my remaining “free” hours in coursera platform learning about climate change. It has been a very well spent time, I have learned many interesting things about climate change, but I hope to talk about it in a further post. Today I want to greet the new year with some short wishes about climate change:

1.- It would be wonderful to stabilize the carbon emissions worldwide as many important countries have done in their particular cases. Or even better, to start reducing them making 2013 the peak emissions year.

2.- If the previous is too optimistic, it would be good at least to stop Coal plant growth in most parts of the world.

3.- And combine it with a robust growth of renewable energies.

4.- An international carbon tax would really help, adopted broadly, or at least by the greater emitter countries. Next COP would be a good place to agree on it.

5.- If all of these does not happen, or it is too weak, and international social movement could help to raise public opinion awareness and move some reluctant governments.

6.- or … we could just stop talking and act with the seriousness to be expected from an intelligent being.

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Climate change and politics, Renewable energy, Transportation

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IPCC 5th report in a tweet and two paragraphs

The tweet (more or less):

Climate change is real, induced by human emissions from fossil fuels and we have to act fast to avoid nightmare scenarios

Of course, this is a personal summary, far from the precise and scientific language of the report summary, but adapted to modern communication and fast to read. A very nice summary of the summary in 6 figures can be found in Carbon Brief. And with more or less extension or accuracy most newspapers mention it (some were even positively surprising for me). Skeptics employ several posts to counteract, in the last posts of WUWT, there are no less than 5 dedicated to that noble purpose, this shows its value.

However, with more or less coverage, my real worry is that I do not feel that the importance and urgency of the message has reach the world population, not in my close neighbourhood at least. And this is the 5th message in the same direction by an organization representing thousands of scientists. Or said in other words, even in many/most trust this scientific effort, it is not enough to act and make what can be done to reduce emissions drastically as needed.

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Climate change and politics, skeptical about skeptics

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Is India committed to continue to be low carbon and Germany to become so?

Some time ago, I mentioned the known fact that China and USA are the most important players in the World CO2 emissions game as the greatest emitters. But they are not  the only ones that matter. At least 25 countries are important in the world emission scenario, In this post I am going to mention two news about other two of those countries: Germany and India, the sixth and third emitter respectively.

News from India are positive: “India Plans To Build The Largest Solar Plant In The World”. In spite of being the third emitter in the world the percapita emissions are low, the lowest among great emitters and even close to the acceptable limit in the world, the ton per person as shown in the figures below. The problem is that the economic efficiency of the emissions has been erratic and the potential to grow in both, economy and emissions at the same time is huge. So, it would be great for the world that India would look for renewable energy to supply its growing demand, investing in their poor grid and forgetting coal or gas. Some studies even consider that wind is as cheap as coal for India, but the grid is a problem.

india_germany_2010On the other side, Germany had historically great emissions as a very industrial country not based on Hydro or Nuclear energy and loving good and fast cars without speed limits. But,then they decided to start the Energiewende, their self-convicted ambitious energy transition to get ride of fossil fuels and nuclear at the same time and to be energetically independent. The emissions / GDP rate (economic efficiency of the emissions) has improved dramatically as shown in the diagrams but the per capita emissions have not followed the same speed, and they still are close to 10 in 2010, ten times higher than the acceptable ton per person. I do not know the last figures but this year they have even increased emissions. So it is a bit discouraging to  see that the apparent multipartisan conviction  and serious efforts are not getting enough results, and even some doubts arose in last elections about economical effects. Nevertheless, I still believe they are committed to succeed and they need more time to show clearer results, if they do it would be a great example of transformation for one of the strongest economies in the world, a great example for China and USA and the rest of Europe.

So let’s hope Germany continues the started revolution and India grows in a revolutionary way, they could be very significant examples.

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Is Sweden such a good example for the USA?

Climate Progress mentioned Obama’s praise to Sweden regarding their energy policy. And the same post shows a figure explaining the very low contribution of fossil fuels in the Swedish electricity production mix and some reasons that led them there. It is interesting and clearly reasonable as it is true that Swedish emissions from power stations are low based on hydro power and nuclear and total emissions per capita are a third of Americans. Even more the Emissions / GDP ratio, or the emission per economic unit are among the lowest in the world and certainly between rich countries, and they have improved a lot since the seventies in this emissions intensity (from 0.4 to 0.12).

But, and this is the problem, it is not enough. The problem is that it is not enough to be efficient as the Swedish, because their emissions per capita are in the 5 CO2 tons figure, 1 ton more than world average, 12 tons less than USA, close to China but 4 tons per person more than acceptable to stabilize carbon flux (data from IEA, 2010). Or, in other words, 5 times more than the reasonable objective for humans.

It is not enough to improve as the Swedish, we have to be really committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and we have to start fast if we do not want to reach too far. Although of course Sweden is still a good example for the USA and many others, an example to start moving.

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Climate change and politics

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When Renewables reduce electricity bill

eolikoak2

The following post mentions something that is repeated sometimes in the renewable energy debate.

How Maryland’s New Climate Plan Could Actually Lower Energy Costs

Depending on the regulations or feed-in-tariff, renewables can reduce the base cost as they can enter at 0 cost in the auction. This happens in Spain for example, but this does not mean that the final tariff is cheaper as renewable feed-in-tariff is added later. OK, the total amount maybe cheaper in the end or not (it was discussed here). Electricity cost definition is quite difficult to understand in many countries, in some too difficult. In my opinion, this is not the moment to discuss if solar energy or wind power are cheaper than gas or coal. Happily they have reduced their costs and are more and more competitive but they have been more expensive and will be in some places/cases for some time. I think that a much better and more clear message is to say that even if/when they are more expensive their costs will be much lower than a catastrophic climate change. Even when/if they are more expensive in the short-term, their long-term profitability will be evident. Otherwise, the pure current cost discussion can be quite disappointing, as in Kirguistan. So it is again a discussion between long-term and short-term, about our generation and the next ones.

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Climate change and politics, climate wars

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