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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1400 on: April 22, 2018, 08:19:16 AM »
Earth Day - We Don't Have Time, conference.
Keynote speakers and conference hosts in the link.
https://wedonthavetime.confetti.events/

Live here later today:


Hopefully an interview with Jeffrey Sachs (and/or others) is made in conjunction with this as well, we'll see...
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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1401 on: April 23, 2018, 12:33:10 PM »
The Carbon Clock is ticking away.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1402 on: April 23, 2018, 04:12:05 PM »
Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron Agree To New Approach To Climate Change Amid Trump's Inaction
Quote
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron, long billed as kindred political spirits, agreed Monday to a fresh, fortified attack on climate change — hoping to keep a shared priority at the forefront of the global agenda despite Donald Trump's decision to quit the battlefield.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna was on hand to sign the new France-Canada partnership on climate and environment in a ceremony at the French presidential palace during the first day of Trudeau's official visit to Paris.

"France and Canada today pledge to redouble their efforts and increase their co-operation," Trudeau said in French during a news conference with Macron following the ceremony.

"This initiative will encourage and accelerate the achievement of the Paris Agreement targets through concrete measures to make this agreement in principle a reality." ...
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/04/16/trudeau-emmanuel-macron-climate-change_a_23412732/
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Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1403 on: April 23, 2018, 05:57:00 PM »
Mexico and the EU have opened talks intended to lead to a fair trade agreement.

Looks like Europe is simply going to work around the US as long a Trump is crapping things up.

Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1404 on: April 23, 2018, 09:34:48 PM »
Continuing on #1402 above, over four hours is not everyones cup of tea so I cut out and tried to shrink a couple of the speakers(!) to fit in here.  ;)
First Jeffrey Sachs and the next following speaker, Anders Wijkman.
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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1405 on: April 24, 2018, 08:20:48 AM »
The same as above, now Canadian Peter Carter. That's pretty much the scale we are dealing with here, with Jeffrey Sachs as the optimistic time frame proponent, Anders Wijkman in the middle with a broad brush over the real and lesser discussed challenges ahead and Peter Carter in the alarmist camp, pointing out that global emissions must decline on an immediate basis, by 2020 at the very latest. But the national emissions targets of our governments do just the opposite, they lead to substantially greater emissions by 2030, that is a planet killer policy, literally the crime of all time.
The world is going vegan he also says, which Swedish hamburger chain MAX CEO won't disagree on. Maybe that will be the next clip from We Don't Have Time.
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gerontocrat

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1406 on: April 24, 2018, 09:51:03 AM »
The Carbon Clock is ticking away.

Hullo Sleepy.

The clock on your post is in a little loop, i.e. goes down for a few seconds and then starts again from the same place. . I tried extracting the clock myself. The same thing happens.
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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1407 on: April 24, 2018, 09:59:01 AM »
Yes, it is an animation of the real thing gerontocrat.
It's live here: https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/co2-budget.html

Continuing, as almost promised above, with the talk by MAX CEO Richard Bergfors, also a snippet from the following panel talk under solutions since he replies to a question posed by Jeffrey Sachs about impossible foods at the end of that one. But also Anders Wijkman's initial comments here are worth listening to. The clip above in #1406 with Anders is definitely worth listening to as well.

Hopefully Nevens disk quota is ok...
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gerontocrat

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1408 on: April 24, 2018, 10:47:28 AM »
Yes, it is an animation of the real thing gerontocrat.
It's live here: https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/co2-budget.html


Hullo Sleepy again.

But I did manage to extract the fully functioning clock without the article.

https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock.htm
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1409 on: April 24, 2018, 11:20:45 AM »
So you wrote:
Quote
The clock on your post is in a little loop, i.e. goes down for a few seconds and then starts again from the same place. . I tried extracting the clock myself. The same thing happens.
Works here, ran it simultaneously on IE, Firefox and Chrome on different operating systems. All continued with the countdown. No restarts.
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gerontocrat

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1410 on: April 24, 2018, 08:36:03 PM »
The Mercator Carbon Countdown Clock is running as I write this.

The clock basically says that the 1.5 degrees thing is kaput.
- Low estimate of budget remaining - budget used up already,
- Medium estimate of budget remaining - budget used up in 4 months (15 GT remaining),
- High estimate of budget remaining - budget used up in three years. CO2 emissions will not diminish by more than a small fraction in the best-case scenario for renewable energy replacement of fossil fuel and EV replacement of ICE vehicles in that time frame.

The 2 degrees limit gives us 8 years, 17 years and 22 years to get CO2 emissions down to zilch.
- 8 years - no chance.
- 17 years and 22 years - then we are looking at the 2035 to 2040 time frame. I would expect real progress on reducing demand for fossil fuels by 2030. That is when the fight with oil-producing countries and the behemoths of the oil and gas industry is surely going to happen.

But there is a gorilla in the room. I got the World Bank data on total greenhouse gas emissions - up to 2012 (the World Bank is always at least 5 years behind the curve). I combined it with the CO2 emissions to derive the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.

The result was that these non-CO2 gases are currently adding 50% to total CO2e emissions and have been flat for several years at around 18 gt per annum. These gases exclude short-cycle biomass burning (such as agricultural waste burning and Savannah burning) but include other biomass burning (such as forest fires, post-burn decay, peat fires and decay of drained peatlands), all anthropogenic CH4 sources, N2O sources and F-gases (HFCs, PFCs and SF6).

Trouble is,
-18 to 20 gt per annum of these gases is surely enough to keep CO2 ppm rising,
- do I believe that the data accurately reflects the methane leaks from the fracking and other gas extraction and distribution systems?
- do I believe that the data reflects truly methane release from the tundra and arctic seas and drying out of tropical peatlands?
- do I believe that land-use changes and ocean acidification will not negatively affect the world's natural carbon sinks?

I attach a graph from the data plus a projection which is a bit negative. The trouble is, when I choose a trendline with the best R2 value (i.e. best fit) on just about any climate issue, the result always seems to tend towards Armageddon.

What a troubled post.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1411 on: April 24, 2018, 09:53:04 PM »
Quote
That is when the fight with oil-producing countries and the behemoths of the oil and gas industry is surely going to happen.

What are they going to do?  Make EVs illegal?  Put a huge road use tax on EVs that ICEVs would not have to pay?

Seems to me that they have already lost.  EVs are the coming thing and there's no way to make ICEVs competitive short of selling oil for no profit or at a loss.

rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1412 on: April 24, 2018, 09:59:06 PM »
Gerontocrat,

Judging from the atmospheric concentration of methane, emissions of that gas have jumped quite a bit on the past few years. Taking the 20-year CO2e number for methane, more appropriate with a static/increasing level of atmospheric methane, produces a very sizeable incremental forcing.

Nitrous oxide concentration seems to be on a pretty constant rate of increase.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4/

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html

By the time of the next UN IPCC report, many UN climate scenarios may have BECCS plus geo-engineering to keep below 2 degrees (and ignore the possibility of a Blue Ocean Event). The push for geo will only get bigger and bigger as the pathetic failure at GHG reductions becomes too obvious to ignore.

Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1413 on: April 24, 2018, 10:35:29 PM »
Quote
What are they going to do?  Make EVs illegal?

That is already being openly discussed in some countries, just the year of illegality is too far away.

In which countries is there serious discussion about making EVs illegal?

gerontocrat

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1414 on: April 25, 2018, 12:16:37 AM »
Quote
That is when the fight with oil-producing countries and the behemoths of the oil and gas industry is surely going to happen.

What are they going to do?  Make EVs illegal?  Put a huge road use tax on EVs that ICEVs would not have to pay?

You would be amazed what Governments will do to protect industries when pressured enough. The Corn Laws in the UK in the 19th century kept USA wheat out for many years to protect the rich landowners (who at that time owned the UK) - no matter what hardship caused to the poor.

In the USA you still have the lunatic Jones Act to protect the US shipping industry (and incidentally screw the people of Puerto Rico and Hawaii). Half the reason for USA's fight against Cuba was to get the United Fruit Companies plantations back - no matter that the company stole the land in the first place (by bribing the Government to change the land laws to legalise theft). How did Mr. Firestone get the land for what became the biggest rubber plantation in the world at a dollar an acre - or was it a lot less (Liberia)?

Governments are bought and sold every day.
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Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1415 on: April 25, 2018, 01:24:10 AM »
Car companies are well down the EV path already.  VW has decided to abandon diesel and go straight to batteries.  Huge battery plants are being built.  (One large enough to supply 500,000 EVs a year just announced by VW.)

There might be a movement in Somewherestan to block EVs but realistically it won't work.  There will be no one building ICEVs before long.

Sigmetnow

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1416 on: April 25, 2018, 05:16:46 PM »
Which U.S. Industries Are Setting the Strongest Climate Goals?
An analysis of more than 600 top U.S. companies finds that those seeing the effects of global warming first-hand are taking the most concrete actions.
Quote
Overall, the industries with the largest percentage of companies setting quantitative, time-bound targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions were the food and beverage sector at 86 percent, followed by transportation at 50 percent and technology hardware at 48 percent. The numbers drop off after that, including 40 percent of apparel companies, 35 percent in finance, 25 percent of utilities and 13 percent of oil and gas companies.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24042018/american-companies-leaders-greenhouse-gas-targets-renewable-energy-ceres-study
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rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1417 on: May 02, 2018, 06:21:52 PM »
Politicians will change. They simply have to.

Just finished a very depressing book "Oil's Deep State: How the petroleum industry undermines democracy and stops action on global warming - in Alberta, and in Ottawa" which plainly shows why the NDP government in Alberta and the Liberal government in Ottawa are addressing climate change more with rhetoric than real action. As long as the politicians can keep taking money from the fossil fuel folks, and those folks ingratiate themselves across society with their money, they may double-down on the denial rather than really do anything substantive.

In Ontario, the most populace province in Canada, we may soon have a Progressive Conservative government that will repeal cap & trade and is committed to no carbon taxes. It may very well be a major landslide, with "Ford Nation" taking over - the brother of the lunatic crack-smoking ex-mayor of Toronto (Rob Ford) is the leader of the Ontario PC. One of the big issues is the increase in electricity bills that has been blamed on climate change action, when its really due to a whole bunch of things (big nuclear refurb bills, drops in electricity usage, selling excess power at a loss to the US etc.).



France missed its emission reduction targets last year, what politicians say is usually relatively meaningless (Obama was a true genius at this), it's what they do that counts. Our Canadian PM seems to have learnt a lot from Obama, as has Macron. If both redirected the extra money that they are giving the military toward renewable energy projects we would all be a lot safer in the long run.

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2018/01/france-fails-to-meet-its-own-climate-goals-promises-to-double-down-on-carbon-reduction/

Geo-engineering will continue to seep into UN FCCC process, as its the only way to reconcile continued growth, taking money from the fossil fuel lobbies, and controlling global temperatures. I am not supporting that approach, which I consider to be a form of societal insanity, but have to accept the reality of our current political and economic system.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2018, 06:36:11 PM by rboyd »

rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1418 on: May 02, 2018, 07:17:09 PM »
A large issue for the UN Climate Agreement is the continuing misrepresentation of natural gas fugitive methane emissions within the national GHG accounts. Taking them into account, together with climate cooling aerosols produced by coal burning, natural gas (especially fracked NG) is worse than coal from a radiative forcing point of view. In the short-term (i.e. 20 years) its even worse given the methane CO2 equivalence over 20 years.

Many countries are ramping up natural gas usage and claiming spurious reductions in GHG emissions. China is now rapidly expanding NG usage for example:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-gas-production/chinas-soaring-natural-gas-output-unable-to-meet-demand-set-loose-in-pollution-fight-idUSKBN1FP006

Articles like that below, extolling the usage of NG are still prevalent. LNG is makes things worse given the energy intensive nature of gas liquefaction "In short, the more we try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the more gas we will consume. Gas emits just 50% the CO2 that coal does and 30% of the CO2 emitted by petroleum". No mention of fugitive methane emissions!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2017/07/09/the-rapidly-expanding-global-liquefied-natural-gas-market/#369974a52213

Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1419 on: May 02, 2018, 09:34:42 PM »
But don't forget that NG, unlike coal, is highly dispatchable.  When the Sun is shining or the wind blowing it's easy to turn off the fuel flow to the gas plant and burn less FF fuel.

If NG and coal are equal in terms of GHG per MWh of electricity burning half as much NG as coal makes NG twice as good as coal.
---

Most studies ignore the fugitive methane releases from mining and crushing coal when they do their coal/NG comparisons.

AbruptSLR

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1420 on: May 02, 2018, 10:33:23 PM »
The more optimistic emission scenarios are becoming less and less likely to occur:

Title: "The world is failing to hit its climate targets"

https://www.axios.com/climate-change-co2-targets-emissions-4c83456d-b513-4e0e-ae67-4165bb957e5e.html

Extract: "Despite big gains and cost reductions in renewables deployment as well as the expansion of carbon pricing, wringing CO2 out of the global economy on a large scale is not happening nearly fast enough to prevent highly dangerous levels of warming."

See also:

http://trackingsdg7.esmap.org/data/files/download-documents/tracking_sdg7-the_energy_progress_report_full_report.pdf
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Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1421 on: May 03, 2018, 01:32:58 AM »
Quote
The more optimistic emission scenarios are becoming less and less likely to occur:

Are those observations based on yesterday's rate of RE installation and EV sales or to they take into account where we are in the transition?

The first 1% is harder than the next 10% is a saying I've heard a few times.  The globe is at about 2% wind and solar and maybe not up to 1% with EVs.  With rapidly dropping price we should see rapid growth.

TerryM

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1422 on: May 03, 2018, 08:08:11 AM »
When should we expect to see the Keeling numbers coming down?
When will clean renewable growth exceed demand growth?


Terry




sidd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1423 on: May 03, 2018, 08:14:38 AM »
"When should we expect to see the Keeling numbers coming down?"

A few years after net human emissions hit zero ... hopefully, if other feedbacks havent kicked in.

"When will clean renewable growth exceed demand growth?"

I actual think demand will plummet as fast as renewable growth.  LED lighting is an example but there are others, like better insulation.

another aspect is shifting demand in time to whenever renewable energy is abundant. I am seeing demand shift take off in electric markets where it is offered, as beancounters at large consumers see the dollar signs. You can do a lot shifting demand for your bottom line if you are a time insensitive energy eater or you can do preheat pr precool or ice manufacture for aircon.

sidd


TerryM

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1424 on: May 03, 2018, 08:58:34 AM »
"When should we expect to see the Keeling numbers coming down?"

A few years after net human emissions hit zero ... hopefully, if other feedbacks havent kicked in.

I'd hope that some percentage of human emissions are constantly being more or less permanently sequestered without human intervention. Otherwise we've a very long row to hoe.


I'd like to see Mr. Keeting's curve flatten out just a little. - soon
Terry

sidd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1425 on: May 03, 2018, 08:28:37 PM »
"I'd hope that some percentage of human emissions are constantly being more or less permanently sequestered without human intervention."

"Permanently" is a very stong word. About half of anthro CO2 is sequestered on land and ocean, but the permanency of sequestered amounts is not clear. For example a lot of the CO2 in the ocean will degas if we heat them up too much.

sidd

rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1426 on: May 03, 2018, 08:49:00 PM »
"When should we expect to see the Keeling numbers coming down?"

Even the most optimistic country plans only look for something like an 80% drop in emissions by 2050, so not carbon neutral/negative until the second half of this century. So the Keeling curve wont go down until post-2050, if as stated above natural emissions have not increased in the interim.

Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1427 on: May 03, 2018, 09:20:03 PM »
Quote
When will clean renewable growth exceed demand growth?

Global
Wind and solar generation as a percentage of total electricity consumed.

2012 = 2.750%   
2013 = 3.341%
2014 = 3.798%
2015 = 4.477%
2016 = 5.209%

Wind first showed up in 1985 with a 0.1% share of all electricity generated globally. Solar debuted at 0.3% in 1989.

Since then the percentage of global electricity has risen each consecutive year.  The numbers graph out like a rocket taking off from a horizontal start.


TerryM

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1428 on: May 03, 2018, 09:51:13 PM »
Understood Bob, but demand increases are still far exceeding any increase that renewables might show.
We're still going in the wrong direction, and the pace isn't slowing down.


If an entity produced 10% of it's electricity through very inexpensive wind farms, and this lowered their electrical selling price by one cent/kWh, this might encourage an additional demand of 11%. If so we'd be better off with the more expensive, polluting, but less used mix.


Figures are not meant to represent reality, but to illustrate the problem.
Terry

Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1429 on: May 03, 2018, 10:03:11 PM »
Quote
but demand increases are still far exceeding any increase that renewables might show

Terry, if the percentage of wind/solar is going up then wind/solar are growing faster than demand is increasing.

2012  wind and solar generation / total electricity = 2.64%
2015  wind and solar generation / total electricity = 5.20%

If wind and solar were not growing faster than demand then the 2015 number would be 2.64% or less. 
----

Edited:  Let me retract that claim.  Wind and solar are growing as a percentage of total generation but (after looking at the numbers) overall generation (TWh) is growing fast than wind and solar (TWh).
« Last Edit: May 03, 2018, 10:23:25 PM by Bob Wallace »

rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1430 on: May 04, 2018, 09:28:35 PM »
Upcoming Ontario election could jeopardize energy transition

"Rising electricity rates have been a major political problem for the [Ontario] government, and the public blames feed-in tariffs for renewable energy for much of that. (​In fact in 2015, wind, solar and biomass generated 18% of the province’s electricity and accounted for 27% of generation and conservation costs.)"

"On the political front, the opposition party (the Progressive Conservatives) have pledged to eliminate the cap and trade legislation, and presumably the energy efficiency renovation rebate program and others that it funds. The Progressive Conservatives suffered a sexual misconduct scandal involving the party’s former leader within 6 months of the election, and have elected a leader, Doug Ford (brother of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford), who has been compared to Donald Trump"

"Ontario’s cap and trade program seems poised to begin delivering significant and popular improvements to the energy efficiency of the existing building stock.  But those programs are vulnerable to political opposition against a government that is widely seen to be well past its prime."

Gnashing of teeth ...


TerryM

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1431 on: May 05, 2018, 05:04:54 AM »
Wynn's as good as I've ever seen, and Ford makes Trump look like a statesman.


Do either of them play well outside Toronto?
Terry

Sigmetnow

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1432 on: May 07, 2018, 02:58:54 PM »
You say, “Talanoa.”

I say, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.”  ;)

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tamarian_language
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rboyd

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1433 on: May 07, 2018, 11:13:46 PM »
If I read it correctly, the EASAC report invalidates the assumptions about widespread NET usage made in the vast majority of ISAM runs used by the IPCC. The result would be that the carbon budget is much closer to the Kevin Anderson version than the UN IPCC one, requiring much more rapid emission reductions (10% a year in the richer nations) that would require limitations on economic growth and much more aggressive policy actions. That's without accepting the impact of increasing methane concentrations, carbon feedbacks, blue ocean etc.

The only other option would then be .... NET plus solar radiation management. My money is on SRM assumptions starting to be built into those ISAM runs, in parallel with increasingly positive/resigned statements in the MSM about the need for SRM.

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1434 on: May 08, 2018, 03:03:11 AM »
I came across these tweets from Kevin Anderson last week.



Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1435 on: May 08, 2018, 03:36:20 AM »
People, in general, are not concerned enough about climate change.  Concern levels might not rise high enough to take major actions until after we have suffered severe hurt.

What it will take to lower our GHG levels is acceptable, affordable options for fossil fuels.

Here's where we are with renewable energy...



Sort of affordable long range EVs are just now being manufactured (Tesla M3 and longer range Nissan Leaf).

Those are the first acceptable, affordable options.  As time goes on the cost of wind and solar is expected to drop.  EVs will get cheaper.  We're short years, IMHO, from seeing rapid CO2 drops.

Bob Wallace

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1436 on: May 08, 2018, 04:57:13 PM »
Here's where we are with renewable energy...
We're short years, IMHO, from seeing rapid CO2 drops.

I seriously doubt that.

Because here's where we really are with renewable energy...



From Nature News Feature 25 April 2018
Can the world kick its fossil-fuel addiction fast enough? Clean energy is growing quickly. But time is running out to rein in carbon emissions.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04931-6

Notice how coal has started dropping? 

Notice the acceleration rate for wind and solar and how, along with increasing hydro, natural gas growth is getting canceled out?

Notice the rapidly dropping cost of wind and solar?

Paying attention to the fact that within the next few years affordable EVs will be available for people to purchase?

I'm sticking with my prediction that within short years - within ten years - we will start to see rapid CO2 drops.

numerobis

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1437 on: May 09, 2018, 12:52:43 AM »
I think it likely that CO2 emissions will drop. Of course, they should have been dropping for the past 20 years since Kyoto.

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1438 on: May 09, 2018, 07:03:19 AM »
I think it likely that CO2 emissions will drop. Of course, they should have been dropping for the past 20 years since Kyoto.

We didn't really have the ability to drop emissions in an acceptable manner and at an acceptable price.  I'm excited, we've reached the acceptable/affordable milestone.

Now, since the majority of people want something done to fight climate change we can start making significant progress while saving money and improving people's lives.  It may take a couple more years before most people understand that but once they do I expect lots of pressure on governments to speed the process off fossil fuels.

gerontocrat

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1439 on: May 12, 2018, 11:33:24 AM »
I think it likely that CO2 emissions will drop. Of course, they should have been dropping for the past 20 years since Kyoto.

We didn't really have the ability to drop emissions in an acceptable manner and at an acceptable price.  I'm excited, we've reached the acceptable/affordable milestone.

Now, since the majority of people want something done to fight climate change we can start making significant progress while saving money and improving people's lives.  It may take a couple more years before most people understand that but once they do I expect lots of pressure on governments to speed the process off fossil fuels.

I think 1.5 Degrees is toast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44074352

Quote
UN puts brave face as climate talks get stuck

UN talks have been officially suspended as countries failed to resolve differences about implementing the Paris climate agreement.


The negotiations will resume in Bangkok in September where an extra week's meeting has now been scheduled .

Delegates struggled with the complexity of agreeing a rulebook for the Paris climate pact that will come into force in 2020.

Rows between rich and poor re-emerged over finance and cutting carbon.

Overall progress at this meeting has been very slow, with some countries such as China looking to re-negotiate aspects of the Paris deal.

UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa was putting a brave face on the talks.

"We face, I would say, a satisfactory outcome for this session but we have to be very, very clear that we have a lot of work in the months ahead," she said.

"We have to improve the pace of progress in order to be able to achieve a good outcome in Katowice in December," she said, referring to the end of year Conference of the Parties where the rulebook is due to be completed and agreed.

China and some other countries, perhaps frustrated by the slow pace, have sought in this Bonn meeting to go back to the position that existed before the 2015 deal, where only developed countries had to undertake to reduce their emissions.

However, many developing countries were strongly opposed to turning the clock back.

"Nations always give reasons to veer away from decarbonisation," the Philippines' Senator Loren Legarda, who's attending these talks, told BBC News.

"But in the end we don't exist in isolation of each other, and negotiators, leaders of these nations, whether industrialised or developing, small island or least developed, should all realise that we're in one planet together."
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Sleepy

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1440 on: May 12, 2018, 04:46:34 PM »
1.5°C is pretty much gone, not much brighter when looking at the IPCC scenarios for 2°C either.

https://twitter.com/rarohde/status/988687041541099520
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Most of the IPCC scenarios for limiting global warming to 2 °C assume that humanity will burn twice as much fossil fuel as the current carbon budget allows, but that unproven technologies for carbon capture and atmospheric removal eliminate the excess.
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1441 on: May 12, 2018, 05:00:43 PM »
Kevin Anderson from the recent Swedish Climate Parliament. 11 views...

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1442 on: May 12, 2018, 05:28:49 PM »
Snipped out the ending words from the video above with Kevin Anderson.
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1443 on: May 12, 2018, 05:47:58 PM »
Brilliant. Best I've heard him do.
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1444 on: May 12, 2018, 07:46:45 PM »
Quote
we have to think differently

No, we have to speed up what we are now doing.


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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1445 on: May 14, 2018, 10:16:13 AM »
I've totally missed that this was written in English as well, so here it comes:

Call for a sharper climate policy in Sweden and the World
https://www.ecoequality.org/call/

Quoting all of it, live links in the link above...
Quote
The Paris Agreement's 2-degree goal will not be achieved by the political commitments of the world's countries. Instead, the forecast points to 3-4 degrees global warming in 2100 if the countries are holding their Paris commitments. Or 4-8 degrees if commitments are not held, so that there will be a delayed or missing global emission reduction. Two degrees are bad enough, which would mean annual heat waves for multi-million cities like Karachi and Calcutta that would make them almost uninhabitable. Each degree's rise in temperature means increasing damage to extreme weather events. Each degree's rise in temperature also means increased desertification and destroyed cultivation opportunities that contribute to increased refugee flows and more armed conflicts. As a result of gradual rising average temperatures, the risk of sudden disruption to the climate systems increases which can lead to accelerating and unstoppable greenhouse effect. Staying under two degrees can be crucial if the planet is to be habitable for future generations.

To have a chance to achieve the 2-degree goal requires tougher and sharper climate policy! Leading climate scientists believe that the rich countries need to make emissions reductions of at least 10 percent each year, starting now with the aim of achieving 100% fossil-free energy systems by 2035. Then, according to the principle of justice, poorer countries can get more time so that they can become fossil free first in 2050.

Sweden and many other rich countries today make too slow emission reductions and instead relies on the hope that new technologies will be realized in the future that can draw huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, then store it in empty oil wells on a large scale.

But there is no promising technical solution that could give these so-called "Negative emissions" of the order of magnitude required. The most widely proposed technology, BECCS, is based on burning biofuels and extract energy while capturing carbon dioxide from the flue gases and storing it in old oil wells. The problem is that huge new plants and huge transport systems for biofuels and liquid carbon dioxide would be needed, on a larger scale than all current coal, oil and gas infrastructure. In addition, plantations for biofuels would have to harvest a total area of ​​2-3 times India's size year after year for many decades, which is an unreasonable proposal.

And no other technical solution for negative emissions has been presented which could be reasonable in the required scale.

The reasonable way is to redirect all fossil-dependent sectors in society to completely fossil-free technologies at a faster pace, as well as to ensure that the 10% of the world's population who account for 50% of carbon dioxide emissions rapidly reduce their emissions.

We therefore demand that Sweden:

1. ceases to account for unproven future negative emissions in emissions targets

2. set 2035 as the goal of 100% fossil-free economy

3. immediately invest what is required to reach at least 10% reduced CO2 emissions each year

4. uses more direct means of control (for example, stated fossil-free annual figures in different sectors of the economy) in addition to price mechanisms (eg, increased carbon tax) to reach the targets

5. does not prioritize GDP growth before the climate targets, but instead prioritizes qualitative welfare measurments such as Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) or Happy Planet Index (HPI)

6. acts vigorously internationally for this kind of sharper climate policy

7. takes action to ensure that the 10% of the world population who account for 50% of carbon dioxide emissions will rapidly reduce their emissions




Facts from e.g.: Climate researchers Kevin Anderson och Alice Bows-Larkin, lecture feb 2016: youtu.be/7wXmpd5pMeE, slides: https://www.gov.im/media/1350732/isle-of-man-tynwald-30-mins-anderson-larkin.pdf
Overview (in Swedish): https://ecoequality.org/klimat-och-miljo/2-gradersmalet-vad-kravs
On negative emissions: youtube.com/watch?v=529Og_YR0IU&list=PLT9wNYihUS0nL_I3BM-hSYrWkPpJ9mGec
Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326

Comment on 22 april 2018 from Isak Stoddard, co-worker of Kevin Anderson at CEMUS / Uppsala university (translated to english): - "Has read through the call quickly and think it looks good. However, it is important to point out that the 10% annual emission reductions are an absolute minimum and should already have been initiated (by 2017 or by January 2018). For each day / week / month / year as we delay this, the emission reductions will be even more challenging to have a reasonable chance of achieving the 2C commitment. And it is also not a fair distribution of the emission reduction .. but as we see it the only remaining possibility of being able to seriously say that we live up to the Paris agreement's premise of building on the latest climate science (CO2 budgets) and taking into account justice (to a certain extent in any case). Attach a presentation which I held a little while ago for climate and energy strategists on Sweden's county administrative boards. Also encloses a slightly shorter variant from a workshop last week (in English). Maybe it may come to use. All well, Isak "

See also Kevin Anderson's speech (20 min) at Klimatriksdagen 2018-05-05, as a presentation of proposal 224, which he and Isak Stoddard wrote and was included among the 12 winning motions on Klimatriksdagen:


This version of the call, 2018-05-08, is identical to the provisional version 2018-04-10, except that the claim list has been numbered instead of items, and the comment from Isak Stoddard has been added, and that the paragraph related to Klimatriksdagen has been added.
« Last Edit: May 14, 2018, 10:21:14 AM by Sleepy »
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1446 on: May 15, 2018, 07:39:19 AM »
Yet another article.

Alternative pathways to the 1.5 °C target reduce the need for negative emission technologies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0119-8
Quote
Mitigation scenarios that achieve the ambitious targets included in the Paris Agreement typically rely on greenhouse gas emission reductions combined with net carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere, mostly accomplished through large-scale application of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and afforestation. However, CDR strategies face several difficulties such as reliance on underground CO2 storage and competition for land with food production and biodiversity protection. The question arises whether alternative deep mitigation pathways exist. Here, using an integrated assessment model, we explore the impact of alternative pathways that include lifestyle change, additional reduction of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and more rapid electrification of energy demand based on renewable energy. Although these alternatives also face specific difficulties, they are found to significantly reduce the need for CDR, but not fully eliminate it. The alternatives offer a means to diversify transition pathways to meet the Paris Agreement targets, while simultaneously benefiting other sustainability goals.

Adding Table 1 & Fig 1 plus one line from the paper:

A rapid transformation in energy consumption and land use is needed in all scenarios.
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1447 on: May 15, 2018, 10:44:18 AM »
CARBON CLOCK

1.5 Degrees Celsius target,
Medium estimate of carbon (CO2) budget left - less than 13 GT,
Time remaining at current emissions rate - 3 months and 23 days (about the time of the September Arctic Ocean minimum).

https://www.mcc-berlin.net/fileadmin/data/clock/carbon_clock.htm
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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1448 on: May 16, 2018, 03:54:03 AM »
Inception date on the attachment was June 2017.
Prediction for September 2018 for 1.5 C.

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Re: UN Climate Agreement - Paris 2015 and beyond
« Reply #1449 on: May 16, 2018, 09:25:58 PM »
Unfortunately, Kevin Anderson is optimistic. He does not take into account continued increases in CH4 emissions (together with their very high GWP20 number - 100 times greater than CO2), nor reducing Arctic albedo, nor increases in natural emissions, nor a host of other feedbacks. There already is no carbon budget, and Hansen is right about 350ppm.

That he is seen as a "radical realist" by some shows the level of denial that our elites are in. As we get more and more temperature surprises (and perhaps an Arctic BOE) during the next decade or so we will slowly move toward the geo-engineering route, plus grudging acceptances of increased rates of reduction in emissions. The day that I stop seeing natural gas mentioned as a "bridge fuel" I may feel that some level of reality has entered the brains of the elites.