[TheClimate.Vote] January 2, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 2, 2021*/

[Ready, set, go, video]
*Exploring If Tesla Solar Roof Is About To Go Mainstream?*
Dec 29, 2020
Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Tesla made a huge splash in the solar panel world when they unveiled the 
latest version of the Tesla Solar Roof.  But since then we haven't seen 
too much about it.  Is it a bargain or a bust?  Or are solar tiles about 
to go mainstream?  I talked to Weddle & Sons Roofing to learn more about 
it from an installers perspective, as well as what it's like to go from 
roofs to solar panels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_5PqHcKNc
- -
https://www.tesla.com/energy/design
https://www.tesla.com/solarpanels


[More innovation!]
*A Monster Wind Turbine Is Upending an Industry*
G.E.’s giant machine, which can light up a small town, is stoking a 
renewable-energy arms race.
- -
The race to build bigger turbines has moved faster than many industry 
figures foresaw. G.E.’s Haliade-X generates almost 30 times more 
electricity than the first offshore machines installed off Denmark in 1991.

In coming years, customers are likely to demand even bigger machines, 
industry executives say...
- -
To make a blade of such extraordinary length that doesn’t buckle from 
its own weight, G.E. called on designers at LM Wind Power, a blade maker 
in Denmark that the company bought in 2016 for $1.7 billion. Among their 
innovations: a material combining carbon fiber and glass fiber that is 
lightweight yet strong and flexible...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/business/GE-wind-turbine.html#commentsContainer



[Water, water everywhere with desalinization]
*Desalination Breakthrough Could Lead to Cheaper Water Filtration*
AUSTIN, Texas — Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the 
horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and 
Penn State solved a complex problem that had baffled scientists for 
decades, until now.

Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a 
process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons 
of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems 
simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other 
side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still 
trying to understand.

The research team, in partnership with DuPont Water Solutions, solved an 
important aspect of this mystery, opening the door to reduce costs of 
clean water production. The researchers determined desalination 
membranes are inconsistent in density and mass distribution, which can 
hold back their performance. Uniform density at the nanoscale is the key 
to increasing how much clean water these membranes can create.

“Reverse osmosis membranes are widely used for cleaning water, but 
there’s still a lot we don’t know about them,” said Manish Kumar, an 
associate professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and 
Environmental Engineering at UT Austin, who co-led the research. “We 
couldn’t really say how water moves through them, so all the 
improvements over the past 40 years have essentially been done in the dark.”

The findings were published today in Science.

The paper documents an increase in efficiency in the membranes tested by 
30%-40%, meaning they can clean more water while using significantly 
less energy. That could lead to increased access to clean water and 
lower water bills for individual homes and large users alike.

Reverse osmosis membranes work by applying pressure to the salty feed 
solution on one side. The minerals stay there while the water passes 
through. Although more efficient than non-membrane desalination 
processes, it still takes a large amount of energy, the researchers 
said, and improving the efficiency of the membranes could reduce that 
burden.

“Fresh water management is becoming a crucial challenge throughout the 
world,” said Enrique Gomez, a professor of chemical engineering at Penn 
State who co-led the research. “Shortages, droughts — with increasing 
severe weather patterns, it is expected this problem will become even 
more significant. It’s critically important to have clean water 
availability, especially in low-resource areas.”
The National Science Foundation and DuPont, which makes numerous 
desalination products, funded the research. The seeds were planted when 
DuPont researchers found that thicker membranes were actually proving to 
be more permeable. This came as a surprise because the conventional 
knowledge was that thickness reduces how much water could flow through 
the membranes.

The team connected with Dow Water Solutions, which is now a part of 
DuPont, in 2015 at a “water summit” Kumar organized, and they were eager 
to solve this mystery. The research team, which also includes 
researchers from Iowa State University, developed 3D reconstructions of 
the nanoscale membrane structure using state-of-the-art electron 
microscopes at the Materials Characterization Lab of Penn State. They 
modeled the path water takes through these membranes to predict how 
efficiently water could be cleaned based on structure. Greg Foss of the 
Texas Advanced Computing Center helped visualize these simulations, and 
most of the calculations were performed on Stampede2, TACC’s supercomputer.
https://news.utexas.edu/2020/12/31/desalination-breakthrough-could-lead-to-cheaper-water-filtration/


[Coal to China now blocked]
*Sailors Stranded for Months as China Refuses to Let Ships Unload 
Australian Coal*
China is vague about why vessels that carried Australian coal to its 
ports can’t unload their cargo. “We’re all depressed; our mental health 
is deteriorating,” one sailor said...
- -
Crews on an estimated 70 ships loaded with seven million to 10 million 
tons of Australian coal have not been allowed to disembark in China, 
according to commercial tracking data. China has cited various factors 
like the coronavirus and environmental issues. But Beijing has 
effectively banned Australian coal as tensions between the two countries 
intensify...
- -
Last year, according to government statistics, Australia exported nearly 
$10.4 billion worth of coal to China. Though that coal helps fuel 
China’s voracious economic needs, deteriorating political ties have 
choked off one conduit.

In April, Australia called for an investigation into the origins of the 
coronavirus. A furious China followed over several months with informal 
bans on a host of Australian goods, including barley, wine and timber. 
In June, ships hauling Australian coal across the ocean began to be 
stranded at several Chinese ports, according to analysis from Bloomberg...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/business/coal-ships-china-australia.html/


[MIT says]
*The pandemic taught us how not to deal with climate change*
We must transform the economy, not halt it, to prevent runaway warming. 
And we're doing it far, far too slowly today.

by James Temple - January 1, 2021
There’s a case to be made that 2020, for all the sacrifices it demanded 
and tragedies it inflicted, could at least mark a turning point on 
climate change.

It's now possible that global oil demand and greenhouse-gas emissions 
may have already peaked in 2019, since the pandemic could slow economic 
growth for years, accelerate the demise of coal, and bring about 
long-lasting declines in energy demand through things like continued 
remote working.

On top of that, a growing number of major companies and nations, 
including China, have committed to zero out their emissions by around 
midcentury. The election of Joe Biden will put a president in the White 
House who has committed to take bold action on climate change. Clean 
technologies like solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles are 
getting cheaper and gaining ground in the marketplace.

And in the final days of the year, the US Congress managed to authorize 
(though not yet appropriate) tens of billions of dollars for clean power 
projects within a sweeping coronavirus relief bill. The package also 
enacted tightening limits on hydrofluorocarbons—highly potent greenhouse 
gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners. (After criticizing the 
bill as a "disgrace," President Trump nonetheless signed it into law on 
Dec. 27.)

But finally reaching a turning point, decades after scientists began 
warning us of the dangers, matters less than how rapidly and 
consistently we cut emissions on the other side of it. And that’s where 
some of the darker signs in 2020 have me worried.

Far too slowly
Even if we have achieved peak emissions, that only means we’re no longer 
making the problem worse at an increasing rate year after year. But 
we’re still making it worse. Carbon dioxide lasts hundreds of years in 
the atmosphere, so every additional ton we emit further exacerbates 
climate change, promising more or worse heat waves, droughts, wildfires, 
famines, and flooding.

We don’t need to flatten emissions—we need to eliminate them as rapidly 
as possible. Even then, we’ll be left to deal with the effectively 
permanent damage we’ve caused.

Some argue that the radical changes in behavior and practices that went 
into effect as the coronavirus spread around the planet are a promising 
sign for our collective ability to address climate change. This is, 
frankly, nonsense.

Huge portions of the population stopped driving to work; going to bars, 
restaurants, and theaters; and flying around the globe. Economic growth 
plummeted. Hundreds of millions of people lost their jobs. Hundreds of 
thousands of businesses have closed for good. People are going hungry. 
And the world is becoming much poorer.

None of this is a viable or acceptable way of slowing climate change. 
Moreover, all this devastation only shaved about 6% off US 
greenhouse-gas emissions this year, according to BloombergNEF estimates. 
Global estimates are about the same. The pollution reductions came at a 
massive economic cost, at somewhere between $3,200 to $5,400 per ton of 
carbon, according to earlier estimates by the Rhodium Group.

We would need sustained cuts on that level, year after year for decades, 
to prevent far more dangerous levels of warming than we’re already 
seeing. Instead, emissions are likely to bounce back close to 2019 
levels as soon as the economy recovers.

It’s hard to point to a clearer example of how deeply embedded climate 
pollution is into an even basic level functioning of our society—and how 
drastically we need to overhaul every part of our economy to begin 
substantially and sustainably cutting emissions.

We need to transform the economy, not shut it down. And that 
transformation is happening far too slowly.

Polarized politics
It is fantastic news that clean technologies are getting cheaper and 
more competitive. The problem is they still represent a fraction of the 
market today: Electric vehicles account for about 3% of new car sales 
worldwide, while renewables generated a little more than 10% of global 
electricity last year.

Meanwhile, we’ve barely begun to transition industries that are far 
harder to clean up, like cement, steel, shipping, agriculture, and 
aviation. And the “net” part of national and corporate zero-emissions 
plans rely on huge levels of carbon removal and offsets efforts that we 
haven’t remotely shown we can do reliably, affordably, permanently, and 
at scale.

We can’t wait for free markets to nudge along nonpolluting products. And 
the lofty midcentury emissions targets that nations have set mean little 
on their own. We need aggressive government policies and trade pacts to 
push or pull clean technologies into the marketplace and support the 
development of the tools we don’t yet have or are far too expensive today.

Getting just the US on track to zero out emissions across its economy 
will require massive investments, and they need to start now, according 
to a study by Princeton researchers released last month. In the next 
decade alone, the US will need to invest $2.5 trillion, put 50 million 
electric vehicles on the road, quadruple solar and wind resources, and 
increase the capacity of high voltage transmission lines by 60%, among 
much else.

The analysis found the nation also needs to dedicate far more money to 
research and development right away if we hope to begin scaling up an 
array of emerging technologies beyond 2030, like carbon capture and 
removal, carbon-neutral fuels, and cleaner industrial processes.

Certainly, the election of Biden is good news for climate change, 
following the Trump administration's four-year blitz to unravel every 
climate and environmental regulation it could. Biden's White House can 
make some progress through executive orders, bipartisan infrastructure 
bills, and additional economic stimulus measures that free up funding 
for the areas above. But it’s hard to imagine, given the mixed results 
of Congressional elections and our highly polarized political climate, 
how he’ll be able to push through the sorts of strict climate policies 
necessary to get things moving at anywhere close to the necessary speed, 
like a hefty price on carbon or rules that mandate swift emissions 
reductions.

The good news is that, unlike what happened in the downturn that began 
in 2008, people’s concerns about climate change have persisted into the 
pandemic and downturn, according to polling. But coming out of a year of 
angst and loss and isolation, I have to wonder how readily voters around 
the world will embrace any measures that ask more of them in the next 
few years, whether it’s a tax on gas, higher airline fees, or being told 
to upgrade to cleaner electric appliances in their homes.

Remember, the world—and many of its citizens—will emerge from the 
pandemic far poorer.

Sowing division
But here is what frightens me the most about what happened in 2020.

Researchers and advocates have long assumed, or hoped, that people would 
start taking climate change seriously as it began to inflict real harms. 
After all, how could they continue to deny it and refuse to take action 
once the dangers were upon them and their families?

But what we’ve seen in the pandemic doesn’t bear that out. Even after 
more than 300,000 Americans have died of covid-19, huge portions of the 
population continue to deny the threat and refuse to abide by basic 
public health measures, like wearing masks and canceling holiday travel. 
Despite waves of infections tied to Thanksgiving gatherings, millions 
packed the airports the weekend before Christmas.

That’s terrifying in itself, but it’s particularly ominous for climate 
change.

In an essay in August, when global covid-19 deaths stood at around 
600,000, Bill Gates pointed out that climate change fatalities could 
reach that level by 2060—but as an annual occurrence. By the end of the 
century, the death toll could be five times that figure.

If the pandemic offers any clear lessons, it’s that even all that loss 
may not persuade many of the reality of climate change or the necessity 
to act—particularly since those deaths will tick up gradually. 
Politicians can still find ways to downplay the dangers and exploit the 
issue to sow division, rather than seeking common cause. And we may 
simply learn to live with the elevated risks, particularly since they’ll 
disproportionately harm those in the poorest, hottest parts of the world 
who had the least to do with causing climate change.

I have every confidence that we have the technical and economic capacity 
to address most of the risks of climate change. I’m pretty sure we will 
begin to move faster than we have in the past. I think we’ll make a lot 
of progress on cutting emissions. I bet we’re going to rebuild big parts 
of our infrastructure to address some of the increased dangers. I’m 
certain that some areas, particularly in the global North, will continue 
to thrive, and some will even grow richer.

But I fear we still don’t fully recognize that we’re on the cusp of 
failing in very tragic ways. Given where our emissions are and where 
they need to be, it’s nearly impossible to see how we’re going to move 
fast enough at this point to prevent 2 ˚C of warming. And that will mean 
staggering levels of otherwise preventable death, suffering, and 
ecological destruction.

It should be a call to arms. But it’s hard to look at 2020 and come away 
feeling optimistic about our collective ability to grapple with complex 
problems in rational or humane ways—even, or perhaps especially, in the 
midst of multiple unfolding calamities.

Instead, overlapping climate disasters could poison our politics even 
further, making all of us more selfish, more focused on our own comfort 
and safety, and less willing to sacrifice for or invest in a better 
common future.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/01/1015533/covid-lessons-for-climate-change-emissions-renewables/



[recent audio - adaptation advice - from Marketplace]
*How We Survive: A changing mindset*
Molly Wood Dec 5, 2020
https://www.marketplace.org/collection/using-tech-to-adapt-to-climate-change/ 




[Video press release - conference next week]
*National Security Significance of a Changing Climate: Risk and Resilience*
Dec 2, 2020
U.S. Naval War College
*The National Security Significance of a Changing Climate: Risk and 
Resilience in the 21st Century. *

This conference explores the national security and economic implications 
of climate change on the current and future security landscape. 
Strategically and operationally, this affects both our ally’s and 
adversary’s behavior leading to the open-ended question—what does it 
mean if the Department of Defense (DoD) adopts a posture that focuses on 
the strategic implications of climate change? Not only does this impact 
where, when, and why the United States gets involved around the world, 
the economic implications are cross-cutting at home. This includes the 
increased use of military forces for domestic response, building 
resilience of defense infrastructure, and the corresponding impacts on 
training and readiness.

The changing climate also affects national security and economic 
interests in the oceans. Advancing U.S. economic, technological, 
environmental, security and defense interests in this internationally 
competitive environment requires a deeper understanding of the “blue” or 
ocean economy and how that connects to the U.S. naval and national 
security concerns.

Our defense, and the defense of countries around the world, is built 
within the context of a stable climate. From now on a stable climate is 
no longer a valid planning consideration. In fact, the changing climate 
can be seen as a high-probability, high-impact security threat 
presenting new risks around the world. We are proud to be the first DoD 
academic institution to host an open event exploring the national 
security significance of a changing climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15fCuu9KoQg&feature=youtu.be



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 2, 2013 *

Former Vice President Al Gore sells the cable network
Current to Al Jazeera. (In the two years prior to the sale, Current
had increased its coverage of the climate-change issue on such
programs as "The Young Turks" and "The War Room with Jennifer
Granholm"; however, in 2012, Current management rejected a proposal to
air a regular weeknight program specifically addressing the risks of
climate change and the steps necessary to combat carbon pollution.)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/01/02/al-jazeera-current-tv-al-gore/1805685/


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