Action must be taken now

Some of the world’s most preeminent climate scientists, all experts with many decades of experience in their respective field, are warning that effective action must be taken now to avoid catastrophe.

These scientists, and many others, have made valuable and much-appreciated contributions to the Arctic-news blog over the years [note: contributors each express their own views in posts and may or may not endorse other content of this blog].

Sam Carana, editor of this blog, has for years supported the calls of these scientists, also discussing and sharing their calls at facebook groups such as Arctic-News, Electric Transport, Renewables and Climate Alert.

Furthermore, Sam Carana has called for specific action for years, including support for biochar, preferably through feebates. More specifically, Sam Carana recommends that revenues raised from fees imposed on sales of livestock products, nitrogen fertilizers and Portland cement are used to fund support for soil supplements, as illustrated by above image. For more on biochar, see this blog and this facebook group.

For years, Sam Carana has also called for more R&D in specific areas of geo-engineering. For more on this, see this blog and this facebook group.

More generally, Sam Carana advocates the Climate Plan, which calls for a global commitment to parallel lines of action while seeking to delegate implementation to local communities, preferably through effective policies such as local feebates.

This blog has had some success in spreading this message. To date, Sam Carana has received 82,327,368 views at Google plus (see screenshot on the right), while this blog has received 3,255,445 views (see update of views in the panel further on the right).

Your continued support is needed to share this message, so please join one or more of the above-mentioned groups, and share and like the images of this post in emails, on facebook and other social media.

Regarding the urgency to act, the images below give an update on the terrifying situation in the Arctic, where the sea ice is disappearing fast.

The decline of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic goes hand in hand with rising sea surface temperatures that contribute to sea ice getting ever thinner.

The image on the right show Arctic sea ice on September 1, 2016, with thickness in meters.

The warming of the oceans is illustrated by the images below.

The image directly below shows sea surface temperature (left) and anomalies compared to 1981-2011 (right).

The image below also shows sea surface temperature anomalies, this time compared to 1971-2000.

Global warming has hit the Arctic particularly hard over the past 365 days, with anomalies exceeding the top end of the scale over most of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the image below.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described at the Climate Plan.

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Roadmap for Repowering California for all Purposes with Wind, Water, and Sunlight

A study by Mark Z. Jacobson et al. concludes that California’s power needs (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry) can be met entirely by WWS technologies.

The necessary WWS (wind, water, and sunlight) technologies consist of wind turbines, concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, solar photovoltaic (PV) plants and rooftop systems, solar hot water heater systems, geothermal power plants, a few additional hydroelectric power plants, and a small amount of tidal and wave power.

Transportation will use battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and hybrid BEV-HFCVs. The hydrogen, where needed, will be produced with electrolysis (i.e. with electricity). While using electrolytic hydrogen in transportation will generally be less efficient and more costly than using BEVs, there are some segments of transportation where hydrogen-energy storage may be preferred over battery-energy storage (e.g., ships, aircraft, long-distance freight).

High temperatures for industrial processes will be produced with electricity and hydrogen, with hydrogen again produced with electricity.

Electricity-powered air-source and ground-source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps, and backup electric resistance heaters will be used for building heating and air conditioning. Air-source heat pump water heaters powered by electricity and solar hot water preheaters will provide hot water for buildings.

This roadmap can serve as a template for plans in other states and countries. The implementation of similar plans worldwide should essentially eliminate energy-related global warming and energy insecurity, while substantially reducing energy insecurity.

For more, go to:

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

and

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html

Post by Sam Carana.

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Aviation Policies

The European Union’s policy on Aviation Emissions

From the start of 2012, the European Union (EU) required its members to include emissions from flights arriving at and departing from their airports in the EU scheme of emissions allowances and trading, while encouraging other nations to take equivalent measures. The EU exempts biofuel and claims to take a ‘comprehensive approach’ to reducing environmental impacts of aviation. To create space for political negotiations to get an international agreement regulating emissions from aviation, the EU has meanwhile postponed implementation of its directive by one year.

What kind of international agreement could be reached on aviation emissions? What policies work best? How do aviation policies fit into a comprehensive approach?

A Comprehensive Plan of Action on Climate Change

A comprehensive plan is best endorsed globally, e.g. through an international agreement building on the Kyoto Protocol and the Montreal Accord. At the same time, the specific policies are best decided and implemented locally, e.g. by insisting that each nation reduces specific emissions by a set annual percentage, and additionally removes a set annual amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the oceans, followed by sequestration, proportionally to its current emissions.

Policy goals are most effectively achieved when policies are implemented locally and independently, with separate policies each addressing the specific shifts that are each needed to reach agreed targets. Each nation can work out what policies best fit their circumstances, as long as they each independently achieve agreed targets. Counting emissions where they occur will encourage nations to adopt effective policies, such as imposing fees on the sales of products in proportion to the emissions they cause, and adopting product standards that ban products that would otherwise cause unacceptably high emissions while clean alternatives are readily available.

Clean Energy Policies

Policies aiming to achieve a shift to clean energy will apply to many sectors such as transportation (including aviation), power plants, and industry and buildings which are also large consumers of fossil fuel. The above image also shows policies specifically targeting aviation, in addition to clean energy policies that apply across sectors.

The image below proposes feebates as the most effective way to accomplish the necessary shift to clean energy. In such feebates, fees are imposed on polluting energy and associated facilities, with revenues used - preferably locally - to fund rebates on clean energy and associated facilities.

In line with such feebates, each nation could impose fees on jetfuel, while using the revenues for a variety of purposes, preferably local clean energy programs. Where an airplane lands arriving from a nation that has failed to add sufficient fees, the nation where the airplane lands could impose supplementary fees. Such supplementary fees should be allowed under international trade rules, specifically if revenues are used to fund direct air capture of carbon dioxide.

Aviation Policies

As said, apart from clean energy policies, it makes sense to additionally implement policies specifically targeting aviation. Airplanes not only cause carbon dioxide emissions, but also cause other emissions such as black carbon and NOx, contrails and cirrus cloud effects. The EU emissions scheme only targets a limited set of emissions, while also looking at their global warming potential, rather than the potential of emissions to cause warming locally, specifically in the Arctic. A joint 2011 UNEP/WMO report mentioned many measures to reduce black carbon and tropospheric ozone, adding that their implementation could reduce warming in the Arctic in the next 30 years by about two-thirds.

A 2012 study by Jacobson et al. concludes that cross-polar flights by international aviation is the most abundant direct source of black carbon and other climate-relevant pollutants over the Arctic. Rerouting cross-polar flights to instead circumnavigate the Arctic Circle therefore makes sense. While such rerouting consumes more fuel, it could reduce fuel use and emissions within the Arctic Circle by 83% and delay pollutant transport to the Arctic.

Given the need to act on warming in the Arctic, it makes sense to ban cross-polar flights. To further reduce the flow of pollutants to the Arctic caused by aviation, it makes sense to add fees on all jet flights. Such fees on jet flights would be additional to the above fees on fuel. This could further facilitate a shift from aviation toward cleaner forms of transportation, such as high speed rail. Where the revenues of such fees are used to fund direct air capture, they could also help kickstart an industry that could produce synthetic jetfuel and that could be instrumental in bringing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide back to 280ppm.

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