Oakland Zoo takes in mountain lion cubs orphaned by California fires


Captain Cal was rescued from the Zogg fire late last month and has since been under the care of the Oakland Zoo. Photo Courtesy of Oakland Zoo/Website

Oct. 12 (UPI) -- The Oakland Zoo said it has taken in two more mountain lion cubs rescued from wildfires in California.

On Sunday, the California zoo said the two unnamed female cubs had lost their mother in the Zogg fire, located in Shasta County.

In the video posted alongside the announcement, the cubs are seen receiving medical checkups and treatment from staff.

The zoo said it plans to introduce the two cubs to Captain Cal, a male mountain lion cub who was also orphaned by the Zogg fire and placed into the zoo's care early this month.

We have taken in 2 more rescued mtn lions as the worst fire season in CA history rages on.

These two female cubs lost their mother in the #ZoggFire, the same fire that injured and orphaned Captain Cal.

We also plan to introduce these two lil' ladies to Captain Cal ️ pic.twitter.com/P3Jt84J0DX— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) October 10, 2020

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Capt. Cal, who was rescued by a firefighter in late September, was severely burned by the Zogg fire and has been receiving treatment from the Oakland Zoo Veterinary Hospital.

"Captain Cal remains bright and active, and has a great appetite," the zoo said Friday in an update on the weeks-old cub's condition. "We are working as hard as we can to keep improving his condition!"

The Zogg fire erupted on Sept. 27 and as of Sunday night had burned 56,338 acres and was 99% contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

California this fire season has seen more than 8,000 blazes burned more than 4 million acres, Cal Fire said.

Crayfish 'trapping' doesn't control invasive species


The American signal crayfish is bigger and more aggressive than native crayfish species in Britain, in addition to carrying a disease called crayfish plague. Photo by Eleri Pritchard/UCL

Oct. 13 (UPI) -- In Britain, a handful of celebrity chefs have encouraged the practice of crayfish "trapping" to control the invasion of American signal crayfish.

Unfortunately, new research -- published Tuesday in the Journal of Applied Ecology -- suggests the practice doesn't work. In fact, crayfish trapping can have a host of unintended consequences.

"Trapping has been linked to a range of risks to our waterbodies, including the spread of invasive species on wet or unclean equipment, as well as the direct capture and release of invasive crayfish to seed new harvestable populations," study co-author Eleri Pritchard told UPI in an email.

"Sadly, trapping also risks protected native wildlife, and has been responsible for the deaths of otters and water voles," said Pritchard, a postdoctoral researcher at University College London.

American signal crayfish have led to significant declines of native crayfish in Britain and Europe. The invasive species is a carrier of what's called crayfish plague, a disease that is lethal to the native white-clawed crayfish. American signal crayfish are also bigger and more aggressive than native species, outcompeting them for available resources.

Beyond threatening native species, American signal crayfish also burrow into stream banks, undermining natural stream structures and increasing flood risks. Researchers suggest the invasive species also poses a threat to fish, invertebrates and aquatic plants.

Taking a cue from efforts to curb the spread of invasive fish species, chefs in Britain have encouraged people to trap and eat American signal crayfish.

"Crayfish trapping involves the use of funnel traps, very similar to lobster pots," Pritchard said. "The traps are submerged in the water and baited with something to attract the crayfish, like fresh oily fish or cat-food. This entices the crayfish through the funnel entrances of the trap and once inside, it is difficult for them to escape. The traps are then retrieved from the water with crayfish trapped inside."

For the new study, researchers compared the effectiveness of three survey methods -- baited funnel trapping, hand-searching and a novel "triple drawdown technique" -- deployed to analyze local crayfish populations. The triple drawdown method involves the draining of a short section of stream in order to tally the number of crayfish present, including infants.

The triple drawdown technique proved most effective at providing scientists a comprehensive and precise picture of the size and makeup of crayfish population within a stream. The method showed crayfish population densities have likely been underestimated in many British streams.

The novel survey method also showed that only a small percentage of any given stream's American signal crayfish is trappable. Most of the invasive crayfish are too small.

"In our research, [the triple drawdown technique] helped us understand how trapping would not be effective at controlling populations, which is really important for management and conservation," Pritchard said.

Researchers are currently working to develop effective American signal crayfish control methods.

RELATED Quest to protect endangered crayfish turns up new species

In the meantime, Pritchard and her colleagues suggest prevention of the spread of both crayfish and the crayfish plague is essential for the protection of native crayfish.

"Please disinfect all gear when traveling between waterbodies," Pritchard said.

upi.com/7046863

Rising atmospheric dust across the Great Plains recalls lead up to the Dust Bowl


During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, massive dust storms rolled across the Midwest, leaving fields barren and burying farm equipment. Photo by National Weather Service/NOAA

Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Atmospheric dust levels are rising 5 percent per year across the Great Plains, according to a new survey by scientists at the University of Utah.

The research, published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, increased cropland conversion and expanded growing seasons are exposing more and more soil and wind erosion.

Authors of the new study suggest the phenomenon, if combined with drier climate conditions as a result of climate change, could yield conditions comparable to the Dust Bowl, the series of droughts and dust storms that devastated the Midwest during the 1930s.

"We can't make changes to the earth surface without some kind of consequence just as we can't burn fossil fuels without consequences," lead study author Andy Lambert said in a news release.

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"So while the agriculture industry is absolutely important, we need to think more carefully about where and how we plant," said Lambert, a recent graduate of the University of Utah.

In the 1920s, farmers across the Great Plains converted massive amounts of grassland to farm tracts. When drought hit in the 1930s, extensive crop failures left newly plowed fields exposed to the wind, yielding waves of dust storms.

"These dust storms removed nutrients from the soil, making it more difficult for crops to grow and more likely for wind erosion to occur," Lambert said.

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Soaking rains eventually brought an end to the Dust Bowl, but much of the damage caused by erosion was permanent. Soils in some parts of the Great Plains have never recovered.

Three-quarters of a century later, around 2000, as demand for biofuels increased, farmers started clearing additional grassland to biofuel feedstocks.

Between 2006 and 2011, nearly 2,050 square miles of grassland across five Midwestern states was converted to farmland. Meanwhile, droughts have become longer and more across the Great Plains.

RELATED Dust Bowl would obliterate modern crops

To gauge the risk of dust storms in the region, researchers amassed data from a variety of instruments designed to measure atmospheric haziness from both the ground up and space down. The data, from NASA satellites and two federally managed ground monitoring systems, showed the amount of dust in the atmosphere above the Great Plains has steadily increased over the last 20 years.

"The amount of increase is really the story here," said study co-author Gannet Hallar, associate professor of atmospheric sciences. "That 5 percent a year over two decades, of course, is a hundred percent increase in dust loading. This is not a small signal to find."

Scientists were also able to link rises in dust levels with crop expansion. Across Iowa, atmospheric dust increased predominantly in June and October, the planting and harvesting months for soybeans, the dominant crop. Across the southern Great Plains, where corn is more popular, the dust increases appeared in March and October.

RELATED To keep soil health, scientists say mix up plant species

"I think it's fair to say that what's happening with dust trends in the Midwest and the Great Plains is an indicator that the threat is real if crop land expansion continues to occur at this rate and drought risk does increase because of climate change," Lambert says. "Those would be the ingredients for another Dust Bowl."

Authors of the new study said their findings should serve as a warning to farmers and policy makers across the Midwest that proactive measures are needed to ensure history doesn't repeat itself.

RELATED Southwest U.S. could face 35-year 'megadrought'

THIS HISTORIC EVENT IS NOT CALLED A GENOCIDE OR MASS MURDER, IT IS TREATED AS AN UNFORTUNATE NATURE EVENT

IN THE UKRAINE WHEN THIS HAPPENED IT IS CALLED STALIN'S GENOCIDE

GUESS WE COULD THEN CALL THE AMERICAN DUST BOWL THE HOOVER GENOCIDE

Climate disasters rising at 'staggering' rate since 2000

Extreme weather events have increased over the last two decades, a new report shows. Fiji is shown after being hit by a cyclone in 2016. File Photo by OCHA/Danielle Parry


Oct. 12 (UPI) -- United Nations researchers said Monday climate disasters have risen at a "staggering" rate in the first 20 years of this century.

From 2000-2019, 7,348 disaster events occurred worldwide, killing 1.23 million people, affecting 4.2 billion people, and resulting in approximately $2.97 trillion in global economic losses, researchers said. 

These new figures show a "staggering" rise in climate disasters compared with the previous two decades, according to researchers.

The previous 20-year period, from 1980 to 1999, had 4,212 reported disasters from natural hazards, with 1.19 million deaths, more than 3 billion people affected and economic losses totaling $1.63 trillion.

RELATED Study: Sicker livestock emit more methane, accelerating climate change

Researchers said that better reporting may explain some of the increase, but the significant rise in climate-related emergency was the main reason for the increase.

Climate-related events, including extreme weather events, rose from 3,653 (1980-1999) to 6,681 (2000-2019), according to the report. Major floods alone more than doubled in the last 20 years, from 1,389 to 3,254, and the incidence of storms rose from 1,457 to 2,034.

Floods accounted for more than 40% of disasters affecting 1.65 billion people, storms 28%, earthquakes 8%, and extreme temperatures 6%.

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"This is clear evidence that in a world where the global average temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period, the impacts are being felt in the increased frequency of extreme weather events including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, winter storms, hurricanes and wildfires," the report said.

U.N. Office on Disaster Risk Reduction Chief Mami Mizutori said that disaster management agencies have "succeeded in saving many lives," through improving preparation, and dedicated staff and volunteers, but industrial nations are "failing miserably" in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Disaster risk governance depends on political leadership above all, and delivery on the promises made when the Paris agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction were adopted," Mizutori said. "But the sad fact is that we are willfully destructive. And that is the conclusion of this report; COVID-19 is but the latest proof that politicians and business leaders have yet to tune into the world around them."

Disasters include a dramatic rise in major fire events, such as over 4 million acres burning in California, Australia's 2019 bush fires that killed or displaced nearly 3 billion animals, illegal fires in the Amazon, and more than 100 fires in the arctic circle last year, a video linked to a U.N. Office Twitter post shows.

The report called the "Human Cost of Disasters" was published on the heels of Oct. 13, which marks the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Report data came from the Emergency Events Database that records disasters that have killed 10 or more people; affected 100 or more people; resulted in a declared state of emergency; or call for international assistance.

Belgium's Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at UCLouvain maintains the database.

Fighting climate change is more cost-effective than cleaning up the mess, study suggests

The effects of climate change are having a greater impact on human systems and ecosystems than scientists previously predicted, new research suggests. Photo courtesy NOAA


Sept. 20, 2019 (UPI) -- It pays to fight climate change, new research suggests.

Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources won't be cheap or easy. But new research suggests the investments will pay off in the long run.

That's because the cost of inaction -- letting climate change run its course and dealing with the consequences -- will be much more expensive than curbing emissions.

In other words, climate mitigation efforts yield a good return on investment, researchers said.

"That investment is even more compelling given the wealth of evidence that the impacts of climate change are happening faster and more extensively than projected even just a few years ago," Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, deputy director of the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, said in a news release. "This makes the case for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions more urgent."

According to Hoegh-Guldberg and his colleagues, the "synergistic nature" of the effects of climate change are having a greater impact on human systems and ecosystems than scientists previously predicted.

For example, the combination of bigger storms and rising seas can combine to exacerbate a variety of already existing human problems. Increasingly damaging storms can worsen poverty and magnify inequality in coastal communities. Increases in poverty can trigger a variety of other societal problems.

RELATED Carbon taxes alone won't be enough to meet Paris Agreement targets

"Each risk may be small, but small changes in a number of risks can lead to large impacts," Hoegh-Guldberg said.

The cascade effect of climate change impacts ensures the human and economic costs are quite steep.

For the new study -- published this week in the journal Science -- scientists modeled the difference in risks to forests, biodiversity, food, crops and other critical systems under different warming scenarios. They found limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as opposed to 2 degrees, has significant social and economic benefits.

To limit warming and prevent a cascade of negative effects, scientists with the United Nations suggest global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut in half over the next decade. The global economy needs to be carbon neutral by 2050.

Authors of the new study estimated public and private entities will need to invest between $2 trillion and $4.5 trillion each year in energy supply and demand measures from 2016 and 2050 to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But researchers estimated these investments would net a total of $496 trillion in savings by 2200.

The benefits will total "at least four or five times the size of the investments," researchers wrote in their paper.

"Current emission reduction commitments are inadequate and risk throwing many nations into chaos and harm, with a particular vulnerability of poor peoples," said Hoegh-Guldberg. "To avoid this, we must accelerate action and tighten emission reduction targets so they fall in line with the Paris Agreement. Our paper shows this is much less costly than suffering the impacts of 2 degrees or more of climate change."

11K scientists declare climate emergency in new paper

More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries endorsed a new paper offering six areas of action for climate change mitigation based on analysis of 40 years of data.
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Authors of a new paper declaring a climate emergency said they're encouraged by the increase in public demands for climate change mitigation, especially by youth activists.

 File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 5, 2019 (UPI) -- After compiling 40-years worth of publicly available climate change data, scientists have declared a climate emergency.

The climate scientists responsible for the declaration, published Tuesday in the journal BioScience, say experts have been sounding the alarm for decades.

"Yet greenhouse gas emissions are still rapidly rising, with increasingly damaging effects on the Earth's climate," scientists wrote in their paper. "An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis."

The newly published paper was signed by 11,000 scientists from 153 countries.

"We have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis," William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University, said in a news release.

Before making their declaration, scientists analyzed a variety of models and data sets related to energy use, surface temperature, population growth, land-use changes, deforestation, polar ice melting, carbon emissions and more.

"Global surface temperature, ocean heat content, extreme weather and its costs, sea level, ocean acidity and land area are all rising," Ripple said. "Ice is rapidly disappearing as shown by declining trends in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness. All of these rapid changes highlight the urgent need for action."

RELATED Scientists publish strategy for carbon neutral land sector by 2040

Thomas Newsome, from the University of Sydney, said scientists have a moral obligation to warn the planet's citizens about the threat of catastrophic climate change.

"From the data we have, it is clear we are facing a climate emergency," Newsome said.

According to the new paper, world leaders and policy makers should focus their climate change mitigation efforts on six fronts: energy, short-lived pollutants, nature, food, the economy and population.

RELATED Report: Fewer than 25 percent of nations close to sustainability goals

"The world must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conservation practices and must replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables," researchers wrote in their paper.

In addition to quickly curbing CO2 emissions, the study's authors called on the world's governments to enact policies that dramatically reduce short-lived pollutants like methane, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons.

"Doing this could slow climate feedback loops and potentially reduce the short-term warming trend," researchers wrote.

RELATED Study: 20 companies account for 35% of global carbon emissions since 1965

According to the study, a concerted effort to protect nature and restore ecosystems, including coral reefs, forests, wetlands and more would boost the planet's natural carbon absorption and sequestration abilities.

Additionally, study authors called on policy makers to transform the planet's economic and agriculture systems.

"Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sustainability of the biosphere," scientists wrote.

Perhaps most controversially, the newly published paper also calls on world leaders to address population growth. Specifically, scientists suggest developing a framework for population stabilization -- and eventually, world population reduction -- that simultaneously boosts human rights while lowering fertility rates.

Several recent reports have highlighted similar strategies for climate change mitigation. According to one report by United Nations scientists, carbon emissions need to be halved in the next decade and reduced to zero by 2040.

Authors of the latest paper are hopeful that the world's governments and its populations can enact the necessary changes.

"Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems," researchers wrote. "We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding. As an Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future."

Carbon capture could be climate change solution, or a waste of time
Carbon capture and storage promises to scrub CO2 from the exhaust pipes of coal and gas plants, for sale or storage, but high costs have prevented wide-scale adoption. And some scientists hope it stays that way.

Carbon capture and store technologies promise to clear CO2 from power plants from the air, but a data analysis suggests CCS may not reduce levels by useful amounts. Photo by Marak007/Pixabay

Nov. 8, 2019  (UPI) -- Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy announced $110 million in federal funding for research and development of carbon capture and storage projects.

According to DOE, carbon capture and storage technologies, or CCS, are "increasingly becoming widely accepted as a viable option" for coal- or gas-fired power plants to reduce their emissions.

Carbon capture technologies promise to scrub CO2 from the flumes and exhaust pipes of coal and gas plants. The captured carbon can be permanently buried underground or sold for other uses like making fertilizers or boosting oil extraction. The technologies have been tested on small scales, but high costs have prevented wide-scale adoption.

While subsidy-free wind and solar power now offer the cheapest sources of electricity generation in most major economies -- and continue to dominate new electric generating capacity -- only a handful of operating carbon capture facilities exist.

And quite a few climate scientists and clean energy advocates hope it stays that way.

"They're a boondoggle," Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, told UPI.

The United Nations latest climate report calls on the world's governments to cut emissions in half by 2030 and to zero by 2040 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages, a threshold for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. The United Nations report -- and the cost minimization models used by the report's authors -- suggests carbon capture technologies could be part of the path to carbon neutrality.

Jacobson isn't convinced. He recently published a study in the journal Energy and Environmental Science suggesting these technologies do more harm than good.

SEE ABSTRACT BELOW

According to Jacobson, many of the models that purport to demonstrate the viability of carbon capture overestimate the technology's efficiency.

"All these other groups that use models, they just assume that the technology captures 85 to 90 percent," he said.

For his study, Jacobson didn't rely on models. He used the first six months of carbon capture data recorded at Petra Nova, a coal-burning power plant built in Texas with a post-combustion carbon capture treatment system. The data showed the technology was just 55.4 percent efficient during the six months, on average.

"But that's not even the major issue," Jacobson said. "The major issue is what is not even considered by their models, and that is that they literally built a natural gas plant to power their carbon capture technology."

Models favorable to carbon capture's potential ignore the upstream emissions and air pollution impacts, he said. In the case of Petra Nova, that is the emissions release and pollution caused by all that goes into constructing and fueling a gas power plant.

When Jacobson accounted for the upstream impacts, he found the Petra Nova project reduced the coal boiler's emissions by just 10 percent.

It would be much better, Jacobson contends, to simply build renewable energy to produce the equivalent power provided by the Petra Nova plant. In fact, Jacobson suggests it would be better to simply do nothing than increase upstream air pollution inputs with inefficient carbon capture projects.

James Mulligan agrees that all things being equal, renewable energy is superior to carbon capture as an energy solution for climate change mitigation. But according to Mulligan, things aren't always equal.

Billions of dollars are spent every year on new gas power plants, and thousands more power plants with purchasing agreements ensure they will be online for many more years.

Mulligan argues Jacobson's contention that it would be better to not do anything at all than to deploy carbon capture technology is based on flawed assumptions.

"Jacobson is a huge advocate of 100 percent renewable," Mulligan told UPI. "His research is a good reminder that we should be shooting for as much renewable as possible, but he's trying to kneecap an entire technology by painting a very shoddy picture of the very first power plant."

Mulligan's first issue is with Jacobson's use of Petra Nova's efficiency data.

"I'm not sure if someone botched the deployment of the system, or they simply weren't operating at full capacity in their first six months," he said. "Jacobson doesn't know either, because he doesn't ask. But we know this technology can capture up to 90 percent of CO2 emissions."

Mulligan likened Jacobson's assumption to taking an umbrella out in the rain, failing to open it up and concluding that it doesn't work.

"If we did that, we'd be called fools," Mulligan said.

Supporters of carbon capture technology suggest steps can be taken to reduce upstream emissions and other environmental impacts. Carbon capture systems also can be powered by renewable energy.

Jacobson's research suggests the Earth and its atmosphere would be better off if renewable energy were built to replace fossil fuels, not power technology designed to reduce the emissions of fossil fuel sources.

But scenarios might exist in which renewables aren't a viable option, Mulligan said.

"Renewable energy is great for providing electricity. Less great for providing on-demand high-quality thermal energy for industrial processes," Mulligan said. "It also does nothing for emissions from concrete. In these applications, even groups like Greenpeace and Sunrise acknowledge we'll likely need CCS."

A risk also exists that as renewable energy becomes the dominant source of energy, its reliability will become an issue. Solar and wind are cheap, but they're not available all the time. Until better, cheaper battery storage technologies come along, some fossil fuel plants will need to continue to operate to maintain the power grid's reliability and ensure prices don't skyrocket.

It would be better, Mulligan argues, if regulation mandated that fossil fuel power plants that must continue to exist, for whatever reason, be retrofitted with carbon capture technology.

But Jacobson's isn't the only study that has painted carbon capture in an unfavorable light. Another paper, published last spring in the journal Nature Energy, found that renewables were far superior to CCS from the standpoint of energy return-on-investment.

"Given its net energy disadvantages, carbon capture and storage should be considered a niche and supplementary contributor to the energy system, rather than be seen as a critical technology option as current climate agreements view it," Denes Csala, a lecturer in energy storage and system dynamics at Lancaster University, said in a statement.

Carbon capture has allies in the oil and gas industry and the labor sector -- many unions see it as a lifeline for fossil fuel industry jobs -- and has been characterized as "essential" to climate change mitigation by the International Energy Agency. The United Nations has acknowledged that the technology could be used as one of many solutions for carbon emissions reductions.

But plenty of environmental advocates remain opposed. In 2017, Michael Bloomberg told a crowd at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit that the technology was "a figment of the imagination." Last year, Al Gore told Axios that he thought carbon capture was "nonsense."

Critics of carbon capture worry that the technology will usurp public and private funds that otherwise might be used for renewable energy, as well as further entrench the interests of the fossil fuel industry, which controls much of the technology involved in carbon capture.

A report published this year by the Center for International Environmental Law echoes these concerns.

"We need to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels," researchers wrote. "Anything that moves us toward greater reliance will not be a solution, and the push for geoengineering is likely to do exactly that."

Another report by Clean Air Task Force, an environmental non-profit group friendly to "low carbon" alternatives to renewables determined the development of carbon capture technologies would not displace wind and solar projects.

Mulligan agrees that CCS should mostly be reserved for special circumstances, but he doesn't think the technology should be impugned unconditionally.

"I don't want to take the CCS option off the table," he said. "This isn't about doing CCS instead of renewable energy. This is about managing the risk that our first-best preference for decarbonization fails to fully and completely deliver on a tight timetable."

If there's one thing on which those friendly to and antagonistic towards CCS can agree, it's that carbon isn't properly priced by world governments or major economies. One way to fix that would be a carbon tax.

"We don't have a lot of CCS because we don't have a real price on carbon," Mulligan said.

But while a carbon tax and a real price on carbon would make CCS projects viable in the short run, a hard price on carbon also likely would accelerate the demise of fossil fuel energy and prove a boon to renewable energy and storage technologies.

The health and climate impacts of carbon capture and direct air capture

Mark Z. Jacobson  

Abstract

Data from a coal with carbon capture and use (CCU) plant and a synthetic direct air carbon capture and use (SDACCU) plant are analyzed for the equipment's ability, alone, to reduce CO2. In both plants, natural gas turbines power the equipment. A net of only 10.8% of the CCU plant's CO2-equivalent (CO2e) emissions and 10.5% of the CO2 removed from the air by the SDACCU plant are captured over 20 years, and only 20–31%, are captured over 100 years. The low net capture rates are due to uncaptured combustion emissions from natural gas used to power the equipment, uncaptured upstream emissions, and, in the case of CCU, uncaptured coal combustion emissions. Moreover, the CCU and SDACCU plants both increase air pollution and total social costs relative to no capture. Using wind to power the equipment reduces CO2e relative to using natural gas but still allows air pollution emissions to continue and increases the total social cost relative to no carbon capture. Conversely, using wind to displace coal without capturing carbon reduces CO2e, air pollution, and total social cost substantially. In sum, CCU and SDACCU increase or hold constant air pollution health damage and reduce little carbon before even considering sequestration or use leakages of carbon back to the air. Spending on capture rather than wind replacing either fossil fuels or bioenergy always increases total social cost substantially. No improvement in CCU or SDACCU equipment can change this conclusion while fossil fuel emissions exist, since carbon capture always incurs an equipment cost never incurred by wind, and carbon capture never reduces, instead mostly increases, air pollution and fuel mining, which wind eliminates. Once fossil fuel emissions end, CCU (for industry) and SDACCU social costs need to be evaluated against the social costs of natural reforestation and reducing nonenergy halogen, nitrous oxide, methane, and biomass burning emissions.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Study: Renewables, not nuclear power, 

can provide truly low carbon energy



Renewable energy programs are more likely to help countries reduce carbon emissions than nuclear energy projects. Photo by University of Sussex


Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Nuclear energy programs around the world have failed to deliver on promises of carbon emissions reductions, according to a new survey.

When researchers at the University of Sussex Business School, in Britain, and the ISM University of Management and Economics, in Lithuania, analyzed nuclear energy programs and renewable power operations in 123 countries over the last 25 years, they found the two tend not to co-exist all that well.

In low-carbon energy systems, the two programs crowd one another other out of the energy market, as well as diminish the efficiency of the other, researchers said.

The latest findings, published Monday in the journal Nature Energy, suggest countries are less likely to meet carbon emissions reduction targets when nuclear energy programs box out renewables.

"The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritizing investment in nuclear over renewable energy," lead study author Benjamin Sovacool said in a news release.

"Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments," said Sovacool, a professor of energy policy at Sussex.

Researchers relied on World Bank and International Energy Agency data to examine the impacts of nuclear programs on renewables, and vice versa.

The analysis showed that when electricity transmission and distribution systems are optimized for large-scale, centralized power production, like a nuclear power plant, small-scale, often-heterogenous renewable power sources are put at a disadvantage.

Likewise, when financial markets, regulatory bodies and employment practices are designed to facilitate large-scale nuclear power construction projects, small-scale renewable projects lose out on access to capital, permits and workers.

"This paper exposes the irrationality of arguing for nuclear investment based on a 'do everything' argument," said study co-author Andy Stirling.

"Our findings show not only that nuclear investments around the world tend on balance to be less effective than renewable investments at carbon emissions mitigation, but that tensions between these two strategies can further erode the effectiveness of averting climate disruption," said Stirling, a professor of science and technology policy at Sussex.

It's not that nuclear power programs don't provide any benefits, though.

Researchers found nuclear energy programs were associated with a small drop in carbon emissions in countries with high GDP per capita. However, the data also revealed a stronger correlation between investments in renewable energy and carbon emissions reductions in countries with high GDP per capita.

In less wealthy countries, nuclear energy projects were associated with slight increases in carbon emissions.

"While it is important to acknowledge the correlative nature of our data analysis, it is astonishing how clear and consistent the results are across different time frames and country sets," said study co-author Patrick Schmid.

"In certain large country samples the relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear," said Schmid, a researcher at ISM International School of Management München.

Energy report says COVID-19 has shown path away from climate change

"Solar is the new king of global electricity markets," 


Seats inside a terminal at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport are seen empty on August 4. Decreased air travel and driving worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic have driven down carbon emissions worldwide. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 13 (UPI) -- While carbon emissions worldwide have fallen dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, energy experts said in an influential report Tuesday that more global efforts are needed to prevent a return to the higher readings seen before the health crisis.

The International Energy Agency said in its World Energy Outlook 2020 it expects global energy demand to decline by 5% for the year, and fall a record 7% for energy-related emissions.

Under present scenarios, global demand is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by early 2023 but that could be delayed until 2025 if the crisis endures, the IEA said.

According to one model, carbon emissions could surge next year, surpass 2019 levels by 2027 and rise to 36 gigatons by 2030.

Since the start of the pandemic, global emissions have declined sharply due to a major decrease in driving and air travel worldwide -- proof, many environmentalists say, that the world is capable of controlling the climate change crisis.

Carbon emissions from energy use are expected to fall to 33.4 gigatons for 2020, the lowest level since 2011 and the largest year-to-year decline since 1900 when record-keeping began, the IEA said.

If the world wants to continue affecting climate change for the better, the outlook says, it needs to take more advantage of the present downturn before carbon emissions return to 2019 levels. The outlook called the next decade "pivotal."

"It has been a tumultuous year for the global energy system. The COVID-19 crisis has caused more disruption than any other event in recent history, leaving scars that will last for years to come. But whether this upheaval ultimately helps or hinders efforts to accelerate clean energy transitions and reach international energy and climate goals will depend on how governments respond to today's challenges," it states.

"A surge in well-designed energy policies is needed to put the world on track for a resilient energy system that can meet climate goals."

"Despite a record drop in global emissions this year, the world is far from doing enough to put them into decisive decline," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

"The economic downturn has temporarily suppressed emissions, but low economic growth is not a low-emissions strategy -- it is a strategy that would only serve to further impoverish the world's most vulnerable populations."

Birol called for quicker structural changes in the way energy is produced and consumed in the form of renewable sources to break the expected upward trend of carbon emissions.

"Governments have the capacity and the responsibility to take decisive actions to accelerate clean energy transitions and put the world on a path to reaching our climate goals, including net-zero emissions," he said.

The report said the pandemic has helped accelerate some renewable alternatives, such as solar power. The IEA report projects that the use of solar power will increase by an average of 13% per year between now and 2030.

"Solar is the new king of global electricity markets," Birol said.

Eight nations, including U.S., sign accords for moon missions


NASA's Space Launch System rocket is shown in this artist's concept launching into space for a lunar mission, which would be governed by a new framework signed Tuesday by eight nations. Image courtesy of NASA


ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 13 (UPI) -- Eight nations have signed NASA's new framework to govern lunar exploration missions, the agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, announced Tuesday.

By signing the agreement, the eight nations commit to peaceful activities on the moon and in travel to the moon.

Provisions in the Artemis Accords stipulate that nations, and private companies in those nations, will openly disclose plans for lunar missions, and mine resources on the moon in accordance with the international Outer Space Treaty that dates to 1967.

The accords also commit signing nations to render aid to other nations on the moon if necessary, to minimize space debris and to register all objects taken to the lunar surface.

In addition to the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates and Britain signed the Artemis Accords.

"We are one human race and we are in this together. The Accords help us to work together to benefit all," Sarah Al Amiri, chair of the United Arab Emirates Council of Scientists, said in a live broadcast Tuesday.

Bridenstine had said in a press conference Monday that more nations are expected to sign the accords this year, and that he hopes all nations eventually will.

"As NASA, we always try to be very transparent and what our plans and policies are, and we think it's good for all nations to be transparent with their plans," Bridenstine said.

The new agreement comes as NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon in 2024, with further plans to establish a lunar base to tap water ice for possible long-term habitation.

NASA officials on Monday acknowledged they didn't approach all space-faring nations in drafting the accords because the agency wanted to move quickly. NASA sought a few nations believed to have common values, said Mike Gold, associate administrator for NASA's Office of International and Interagency Relations

"We wanted to begin with a group substantive and large enough to make an impact," Gold said. "It's very challenging to do that with too large a group. Now that the text of the accords have been finalized we can broaden the coalition."

Bridenstine said NASA couldn't approach China, which already has landed two robotic missions on the moon, because federal law prohibits negotiations with China.

When asked how the accords would be enforced, Bridenstine said the intent of the agreement is to pre-empt conflict by being transparent.

"If one of the participants chooses to disregard the guidance, other participants ... ultimately could be asked to leave the Artemis program, but I would hope that they will come to a better resolution," Bridenstine said.