WAIT, WHAT

Hawaii Is Under A Blizzard Warning & The Weather Forecast Calls For A Foot Of Snow

Winter is coming for Hawaii 😭

George Burba | Dreamstime
Josh Elliott
December 03, 2021 

Part of Hawaii is under a blizzard warning. Really.

The National Weather Service (NWS) warns that high winds and heavy snow are coming for the Big Island summits, and things could get pretty nasty over the weekend.

Up to 12 inches of snow are expected to fall in the area from Friday evening until Sunday morning, according to the NWS.

Wind gusts are also expected at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.

“Travel could be very difficult to impossible,” the warning says. “Blowing snow will significantly reduce visibility at times, with periods of zero visibility.”

The weather agency adds that the strong winds will “likely cause significant drifting snow.”

The news will likely not delight vacationers who are trying to escape the frigid winter weather this December, especially since the NWS is recommending that people stay indoors during the storm.
Story continues below

“Travel should be restricted to emergencies only,” it said. “If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle."

Hawaii is known to get snow a few times a year, according to the South Kohala Management tourism site.

The summits of the island's volcanos typically get the worst of it, with 8 inches forecast in 2017.

But it's not all bad. The bare slopes of the volcanoes can apparently make for some pretty awesome sledding after a snowstorm.

IKEA Customers Slept Over In The Store's Beds During A Danish Snowstorm & Lived The Dream

Admit it: you've secretly thought about doing this.


@ikeaaalborg | Instagram
Josh Elliott
December 03, 2021 

IKEA typically doesn't let you sleep in the cozy display beds at its stores — but a few lucky people are now the exception to the rule.

More than two dozen people spent the night in a Denmark IKEA's showroom this week after a winter storm trapped them in the store, The Associated Press reports.

The storm hit late Wednesday in Aalborg, Denmark, leaving six customers, many IKEA employees and staff from a nearby toy shop stranded.

But don't feel too badly for them, because they had a blast.

The customers and staff enjoyed dinner from IKEA's cantina, kicked back and watched some TV and then they each picked out a bed where they would spend the night, AP reports.

The people were able to "pick the exact bed they always have wanted to try."

"The evening went very fast before we went to bed between [11 p.m.] and 1 a.m.," store manager Peter Elmose told Ekstra Bladet, a Danish newspaper.

Customer Erik Bangsgaard, who had to stay at the store for their night along with his wife, said they enjoyed sleeping on the fold-out sofa that they chose. However, the bright showroom lights stayed on throughout the night.

"They could not dampen it, so we just had to try to sleep anyway," he told TV2Nord.

Everyone went home in the morning and IKEA changed the sheets on all the beds afterward, but not before sharing a few photos and videos of the scene after a very unusual night.

Toy store employee Michelle Barrett told Denmark's public broadcaster DR that it was an unusual but unforgettable scenario.

"We just laughed at the situation, because we will probably not experience it again," Barrett said.

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The skeleton of a Roman 'vaporized' just steps from the sea as he fled the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD, found by archaeologists


Alia Shoaib
Sat., December 4, 2021

Francesco Sirano, director of the excavations, near the skeleton of the last person who was trying to escape from Herculaneum during the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius.Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Images

Archaeologists discovered the skeleton of a Roman man who was fleeing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Scientists believe the man was possibly trying to get on a rescue ship.

The skeleton was lying facing upwards, which suggests that he had turned to face the onrushing cloud.

Archaeologists discovered the skeletal remains of a man killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, offering new insights into one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history.

The man, who researchers believe was between 40 and 45 years old, was killed just steps from the sea in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum as he tried to escape, Italian news agency ANSA said.

He was carrying with a wooden box containing a ring, which could have been his most prized possession, The Times said.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago destroyed several major Roman cities, including Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The remains were discovered during excavations in October, and archaeologists released several images for the first time on Wednesday.

The skeleton of a male victim just found during a new excavation campaign in the Herculaneum archaeological area, the town buried with the nearly Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius volcano on 79 AD.Carlo Hermann/KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty ImagesMore

"The last moments here were instantaneous but terrible," Francesco Sirano, the site director, told ANSA.

"It was 1 a.m. when the pyroclastic surge produced by the volcano reached the town for the first time with a temperature of 300-400 degrees, or even, according to some studies, 500-700 degrees."

"A white-hot cloud that raced towards the sea at a speed of 100km [60 miles] per hour, which was so dense that it had no oxygen in it," he added.

The man's bones were stained red from blood, Sirano told the outlet, because of combustion caused by the flow of magma, ash, and gas.

"They would have burnt off all his clothing and vaporized his flesh. Death would have been instantaneous," said Pierpaolo Petrone, an anthropologist and archeologist, reported The Telegraph.

The remains were surrounded by heavy carbonized wood, including a roof beam that could have crushed his skull, ANSA reported.

Unusually, the skeleton was facing upwards, suggesting that he had turned to face the onrushing cloud of hot gas and volcanic matter.

"Most of the people we've found here at Herculaneum were face down, but maybe he was trying to reach a boat and turned because he heard the roar of the cloud racing towards him at 100km/h," Sirano said, according to The Times.

The remains were found in an area where 300 people were unearthed in fishermen's shelters in the 1980s, likely awaiting a possible rescue by the fleet of Pliny the Elder, ANSA said.

Researchers are now puzzling over the man's identity and wondering why he was not sheltering with the others. Sirano suggested he could have been a rescuer or soldier helping people escape to the sea.

Alternatively, he could have been a fugitive who left the group to try and get on a rescue ship.

Some experts have suggested he was not a rich man, evidenced by the ring he was carrying.

"The ring is reddish, meaning iron, but there is something green inside the box which could be bronze," Ivan Varriale, an archaeologist, told The Times.

"The box looks like it was used to keep change, and if that's all he was carrying, he may not have been rich."

Traces of fabric in the stone indicated that the wooden box was once stored in a bag.

Thousands of years ago, Herculaneum was a seaside town favored by wealthy Romans. The ancient town now lies beneath the modern Italian city of Ercolano.

Canadian housing 'too much of an asset class' now: Rosenberg



7:53
It's not an influx of investors that are rising home prices, it's...

Dec 3, 2021

David George-Cosh
Reporter

People who buy a home in Canada aren't merely owning a place to live, but rather controlling a seemingly ever-appreciating asset class, as the cost of housing in many Canadian cities continues to soar, according to Bay Street economist David Rosenberg.

"Housing has become not just a place to live in Canada, it's become like an asset class, and probably too much of an asset class," said Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research and Associates Inc., in an interview on Friday. "We've deviated way too far in terms of pricing and where nominal growth is in the economy."

Rosenberg's comments come as the price of a house in Toronto soared to a record $1,163,323 in November, up nearly 22 per cent from a year earlier, according to Toronto Regional Real Estate Board data released Friday. Toronto wasn't the only city in Canada to report steep housing price hikes in November, with the average price of a home in Vancouver climbing 16 per cent to $1,211,200, while Calgary prices were up nine per cent to $461,000, according to those city's respective real estate boards.

Cooling Canada's housing markets has been a debate years in the making, with some analysts pointing to the Bank of Canada raising interest rates as a way to make homes more affordable for the average Canadian. Based on forward overnight index swap rates, investors expect the Bank of Canada to raise rates five times over the course of 2022, according to Bloomberg data.

However, Rosenberg cautions that rate hikes are unlikely to move at that pace, given the amount of outstanding debt Canadians have taken on. Statistics Canada said in August that Canadian households carried approximately $2.5 trillion in debt one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, about two-thirds of which was tied to mortgages.

“We had a mountain of debt before the [COVID-19 pandemic] that prevented a normal policy move in the last cycle. Now we're choking on even more debt," Rosenberg said. "Central banks might want to raise rates (but) they won't raise them as much as what the markets got priced in."

Rosenberg - who rose to prominence through a series of bearish market calls during his time as a Merrill Lynch economist in 2007-2008 - expects the Canadian economy to underperform next year. He’s predicting equity valuations will be "quite weak" and that the housing market landscape will be much different from what homeowners are seeing currently.

"When I tell this tale, people say 'Well, you're like the boy who cried wolf.' To which I say, 'Just remember that the wolf shows up at the end of the story,'" he said.

BNN

Physics Nobel belies Italy's scientific brain drain

Giorgio Parisi will share this year's physics Nobel with US and German scientists (AFP/Alberto PIZZOLI)

Claudia CHIEPPA and Gildas LE ROUX
Sat, December 4, 2021

Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi will receive a shared Nobel prize at a ceremony Monday, but behind the celebrations is consternation at the brain-drain that for years has seen many young scientists leave to work abroad.

Some 14,000 Italian researchers quit the country between 2009 and 2015, according to Italy's national statistics agency Istat -- a trend explained in large part by a lack of investment.

"Italy is not a welcoming country for researchers, whether Italian or foreign," Parisi said in October after being awarded the Nobel prize for his work on the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.

"Research is underfunded and the situation has worsened over the past 10-15 years."

Government funding fell from 9.9 billion euros ($11.2 billion) in 2007 to 8.3 billion in 2015 -- the latest figures available -- while in 2019, research spending in the eurozone's third largest economy was significantly below the EU average.

As well as Parisi, Italy has produced some top scientists in recent decades, notably Carlo Rubbia, the CERN physicist who won a Nobel in 1984, and neuroembryologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, who won in 1986.

But commentators note that research budgets were slashed after the 2008 financial crisis, while Italy's notorious bureaucracy also plays a role in sending young talent abroad.

"In Italy, unfortunately, there are big obstacles to getting a university job," said Eleonora D'Elia, a 35-year-old biologist from Rome, who has been teaching for the past four years at Imperial College London.

She cited "a lack of funding, and jobs available, the contacts needed and a highly complex system based on the number of articles published".

- Like a vegetable garden -

The scale of the problem was confirmed by Roberto Antonelli, head of the prestigious Lincean Academy in Rome, who told AFP there had been "an enormous reduction in funds for universities and Italian research facilities".

This was accompanied by "a reduction in the quality of positions available for young people compared to other countries".

The number of professors and of long-term contracts at universities has fallen from 60,882 in 2009 to 48,878 in 2016 -- a drop of almost 20 percent.

In London, d'Elia told AFP, there is "more support in terms of salary and research budget", whereas in Italy, where she hopes one day to return to be with her family and friends, she "would have to constantly fight to get that".

The Italian government has vowed to use some of the massive post-pandemic recovery funds it expects to receive from the European Union between now and 2026 to help boost home-grown research.

Research Minister Cristina Messa in October promised six billion euros in funding for 60 projects.

- 'Like a vegetable garden' -

Antonelli welcomed the funds, but warned: "The problem is the continuity of funding... what will happen after 2026?"

He said research must be measured in percentage of GDP, which ranges from "the highest such as in Finland, Japan and South Korea, to the lowest among developed countries such as Italy, which do not invest comparable funds when compared to neighbours such as Germany or France".

Italy spent just 1.45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on research in 2019, below the EU average of 2.19 percent and Germany's 3.17 percent, according to data from European agency Eurostat.

Parisi has also emphasised the importance of a long-term view.

"Research is like a vegetable garden, if you think you can water it every fortnight, things will go wrong," he said.

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Albanian bunkers ravaged by rising tides as erosion takes toll




Bunkers built under the direction of Albania's former dictator Enver Hoxha are now underwater (AFP/Gent SHKULLAKU)

Briseida MEMA
Sat, December 4, 2021, 11:31 PM·4 min read

Albania's communist-era bunkers were meant to withstand a nuclear strike, but decades later the fortifications are being devoured by the sea as the country's coastline is battered by erosion.

The shores of the Balkan country are among the most affected in Europe by erosion, according to experts, who blame climate change and uncontrolled urbanisation for the scourge.

Along the shores of Seman in central Albania, many of the bunkers built under the direction of former dictator Enver Hoxha -- who feared imminent invasion by the United States, Soviet Union and China among others -- are now underwater.

The same goes for the police station, a sports field and an oil well.

On the beaches, tree trunks have been ripped apart, while collapsed roofs testify to the population's helplessness in the face of the ever-advancing sea.

"The bunkers were supposed to resist everything but they failed in their one and only battle," Ilir Zani, 80, tells AFP.

According to locals, the Adriatic has advanced by 800 metres (half a mile) in this area in the past three decades alone.

Seman resident Izmir Mernica, 47, fears his cafe may be next.

"We are worried, the sea is swallowing everything," he says, pointing to a water tower now marooned in middle of the Adriatic.

- 'Waves will swallow us' -

In 2009, the authorities relied on military tanks to pull seven submerged bunkers from the sea following a string of drowning deaths caused by the whirlpools created by the currents around the structures.

More than a decade later, the bunkers are back underwater.

The sea "took them again", says Mernica.

According to climate change experts working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), more than a third of Albania's 427-kilometre (265-mile) coastline is affected by erosion, at a rate of roughly one to two metres (three to seven feet) per year.

Abdulla Diku, an environmental specialist, said that for each hectare of land about 27 tonnes of soil are lost to encroaching tides each year, which is approximately 11 times the average for other European countries.

In central Albania's Qerret, Vlash Moci still maintains his bunker, which once housed anti-aircraft guns and is now a bar that attracts foreign tourists.

Moci, 64, is worried that the rising tides may claim his business soon, with the neighbouring bunker -- a pale green structure that looks like a flying saucer -- already close to being consumed.

"We are afraid that one day big waves will swallow us. It's terrible," he tells AFP.

To fight back, the owners of nearby villas and hotels in Qerret have begun constructing illegal jetties perpendicular to the sea.

But experts argue the measures only exacerbate the situation.



Experts blame climate change and uncontrolled urbanisation for the erosion on Albania's coast (AFP/Gent SHKULLAKU)

- 'Erosion hotspot' -

"These are individual solutions that aggravate the problem and harm biodiversity and marine ecosystems," warns Mirela Kamberi, an expert with the UNDP.

With little being done to stop the rising tides, the sea appears to be irresistible for the foreseeable future.

Due to climate change, experts predict sea levels in Albania will increase by 40 to 105 centimetres (16 to 41 inches) by 2100, compared with the changes recorded between 1986 and 2005.

To add to the country's woes, deforestation has also taken a toll, while the unregulated dredging of sand from rivers has accelerated their course and uncontrolled urban development along the coast has damaged the area's natural defences.

"The problem is that people have cut down almost all the fir trees to build buildings, damaging nature's systems," says Besnik Zara, 66, as he casts a fishing rod into the sea.

And in the Shupal mountains near Tirana, it is easy to see the damage erosion has wreaked further inland -- most of which has been caused by deforestation and the rivers that feed a nearby reservoir.

This lake, which supplies the capital with drinking water, "is already considered an erosion hotspot", says Diku.

To cope, the authorities banned the felling of more trees from the area's forests in 2016.

They have also vowed to implement promises made at the UN climate conferences in Paris and Glasgow and have begun passing new legislation.

"Environmental crime will be treated by the criminal code as a crime against life, property or on a par with organised crimes," warned interior minister Bledi Cuci.

bme/ev/ds/imm/dl

Texas bears brunt of US plastic pollution

Environmental activist Diane Wilson shows plastic pellets that pollute the Gulf coast of Texas (AFP/Mark Felix)

François PICARD
Sat, December 4, 2021,

Former shrimper Diane Wilson watches in disgust as a Taiwan-owned factory in Texas spews millions of plastic pellets into the Matagorda Bay.

For years Wilson has been documenting this pollution by Formosa Plastics Group, the world's fourth largest plastic manufacturer. It set up shop in 1983 south of Houston in Point Comfort, near the waters where she used to catch shrimp in abundance.

"When we did the sampling on Formosa, we found 2,000 violations. How many did the state of Texas have? Zero," Wilson told AFP as she stood at the helm of a shrimp boat.

She said regulators at environmental protection agencies in Texas, the second most populous US state, operate in a revolving door system.

"They leave the state agencies and get a job at the chemical plant because there is no money in being an inspector or an officer," Wilson said.

- America the polluter -

The United States is by far the world's biggest plastic polluter, according to a study released Wednesday.

It generated 42 million tons of waste in 2016, more than twice as much as China and more than all the countries of the European Union combined, says the study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The US accounts for less than five percent of the world's people.

Point Comfort, population 737, is essentially a plastics town: it has 17 Formosa production units spread out over many acres.

Wilson, a mother of five, comes from a family that has been shrimping for four generations and is the face of the local fight against Formosa's polluting practices.

In particular she is battling white pellets, called nurdles, that factories near the coast release by the millions. These little balls smaller than beans are the raw material that buyers melt down to make a variety of plastic products.

The nurdles leak from faulty pipes at production plants and are so light they are easily carried off into nature by the slightest wind.

- Few shrimpers left -

Complaining that the state of Texas takes a hands-off approach, Wilson sued Formosa Plastics and managed to force it to sign in 2019 a consent decree under which it pays tens of thousands of dollars for each day in which it releases plastic pellets or powder into the environment.

"At this moment Formosa has had over 50 violations probably since June of this year, and they have been fined approximately $1.1 million," Wilson said.

"And the money that Formosa pays goes into a trust. It's called the Matagorda trust. It goes into environmental projects."

But Formosa also dumps toxic liquid waste into the water, millions of gallons a day, she said. This discharge is legal -- and it has ruined the local shrimp industry, Wilson added.

"There used to probably be maybe 4, 5, 600 fishermen in this community and now you're lucky if there's more than a handful of them," she added.

Formosa Plastics Group also has factories in the US states of Louisiana, South Carolina and New Jersey, as well as in Vietnam and Taiwan itself.

"We documented that within the next decade there will be more greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production than from coal plants in the United States," said Judith Enck, author of a report for Beyond Plastics, a project run by Bennington College in Vermont.

Her study found that almost 80 percent of CO2 emissions from the plastics industry in America happen along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico -- in Louisiana but mainly in Texas.

- $560 million in fines -

Plastic is made using a variety of gases, ethane in particular. And the southern US offers advantages for producing it: cheap energy, skilled labor, and good port and energy infrastructure.

Enck said the region has another lure: "A lot of fossil fuel companies like to do business in Texas because environmental laws are so weak and often not enforced."

In the last 21 years, Formosa plastics group -- all of its affiliates and subsidiaries across various countries -- have paid in total just over $560 million of fines, said Jane Patton, who wrote a report entitled "Formosa Plastics Group: a Serial Offender of Environmental and Human Rights."

It was published in October by environmental advocacy group CIEL.

Formosa Plastics declined to be interviewed for this story, referring AFP instead to the 2019 consent decree engineered by the shrimper Wilson.

str/seb/dw/mlm

Turning leaked methane into fishmeal would turn a profit while helping the environment

Why not turn a problem into an asset?

 by Alexandru Micu

ZME
November 29, 2021

The issue of methane pollution might become an asset in the future, thanks to new technology that can transform this potent greenhouse gas into fish food.

I

 Sirawich Rungsimanop.

Approaches to converting methane into fishmeal have already been developed, the authors note, but the economic uncertainty during the pandemic has prevented its use to promote food security on any meaningful scale. The new study analyzes the method’s economic viability today. The main takeaway of the research is that methane-to-fishmeal conversion is economically feasible for certain sources of the gas and that other sources can be made profitable with certain improvements.

The approach can also be of quite significant help against climate change, the team adds, and is capable of meeting all the global demand for fishmeal, further reducing the strain we’re placing on natural ecosystems.

Untapped resource

“Industrial sources in the U.S. are emitting a truly staggering amount of methane, which is uneconomical to capture and use with current applications,” said study lead author Sahar El Abbadia, a lecturer in the Civic, Liberal and Global Education program at Stanford.

“Our goal is to flip that paradigm, using biotechnology to create a high-value product.”

Carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas, and currently the most abundant one in the Earth’s atmosphere. That being said, methane is another important player in our current climate woes. Methane is estimated to have 85 times the global warming potential of CO2 over a 20-year period, and at least 25 times as great a potential over a 100-year period. Methane also represents a direct hazard to public health as concentrations of this gas are increasing in the troposphere (the lower layer of the atmosphere, where people live). An estimated 1 million premature deaths occur worldwide, per year, due to respiratory illnesses associated with methane exposure.

The problem posed by methane is also increasing over time: the relative concentration of this gas in the atmosphere has been increasing twice as fast as that of CO2 since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the team explains. Although there are natural sources of atmospheric methane, mostly through the decomposition of organic matter and from digestive processes, the lion’s share of that increase is owed to human-driven emissions.

Methanotrophs, bacteria that consume methane, have been explored as a potential solution in the past. If supplied with methane, oxygen, and certain nutrients, these bacteria produce a protein-rich sludge that can be used, among other things, to produce feedstock for fish farms. This process is already in commercial use by some companies; however, they are supplied by methane fed through gas distribution grids.

The authors note that capturing methane emissions — such as those from landfills, wastewater treatment plants, or leaked at oil and gas facilities — would be both cheaper and much more eco-friendly. Besides economic and environmental benefits, the shift from pumped to captured methane in the production of fishmeal would also help ensure humanity’s greater food security. The authors explain that seafood consumption has increased more than four times since the 1960s, with grave consequences for natural fish stocks.

Aquaculture (fish farms) now provide around half of the quantity of animal-sourced seafood consumed globally. Demand for seafood in the form of algae and animals is also estimated to double by 2050, the team adds, which will place increased strain on producers.

Against this backdrop, methane-sourced fish feed can represent an important asset towards food security in the future, and allow us to have the seafood we crave for minimal environmental impact.
Makes economic sense

Unused methane emissions in the U.S. from landfills, wastewater treatment plants and oil and gas facilities. Image credits El Abbadi, et al., (2021), Nature Sustainability.

In order to determine whether such efforts would also be economically-feasible, the team modeled several scenarios, each with a different source of methane used in the production of the fishmeal. These included natural gas purchased from commercial grids, as well as methane captured from relatively large wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and oil and gas facilities. For each scenario, they looked at a range of variables that would factor into a company’s bottom line, including the availability of trained labor and the cost of electricity used to keep the bioreactors running.

In the scenarios that involved methane capture from landfills and oil & gas facilities, the production cost for one ton of fishmeal would be $1,546 and $1,531, respectively. Both are lower than the 10-year average market price of such products, which sits at $1,600. In scenarios in which methane capture was performed at wastewater treatment plants, the cost per ton sat at $1,645, which is just slightly over the market average. However, the highest prices per ton were seen when methane was purchased directly from the commercial grid — $1,783 per ton.

Surprisingly enough, electricity was the single largest expense for all scenarios, representing around 45% of total costs on average. This means that areas with low electricity production costs could see significant decreases. The authors estimate that in states such as Mississippi and Texas, these costs would go down by around 20%, to an average of $1,214 per ton ($386 less than the 10-year average).

With certain improvements, such as bioreactors with more efficient heat transfer to reduce the need for cooling, production costs can be reduced even further. Even in the scenarios where wastewater treatment plants provided the methane, steps can be taken to reduce costs. For example, wastewater itself can be used as a source of nitrogen and phosphorus (key nutrients), as well as for cooling.

The team estimates that if manufacturers can bring the per ton production cost by 20%, there would be profits to be made even if all the supply of fishmeal today was covered using methane-produced materials with gas captured in the U.S. alone. With ever more reductions in cost per ton, such products could out-compete soybean and other crops for animal feed in general.

“Despite decades of trying, the energy industry has had trouble finding a good use for stranded natural gas,” said study co-author Evan David Sherwin, a postdoctoral researcher in energy resources engineering at Stanford. “Once we started looking at the energy and food systems together, it became clear that we could solve at least two long-standing problems at once.”

The paper “Displacing fishmeal with protein derived from stranded methane” has been published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Japan backs oil and gas even after COP26 climate talks

Japan is quietly encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to government and industry sources. 

| BLOOMBERG

BY STEPHEN STAPCZYNSKI AND TSUYOSHI INAJIMA
BLOOMBERG
Dec 2, 2021

It’s been less than a month since world leaders pledged to combat climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, yet Japan is already showing signs of putting the brakes on divestment from fossil fuels.

Government officials have been quietly urging trading houses, refiners and utilities to slow down their move away from fossil fuels, and even encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to people within the government and industry, who requested anonymity as the talks are private.

The officials are concerned about the long-term supply of traditional fuels as the world doubles down on renewable energy, the people said. The import-dependent nation wants to avoid a potential shortage of fuel this winter, as well as during future cold spells, after a deficit last year sparked fears of nationwide blackouts.

Japan joined almost 200 countries last month in a pledge to step up the fight against climate change, including phasing down the use of coal power and tackling emissions. However, the moves by the officials show the struggle to turn those pledges into reality, especially for countries like Japan, which relies on imports for nearly 90% of its energy needs, with prices spiking partly because of the world’s shift away from fossil fuel investments.

The nation has been slow to make any concrete commitments to phase out coal in the near term, and has often been criticized for its funding of overseas power plants that use the dirtiest burning fossil fuel. The government has also avoided joining efforts by developed nations to reduce consumption of natural gas.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry declined to comment directly on whether it is encouraging industries to boost investment in upstream energy supply, and instead pointed to a strategic energy plan approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet on Oct. 22. That plan says "no compromise is acceptable to ensure energy security, and it is the obligation of a nation to continue securing necessary resources.”

That latest strategy calls for the share of oil and natural gas produced either domestically or under the control of Japanese enterprises overseas to increase from 34.7% in fiscal year 2019 to more than 60% in 2040. Japanese officials plan to convey to other nations the importance attached to continued investments in upstream supply, the people added.

Japan is still expected to be highly dependent on fossil fuels for the next decade as there is limited available space to significantly expand solar power, and the nation’s wind sector is developing slowly. | BLOOMBERG

While Japan will likely avoid rolling blackouts or gasoline rationing this winter when demand for energy peaks in the region, the global energy crisis is leaving many within the government thinking about how to prepare for the future.

Japan is still expected to be highly dependent on fossil fuels for the next decade as there is limited available space to significantly expand solar power, and the nation’s wind sector is developing slowly. It’s also struggling to restart nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the world needs to stop developing new gas, oil and coal fields, the International Energy Agency said in May. Japanese officials are echoing concerns highlighted by Australia last month, which said Europe’s gas supply squeeze is proof that nations need to continue to add more production.

Japan’s trading houses, including Sumitomo Corp. and Marubeni Corp., are aggressively divesting from fossil fuels amid an uncertain future for the energy sources and pressure from shareholders. These companies, formally known as sōgō shōsha, have traditionally been among the biggest investors in oil and natural gas assets in order to bring fuel to resource-poor Japan.

Oil prices had surged to the highest level since 2014 in October, which many Japanese government officials believe was exacerbated by a lack of investment in new supply, the people said. Meanwhile, liquefied natural gas prices have jumped to a record on the back of a global shortage, helping to push Japan’s wholesale power rate to the highest level for this time of year.

Cars spew more ammonia than suspected, pandemic data suggests

By Robert Preidt, HealthDay News

COVID-19 lockdowns brought surprising news to scientists studying pollution: Cars spew much more ammonia into the air than previously thought.

Ammonia is a common air pollutant that's a major cause of lung and heart disease, especially in cities.

"The tricky question has always been: How do we separate out ammonia concentrations owing to traffic from the ammonia emitted from sources like agriculture?" said study co-author Daven Henze, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"Then the COVID lockdown suddenly provided us with a natural experiment," Henze said.

RELATED Western boom cities see spike in harmful ozone

Henze and his colleagues analyzed data from Los Angeles County, which saw a 24% drop in traffic during the March 2020 pandemic lockdown.

The investigators used satellite images to assess ammonia concentrations in the air above Los Angeles before and during the lockdown.

They concluded that vehicles account for 60% to 95% of ammonia emissions in the city.

State and national regulators had estimated that cars contribute less than 25% of ammonia air pollution.

"Our estimates for vehicle ammonia emissions are higher than federal and state inventories by a factor of two to five," said lead author Hansen Cao, a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder.

The findings were recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

RELATED Lower income ZIP codes at greater risk for health issues from heat, ozone

The researchers now want to take a similar look at how the pandemic affected ammonia air pollution in other cities.

"Vehicles can be the dominant sources of ammonia emissions over urban areas," Cao said in a university news release.

"If we're underestimating those emissions, then previous estimates of premature deaths owing to ammonia emissions might also be underestimated," Cao said.

It's estimated that ammonia emissions from vehicles cause about 15,000 premature deaths in the United States each year, but recent studies such as this one suggest the actual number may be higher.

More information

The World Health Organization has more on air pollution and health.

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