It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wind energy holds enormous potential to generate carbon-free electricity around the world, and the energy industry finally seems to be catching on. Last year the United States broke records for wind energy installation, and it looks like the wind revolution is just getting started.
While current global wind power capacity is capable of generating just a fraction of the world's energy demand, wind power’s technical potential actually exceeds worldwide energy production. The technical potential of a renewable energy technology is the amount of energy generation that is theoretically achievable once system performance, topographic, environmental, and land-use constraints are accounted for. And even when taking all of these constraints into consideration, wind energy alone would be capable of filling the entire world’s energy needs. In order to actually make that happen, though, massive scaling of both on- and offshore wind farms would be necessary -- and that kind of scaling is not without its drawbacks.
Other than initial cost, which could be a barrier to entry but which is decreasing all the time thanks to technological improvements and economies of scale, large-scale wind projects pose potential negative environmental and social externalities. Wildlife, such as bird and bat collisions on-shore and marine life offshore, must be considered. In terms of social impact, wind farms alter landscapes, block views, and can cause potential radar interference. These negative impacts, however, pale in comparison to the benefits of wind power, not to mention the negative externalities of global warming.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the energy used and greenhouse gases emitted in the life cycle of a wind turbine, from manufacturing to decommissioning, are puny in comparison to the energy generated and emissions mitigated over the apparatus’ lifetime. “the GHG emissions intensity of wind energy is estimated to range from 8 to 20 g CO2 /kWh in most instances, whereas energy payback times are between 3.4 to 8.5 months,” a 2018 report stated.
In this light, the wind power revolution can’t come fast enough. Just this month, the United Nations and the IPCC sounded a “code red for humanity” which stated in no uncertain terms that we have reached the point of no return for climate change, and the global clean energy transition must be swift and absolute in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. Wind energy will have to be a considerable part of that front.
The technology is already being scaled at unprecedented rates. 2020 saw more wind energy capacity installed in the United States than any other year before, and in 2019 wind power surpassed hydropower to be the country’s top source of renewable energy in the same year that renewable energies overtook coal in the U.S. energy mix. This success story owes a lot to wind-friendly policy in the United States, where the federal government has been offering a tax credit to wind producers. That policy, however -- and subsidies in general -- has been controversial and the federal incentive was slated to end last year, resulting in a rush to expand production while the tax credit was still in place.
“On the one hand, these government motivators have been good enough that the U.S. now has the third-highest per capita wind power generation in the world,” according to Marketplace. That’s a distant third, however, lagging far behind the global leaders, Denmark and Germany. Even after the massive expansion in 2020, the United States’ total wind energy capacity is just half that of China’s. “On the other hand, we are a distant third — behind Denmark and Germany. The U.S. total capacity is half of China’s, and our volatile and cyclical policy of subsidies followed by subsidy cancellations is part of the reason why. While wind power is unequivocally a reliable, cost-effective, and efficient means of carbon-free energy production, its continued expansion is no guarantee without broad support.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
AHS announces funding to ‘stabilize’ EMS staffing; union says it doesn’t solve issues
An ambulance travels along 14 Street N.W. in Calgary in response to an emergency call.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) is making more temporary EMS positions permanent thanks to $8.3 million in new funding from the province.
But the union representing paramedical professionals says it doesn’t add any new positions, putting the system at risk.
According to a release from AHS, 70 casual positions will be made into temporary full-time, and 30 full-time positions hired in Alberta’s two largest cities in 2019 will continue to be funded.
“This funding will help stabilize EMS staffing levels and ensure that we are able to respond to Albertans and also take care of our staff,” Dr. Verna Yiu, AHS president and CEO, said in a statement.
According to AHS, EMS call volumes have jumped by 50 per cent since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. The provincial health authority said effects from the pandemic, smoke-related calls, heat-related events, and a return to pre-pandemic activities have increased calls to an average of 1,521 per day from about 1,095.
The announcement of the stabilization of 100 EMS positions was panned by the president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta.
“While this funding is important to bolster and maintain 100 already existing positions, it doesn’t actually add a single paramedic to our overburdened health system,” Mike Parker said in a statement. “It doesn’t solve the issue of not having enough members hired.
“Every shift is being run short. Without hiring more new paramedics, the current government continues to put the system, our members, and every Albertan needing urgent medical care, at risk.”
In a statement, Health Minister Tyler Shandro said Monday’s announcement was a stop-gap measure.
“We need to do our best to support our paramedics and all healthcare workers now as we continue to see high demand on our healthcare services, and this decision by AHS should provide some tangible short term relief as we work on longer term solutions,” Shandro said.
Parker said more paramedics need to be hired by AHS immediately.
“This announcement does nothing to overcome the hiring crisis affecting emergency medical services, or AHS in general,” he said.
Too Much Meat During Ice Age Winters Gave Rise to Dogs, New Research Suggests
1/07/21 11:23AM A western gray wolf. Image: Jacob W. Frank (AP)
Two prevailing theories exist about the origin of domesticated dogs. One proposes that prehistoric humans used early dogs as hunting partners, and the other says that wolves were attracted to our garbage piles. New research suggests both theories are wrong and that the real reason has to do with our limited capacity to digest protein.
Dogs were domesticated from wild wolves during the last ice age between 14,000 and 29,000 years ago, and they were the first animals to be domesticated by humans. That humans and wolves should form a collaborative relationship is an odd result, given that both species are pack hunters who often target the same prey.
“The domestication of dogs has increased the success of both species to the point that dogs are now the most numerous carnivore on the planet,” wrote the authors of a new study published today in Scientific Reports. “How this mutually beneficial relationship emerged, and specifically how the potentially fierce competition between these two carnivores was ameliorated, needs to be explained.”
Indeed, given this context, it’s not immediately obvious why humans would want to keep wolves around. Moreover, the two prevailing theories about the origin of dogs—either as partners used for hunting or as self-domesticated animals attracted to our garbage—aren’t very convincing. Wolves, even when tamed, would’ve made for awful hunting partners, as they lacked the collaborative and advanced communication skills found in domesticated dogs. And sure, wild wolves were probably attracted to human scraps, but this would’ve required some unlikely interactions between humans and wolves.
“In our opinion, the self-domestication in this way is not fully explained,” Maria Lahtinen, a chemist and archaeologist at the Finnish Food Authority in Finland and the first author of the new study, said in an email. “Hunter-gatherers do not necessarily leave waste in the same place over and over again. And why would they tolerate a dangerous carnivore group in their close surroundings? Humans tend to kill their competitors and other carnivores.”
Lahtinen and her colleagues say there’s a more likely reason for the domestication of dogs, and it has to do with an abundance of protein during the harsh ice age winters, which subsequently reduced competition between the two species. This in turn allowed humans and incipient dogs to live in symbiotic harmony, paving the way for the ongoing evolution of both species.
The researchers have “introduced a really interesting hypothesis that seeks to address the long-debated mechanism by which early dog domestication occurred,” James Cole, an archaeologist at the University of Brighton who’s not involved with the new study, wrote in an email. “The idea is that human populations and wolves could have lived alongside each other during the harsh climatic conditions [of the last ice age] because human populations would have produced enough protein, through hunting activities, to keep both populations fed during the harsh winter months.”
Seems hard to believe, but humans likely had more food during ice age winters than they could handle. This is due to our inability to subsist exclusively on lean protein for months at a time—something wolves have no issues with. For humans, excessive consumption of protein can lead to hyperinsulinemia (insulin resistance), hyperammonia (excess ammonia in blood), diarrhea, and in some extreme cases even death, according to the authors. To overcome this biological limitation, Pleistocene hunters adapted their diets during the winter months, targeting animal parts rich in fat, grease, and oils, such as lower limbs, organs, and the brain. And in fact, “there is evidence for such processing behavior during the Upper Palaeolithic,” according to the paper.
Consequently, wolves and humans were able to “share their game without competition in cold environments,” said Lahtinen. This in turn made it possible for humans to keep wolves as pets.
“Therefore, in the short term over the critical winter months, wolves and humans would not have been in competition over resources and may have mutually benefited from each other’s companionship,” wrote the authors. “This would have been critical in keeping the first proto-dogs for years and generations.”
A 7-week-old Mexican gray wolf puppy. Image: Jeff Roberson (AP)
It’s very possible, said Lahtinen, that the earliest dogs were wolf pups. Hunter-gatherers, she said, “do take pets in most cultures, and humans tend to find young animals cute,” so it would “not be a surprise if this would have happened.”
So dogs exist because wolf pups were cute and we had plenty of leftovers? Seems a legit theory, if you ask me.
Only later, due to traits introduced by artificial selection, were dogs used for hunting, guarding, pulling sleds, and so on, according to the researchers. This theory may also explain the complexity of early dog domestication, which appears to have occurred in Eurasia at multiple times, with dogs continuing to interbreed with wild wolves. The new theory may also explain why the domestication of dogs appears to have occurred in arctic and subarctic regions.
As for the summer months, that wasn’t as crucial for humans, given the relative abundance of food alternatives. During the critical winter months, however, “hunter-gatherers tend to give up their pets if there is a need to give up resources from humans,” said Lahtinen.
Importantly, Lahtinen and her colleagues did not pull this theory from thin air. To reach this conclusion, the team performed energy content calculations to estimate the amount of energy that would be left over from prey animals also hunted by wolves, such as deer, moose, and horses. The authors reasoned that, if humans and wolves were having to compete for these resources, there would be little to no cooperation between the two species. But their calculations showed that, aside from animals like weasels, all animals preyed upon by humans would have provided more lean protein than required. Ancient Humans Didn't Turn to Cannibalism For the Calories
Humans have been eating other humans since the beginning of time, but the motivations behind this…Read more
“Therefore, the early domesticated wolves could have survived living alongside human populations by consuming the excess protein from hunting that humans could not,” explained Cole. “By having enough food for both populations, the competitive niche between the species is eliminated, thereby paving the way to domestication and the benefits of such a relationship to the two species.”
Cole described it as a “really intriguing hypothesis” because it provides a “mechanism that can explain the domestication of the wolf across a wide geographic and temporal range,” and it does so by “explaining how two carnivorous species could overcome the competition...under harsh climatic conditions.” Looking ahead, Cole said a similar approach would be useful for studying the interactions of humans and other species on this planet over time.
As a relevant aside, Cole is the author of a fascinating Scientific Reports paper published in 2017 arguing that ancient humans didn’t turn to cannibalism for nutrition. Using an approach similar to the one taken in the Lahtinen paper, Cole showed that human flesh simply doesn’t pack the same amount of calories as wild animals, and cannibalism wouldn’t have been worth all the trouble.
Mars' weird geology is making Perseverance's job more complicated
Perseverance took a rock sample that crumbled to dust, confounding scientists. Geologists now know what happened
By NICOLE KARLIS PUBLISHED AUGUST 26, 2021 7:00PM (EDT)
Perseverance's Selfie with Ingenuity (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Earlier this month, the Perseverance rover set out to collect some rock samples on Mars. It was supposed to be a key moment in the rover's historic sample-return mission, one in which Perseverance was to collect, store and return Martian rock and soil samples to Earth. (The rocket that will pick up the samples hasn't launched yet, and may not for almost a decade; currently, Perseverance is doing the grunt work of collection.) To date, Perseverance had been highly successful: its risky landing worked perfectly, and Ingenuity, the 4-pound helicopter that hitched a ride to Mars on Perseverance's back, overcame massive barriers to become the first powered-controlled flight on another planet. Compared to those feats, Perseverance's next task — drilling out a finger-sized hole in a rock — seemed simple. But after the drilling, the collection tube came back empty. Mission control was in disbelief.
As Salon previously reported, scientists rushed to figure out why the sample went missing. Did the drill somehow miss? It didn't seem so — images from the Red Planet revealed there was a hole in the rock. Advertisement:
So what happened once the drill came out of the rock?
After some sleuthing, NASA's Perseverance team determined that the rock most likely crumbled into "small fragments" — essentially, a powder. While the pulverization of the rock sample was disappointing to the team, it was also a lesson in Martian geology.
"It's certainly not the first time Mars has surprised us," said Kiersten Siebach, an assistant professor of planetary biology at Rice University and participating scientist on the science and operations team for Perseverance. "A big part of exploration is figuring out what tools to use and how to approach the rocks on Mars."
Siebach explained that something similar sometimes happens to geologists here on Earth. Certain rocks look solid, their appearance having been retained by their chemistry. But weathering events and erosion can weaken that chemistry.
"If you've hiked in California, sometimes it looks like you're hiking next to a rock. But if you kick it, it falls apart into dust," Siebach said. "It's probably something like that, where there's been more weather than anticipated."
Mars is a curious place, geologically speaking. The surface of the planet is rocky, dusty; and thanks to previous missions like the Sojourner rover, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity, we know that the soil is toxic. High concentrations of perchlorate compounds, meaning containing chlorine, have been detected and confirmed on multiple occasions. In some spots, there are volcanic basaltic rocks like the kind that we have on Earth in Iceland, Hawaii or Idaho.
Raymond Arvidson, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a Curiosity science team member, explained that one big difference between Earth and Mars though is that Earth has active plate tectonics — meaning that Earth's surface is comprised of vast, continent-spanning "plates" that move and shift and abut against each other, creating valleys and mountains. Such geology has given Earth places like Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mars, however, never had plate tectonics.
"So those very primitive rocks that are called the basaltic, like we have in the oceans — that's the dominant mineralogy and composition of rocks on Mars," Arvidson said. "It's basically a basalted planet — not as complicated as here, not as many rocks." Jezero Crater, a 28 mile-wide impact crater and former lake located north of the Martian equator, is where Perseverance touched town. Arvidson noted that the crater has diverse geology: "It has clays, it has faults and carbonate, many of them produced [around] three and a half billion years ago."
For that reason, scientists believe Jezero may be an ideal spot to search for ancient signs of microbial life on Mars. Perseverance is now headed to the next sampling location in South Seitah, which is within Jezero Crater.
Notably, the tubes and instruments on Perseverance were built to collect more solid samples, and that's because the aim of this mission is to see if these rocks contain evidence of microbes, or any ancient fossilized life.
"Do these rocks contain evidence for life?" Arvidson asked. "To answer those questions, you need to get the rock back to Earth."
Arvidson said that these soft sedimentary rocks that turn into powder when you drill are "everywhere" on Mars. Previous rovers encountered them too.
"For example with Curiosity, which landed in Gale Crater in 2012 — and we'd been driving up the side of the mountain called Mount Sharp — we encountered soft sedimentary rocks that were easy to drill, and we'd get powders back," Arvidson said. "Then we found really hard rock that we couldn't drill into, so we gave up. Jezero is going to have hard rocks and soft rocks."
As Siebach previously mentioned, what happened with Perseverance is a learning experience. Scientists, Siebach said, rely on a basaltic signal from orbit to determine the mineralogy and composition of Jezero Crater's floor.
"It's a little bit ambiguous. . . we don't see a strong signal of hydration or something in these rocks in particular, instead, they look like most rocks on Mars which means they have a lot of these volcanic minerals and some dust on top," Siebach noted. However, orbital surveillance is not foolproof. "We don't know whether this crater floor was actually volcanic," Siebach added.
Hence, scientists won't always be certain about the consistency of the sample areas they choose to drill. But once on Mars, it's a mix of science, educated guessing, and luck to really find what they're looking for to bring back home.
"Some of these rocks could have a composition that makes it look igneous, when they could be sedimentary or igneous rocks," Siebach said. "That's the kinds of compositions we're seeing that makes it challenging and fun."
Siebach emphasized she has confidence that Perseverance will have success in sampling some of the other rocks.
"Those surprises and those unexpected events are what drives our curiosity and asking more questions, and learning more about this history of Mars that is written in these rocks," Siebach said. "If the sampling doesn't go as we expect, those surprises are inherent to discovery, and will drive us to learn more."
But the truly exciting science will happen when the samples get back to Earth eventually.
"We will be able to learn so much about Mars from those samples," Siebach said.
SOUTH AFRICA
Activists plan court action against government’s new coal-fired power plants after report finds there’s ‘no such thing as clean coal’
by Tembile Sgqolana, Daily Maverick August 26, 2021
This article was edited post-publication to remove specific information regarding the strategy of the litigation.
GroundWork, Vukani Environmental Movement and the African Climate Alliance, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) are preparing a court challenge to the government’s plans to procure electricity from new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.
These plans are set out in the government’s 2019 Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity (IRP) and the Minister of Energy’s determination for 1,500MW of new coal-fired generation capacity.
The court challenge will focus on the protection of people’s rights in the South African Constitution, showing that the use of fossil fuels for power generation is harmful and violates many human rights, including the right to a healthy environment.
The applicants will seek relief from the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa, the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, the National Air Quality Officer and the President of the Republic of South Africa (the Respondents), cited in their official capacities.
An expert report on air pollution by Dr Ranajit Sahu, will form part of the litigation. Sahu, who confirmed that South Africa’s proposed 1,500MW of new coal-powered electricity generation will cause significant air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, even if the cleanest technology currently available is used.
In 2019, the South African government proposed adding 1,500MW of new coal generation in the country, as part of the Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity (IRP). The IRP claims that such coal generation will be cleaner because high-efficiency, low-emission (HELE) generation technology will be used, although it does not state which kind.
In the report commissioned by the CER for the activist groups, Sahu — an engineer with more than three decades of experience in power plant design — assessed the potential air emissions of the most likely types of HELE technology that could be used.
He found that even in the best-case scenario, in which the cleanest available technology is used, large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions are unavoidable.
Sahu considered two likely technologies that could be used: pulverised coal units and circulating fluidised bed technology. He found that pulverised coal units — even when operating at ultra-supercritical efficiency — will not be able to capture their emitted carbon dioxide due to extremely high costs.
In the case of circulating fluidised bed technology, which is considered preferable by the IRP due to its ability to handle low-quality coal, Sahu found that this technology emits from two to 10 times more nitrous oxide than pulverised coal technologies. Nitrous oxide is a potent, long-lasting greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 300 times that of carbon dioxide.
“I want to stress that contrary to implications in the 2019 IRP and the ministerial determination, there is simply no such thing as ‘clean coal’, regardless of whether HELE technologies are used to minimise air emissions from coal (or gas derived from coal),” Sahu said.
The report is the latest piece of research that supports the view that new coal generation in South Africa will be unnecessary, costly and highly detrimental to the environment. It follows previous investigations into the coal cycle (mining, production, supply and disposal) which prove that “clean coal” is an impossibility.
“New coal generation flies in the face of the South African government’s obligation under international and South African law, including the South African Constitution, to take all reasonable measures to protect its people from the impacts of climate change,” said Sahu.
He found that it is unreasonable to expect 750MW (or any amount) of new coal generation could come online by 2023. It takes much longer than four years to achieve generation starting from scratch, especially with the many unknowns relating to HELE technology selection, design, procurement and implementation.
The integrated gasification combined cycle and underground gasification combined cycle power plants, and carbon capture (CC) technologies are unproven and cost-prohibitive at scale, and extremely unlikely to be implemented for the 1,500MW of new coal proposed under the 2019 IRP.
“The worldwide progress of carbon capture technology has been sluggish, at best. Per the Global CCS Institute, there are currently 23 CC projects in construction or operation around the world. But a review of the website listing the projects shows that not one is located at a coal-fired power plant of commercial scale.
“While the CO2 emissions intensity for coal plants is reduced somewhat as a result of increasing the efficiency of the thermal cycle, major reductions in CO2 intensity can only be achieved by way of carbon capture.
“Based on the track record of carbon capture to date globally, it is my opinion that there is simply no pathway to economically utilise carbon capture in South Africa now or in the foreseeable future for reducing CO2 emissions from new coal generation,” said Sahu. DM/OBP
This article first appeared on Daily Maverick and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Monday, August 30, 2021
Unproven technologies, unknown risks: Top SA climate scientists sceptical humanity can ‘geoengineer’ its way out of climate crisis
by Ethan van Diemen, Daily Maverick August 18, 2021
On a globe already pockmarked by extreme weather events, a mere .4°C away from the thresholds of “dangerous climate change”, nations as well as non-state actors are increasingly looking to technology to pivot humanity from self-imposed disaster on to the path toward salvation.
Scientists say, however, that while possible, there are immense political, economic, ecological, ethical and other societal considerations to be aware of when tinkering with global climate.
Much like South Africa, where multi-year droughts and heat waves are expected to be the most significant climate-change-related challenge, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also threatened by extreme temperatures and reduced rainfall. Its National Center of Meteorology has been testing “rain-enhancement” technology to “seed” clouds and tackle the impacts of climate change head-on.
High above the dunes and cityscapes of the UAE, in the skies above Abu Dhabi and Al Ain, drones have been flying among the clouds, releasing electrical charges aiming to merge water droplets, form precipitation and ultimately trigger rainfall according to Gulf Today.
In the absence of complete abeyance of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, technological alternatives are being proposed to either halt or reverse the heating of the planet. When these technologies and techniques reach a global scale, they comprise what is referred to as “climate geoengineering” (GE). The University of Oxford defines geoengineering as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change”.
Professor Bruce Hewitson, South Africa national research chair on climate change and director of the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), told Daily Maverick he has reservations about geoengineering.
“I’m deeply sceptical of geoengineering, not because it’s not feasible, but because it has very dangerous potential consequences. I think it is very valid to do research on it so we understand geoengineering options better. So doing research to look at its limits and viabilities is very valid, but I am deeply sceptical that it will ever be a viable option.”
He used SRM as an example saying: “Solar radiation management is managing the amount of sun that is reaching the surface and there are different ways of doing that, but if you do that in one location, if you do something that reduces the sunlight let’s say over the Western Cape, then that has an impact on how the atmosphere responds and that is going to have a change on the climate outside of the Western Cape.”
His scepticism, Hewitson explained, was because of the unknown nature of the potential impacts of geoengineering and the interconnectedness of the climate system.
“We’re in a coupled climate system, so whatever you do in one location has a consequence elsewhere. These other consequences are very difficult to map out at this point and we don’t fully understand them, and the problem is that in every region of the world the society is calibrated to the climate it receives. Now if you change the climate, you’re going to disturb the structure of society, you’re going to impact that society whichever way you change the climate,” he said.
“So geoengineering has some very high potential to cause negative impacts, negative consequences while its primary objective of trying to reduce the energy in the atmosphere, trying to reflect sunlight or whatever way you try to approach it — the primary objective is technically feasible. There are a lot of technical scalable options available to us, but the potential consequences of taking those actions are very, very dangerous.”
Broadly defined, proposed geoengineering techniques fall into one of two categories:
The first is solar radiation management (SRM). The Royal Society, in a report, explains that SRM “refers to proposals to cool the Earth by reflecting a small percentage of inbound sunlight into space, in order to reduce global warming”.
A prominent SRM technique proposal is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). SAI is a proposed geoengineering technique that seeks to “engineer global climate through the deliberate injection of aerosols into the stratosphere”. According to a report, the intent is to cool the planet by reflecting sunlight into space.
The oceans have also piqued the interest of climatologists and researchers in the geoengineering space, with marine cloud brightening (MCB) proposed as another SRM technique. MCB is a proposal to whiten the clouds above the oceans to reflect more sunlight into space.
A Royal Meteorological Society paper explains that MCB might involve “using automated ships to spray droplets of seawater into the marine boundary layer where they evaporate to form an elevated concentration of sea-salt aerosols which nucleate higher concentrations of cloud droplets in marine clouds, thereby increasing their reflectivity”.
Dr Pedro Monteiro, head of Ocean Systems and Climate at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, told Daily Maverick that, in a way, SRM is “the most problematic of all the interventions” because of the principle it works on.
Consistent with the views expressed by Hewitson, he explained that solar radiation management cannot be used as a local intervention. It’s hard to reduce the sunlight in just one spot.
“The main problem with it is that the impacts that SRM have regionally are very uncertain and it is quite possible that in some areas there could be positive outcomes, ie, cooling. It could also just as much be possible that there could be very negative effects in areas, and the models are at this stage not able to provide us with the confidence level that would make the intervention viable. So the point is really the uncertainty around the global versus regional impacts of SRM.”
The other main problems are that the technologies don’t yet exist at scale and that if they were stopped, the benefits of their use would swiftly disappear, Monteiro said.
“So, on three levels: the unproven technologies, the unknown risks and the lack of a governance system that would ensure multidecadal continuity [make] SRM something that is pretty much off the table as an intervention.”
The second category of geoengineering techniques is the much-vaunted carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines CDR simply as “the process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere”.
The IPCC report explains that there are two main types of carbon dioxide removal, namely: “enhancing existing natural processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere (eg, by increasing its uptake by trees, soil, or other ‘carbon sinks’) or using chemical processes to, for example, capture CO2 directly from the ambient air and store it elsewhere (eg, underground)”.
Monteiro said that “CDR is in essence… reversing the emissions of CO2 over the past century”.
Monteiro, an author in the recent “code red for humanity” IPCC report, said that, “We now understand enough about the carbon climate system to be able to say confidently that the only way we will stay under the 1.5-degree temperature objective is through the implementation of CDR at the scale that has an impact on the global CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
“So that makes it sort of a prime approach. In other words, to get us into a safe climate space, CDR is sort of the broad box that we have that is probably workable. However, the problem is that there are no proven CDR techniques that scale up to the level that is required at this stage,” he said.
“I want to really emphasise that there are two stages for getting to 1.5°C and keeping us there. The first stage is what’s called net zero and to get to net zero we need to stop CO2 emissions. In order to stay at 1.5°C we need to go into negative emissions in the second half of the century and this is where CDR comes in.
“CDR are central to implementing negative emissions in the second half of the century and beyond. So from a global and a South African perspective, the big challenge is that there are no proven techniques at this stage that scale up to the required global impact.”
In an article in Nature, the authors argue that “current mitigation efforts and existing future commitments are inadequate to accomplish the Paris Agreement temperature goals”. The “Long Term Global Goal” of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change is to restrict global warming to values well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels because above these levels aspects of climate change become increasingly dangerous in terms of impact.
The authors in Nature continue that “although research indicates that several techniques may eventually have the physical potential to contribute to limiting climate change, all are in early stages of development, involve substantial uncertainties and risks, and raise ethical and governance dilemmas. Based on present knowledge, climate geoengineering techniques cannot be relied on to significantly contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement temperature goals.”
Hewitson told Daily Maverick that geoengineering is only being discussed “because society is not willing to engage with our fossil fuel dependency”.
“If we could change our fossil fuel dependency and our emissions, these geoengineering options would be far less needed to be thought about and discussed. It’s like trying to treat someone for cancer who has been smoking but they refuse to stop smoking. It’s illogical. You can do it. You can treat someone who has cancer from smoking but really they should stop smoking. Geoengineering is trying to treat somebody who is perpetuating the cause of the problem.”
The real geoengineering solution, he said, is for society to change how we use and generate our energy systems and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. OBP/DM
This article first appeared on Daily Maverick and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
ANOTHER REPUBLICAN PROVINCE
Several Sask. ICUs full, unable to admit patients
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Saskatoon, Prince Albert and North Battleford ICUs are on 'bypass'
Staff on the ICU Unit at the Peter Lougheed Centre in Calgary on April 17, 2020. (Leah Hennel/AHS)
As of Monday morning, intensive care units in some Saskatchewan cities are full.
Saskatoon, Prince Albert, and North Battleford ICUs are on "bypass," which could be because of increasing COVID-19 cases, according to Saskatchewan Health Authority Critical Care Lead Dr. Jeffrey Betcher.
In an interview with CBC Saskatoon Morning host Leisha Grebinski, Betcher said that means ICUs in those locations are full, and that any patient who needs an ICU in the north or Saskatoon will be referred south to Regina.
"There are things like staffing issues as well, and we have to be able to provide the care that patients need safely," Betcher said.
"We can't just take the patient because they need it. We have to make sure that we can meet the needs that they have as well."
"I'm hoping it's not going to happen, but as schools open and a lot of the restrictions were lifted earlier this summer, the anticipation and prediction is that this could well happen again. And we just need to prepare mentally for it as well," he said.
There are currently 25 people in ICUs across the province. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Beyond the issues this could cause for patients needing ICU admission, Betcher is also concerned about the impact on the medical community.
"We don't just work and sleep, we need downtime to recharge. And a lot of that is not able to happen like it normally does," he said.
As of Aug. 29, there were 33 people in hospital with COVID-19 in the Saskatoon region, with 15 in intensive care. In Regina, there are 12 people in hospital, five in ICU.
Doctors and nurses are painting a grim picture of crowded ICUs, and younger and younger people suffering from COVID-19.
In an interview with Morning Edition host Stephanie Langenegger, infectious disease physician Dr. Alexander Wong said that the bypass is causing a strain on the system and that urgent action is needed.
"We're a small province. The impact of one or two big centres is going to be felt very very quickly across the entire province," said Wong.
Wong said that what Saskatoon ICUs are experiencing right now is similar to what Regina experienced in March and April. It was so bad, according to Wong, that he referred to it as a war zone situation.
"The challenge now with this fourth wave is we just don't have staff. I think we're pulling all kinds of people out of retirement from other areas and so forth to staff these critical care beds," he said.
"And unfortunately, what that means is we may get into a situation when things are too overrun, where we're going to have to make triage decisions and where people who otherwise may have had the ability to get ICU-level care and critical care support — we might have to let those people go.
"We absolutely do not want to get there, which is why we need to take action now."
Dr. Alexander Wong, infectious diseases specialist, says vaccines aren't enough to get the province through a fourth wave. (CBC News)
Wong also said that vaccines won't be enough to get through the fourth wave, and that other measures such as mask mandates should once again be implemented.
SHA Critical Care Lead Dr. Jeffrey Betcher said that no matter the situation, however, if someone is in need of medical attention, they should seek care.
"If you're in a car accident, if you have a heart attack, or if you have any of those sorts of emergencies, you will not be neglected," Betcher said.
"You will be looked after and you will be looked after as well as you were before."
A strike at Nabisco is testing the power of unions in the pandemic REUTERS/DADO RUVIC/ILLUSTRATION
Nabisco workers are striking.
By Michelle Cheng Reporter Published August 30, 2021 Since Aug. 10, about 1,000 union workers across five states who make Ritz crackers and Oreo cookies for Nabisco have been on strike over contract disagreements.
As America’s appetite for snack foods has grown during the pandemic, Mondelez International, Nabisco’s parent company, wants some employees to work longer shifts to make more high-demand items. Union workers oppose the new schedules, saying their hours are already long and the change would take away time spent with their families.
The heightened employee activism in part stems from the pandemic, where workers have had to work in more unsafe conditions or with less favorable schedules. Now, with a tight labor market, where employers have been offering bonuses and higher wages to attract workers, labor unions may have the power to ask for more.
“Workers have more power to demand more rights, and unions have more power to demand more from employers like Nabisco,” says Patricia Campos-Medina, the executive director at The Worker Institute at Cornell University. “So, in a tight labor market, when society is more acutely aware of the value of essential workers, unions and workers have the power to demand more.”
At its Nabisco factories, Mondelez wants to implement “alternative work schedules” on select high-demand production lines where employees work 12 hours shifts for three to four days. Workers assigned to these lines would have a three-day weekend every other week. Since the start of the pandemic, Nabisco workers say they have been putting in at least 13 hour shifts—and some have had enough.
“They just care about putting out cookies and production, they don’t care about anything else,” says Jesus Jimenez, a packing worker in Portland, Oregon, who has been working for the company for 10 years, and is president of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union local 364. In the second quarter, Mondelez reported a revenue increase of 12% from the same period last year.
“We remain committed to bargaining in good faith to reach new contracts for our employees,” said Laurie Guzzinati, a Mondelez spokesperson.
Some members who are picketing already have part-time or full-time jobs that pay well, says Jimenez. He says he receives emails and texts for jobs that pay at least $20 an hour, with benefits and bonuses, and are close to his house. “There’s way too many jobs right now…we might lose good members that are going to be hard to replace,” says Jimenez. “The experience that you have that counts a lot—the experience we have working those machines, working the department, mixing and baking, even packing.” How did Covid-19 change union bargaining?
The current environment also means workers who don’t like their jobs can find better ones—without a union. “While the pandemic has made unions much more directly relevant to workers…I don’t know how long that effect is going to last,” says Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter.
For unions, the stakes could not be higher, with the pandemic having a direct effect on jobs. Union enrollment has been on a decline for decades: Just 10.8% of US employees are in unions and only 6.3% of private sector workers are unionized, according to US Bureau of Labor Statistics. “It’s more difficult to get new hires to join the union,” says Pollak. There’s been scrutiny around the costs of unionization dues and political involvement, for instance, she says.
Responding to concerns of workers during the pandemic, unions have taken on new responsibilities by advocating for more PPE or pushing for more Covid-19 safety standards. As companies try to find ways to cut costs by extending work shifts, unions have also taken on the role of advocating for mental health resources.
As seen with recent failures like the Amazon union vote and attempts to unionize gig workers in New York, unions have struggled to expand, says Pollak. “You just see huge ambivalence among workers about unions and their role,” she says. That said, there has been recent momentum for white-collar unions among tech companies like Kickstarter and Google, museums, and at media companies.
