Earth Hour - a powerful symbol, but the right one?

Shortly it will be Earth Hour again and around the world people concerned about global warming will turn off their lights in a powerful symbol of humanity's desire to tackle global warming.

At least that's the theory.

Earth Hour has undoubtedly been hugely successful as a symbol of the need to act on global warming. In only a few years it caught on globally; this year hundreds of millions, if not billions of people will take part. 

But is it a victim of its own success? Is it a powerful symbol of tacking the climate crisis; or is it an unwitting symbol of the exact opposite?

Are we just conning ourselves?

In 2007 George Marshall, in his article “Can this really save the planet?” (The Guardian) took a look at the usual sorts of demand reduction measures we are urged to do - like use less plastic bags -  and found them wanting:

The average Brit uses 134 plastic bags a year, resulting in just two kilos of the typical 11 tonnes of carbon dioxide he or she will emit in a year. That is one five thousandth of their overall climate impact ... The electricity to keep the average television on standby mode for a whole year leads to 25 kilograms of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. It's more than plastic bags, but still very marginal: 0.2 per cent of average per capita emissions in the UK.

... Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punchline: "It's easy to be healthy - smoke one less cigarette a month."
We know without a moment's reflection that this campaign would fail.

So why do we persist with something that we know is failing?

Marshall explained:

Their logic is as follows. Simple actions capture people's attention and provide an entry-level activity. Present people with the daunting big-ticket solutions and they turn away. Give them something easy and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready to make the step up to the next level.

That is the theory, but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn't work. For one thing, making the solutions easy is no guarantee that anyone will carry them out ... And there is a greater danger that people might adopt the simple measures as a way to avoid making more challenging lifestyle changes ... In other words, people can adopt the simplest solutions as a part of a deliberate denial strategy that enables them to feel virtuous without changing their real behaviour... 

Judging by the latest Mori poll data, people have already acquired a severely distorted sense of priorities. Forty per cent of people now believe that recycling domestic waste, which is a relatively small contributor to emissions, is the most important thing they can do to prevent climate change. Only 10% mention the far more important goals of using public transport or reducing foreign holidays. (my emphasis)

Let me give you my own experience of Earth Hour: three years ago in the office tower I worked in, we were told that at Earth Hour, if we couldn't, or didn't want to turn the lights off, we should close the blinds to make it look as if we did. That way we'd be sending a powerful symbol of our desire to....

I think you know the rest. Pointless symbolism par excellence.

Earth Hour too successful for our own good?

My concern is that Earth Hour is now so successful, people are deluding themselves into thinking that turning their lights off for an hour is doing their bit to solve global warming. Like smoking one cigarette less a month, we're turning the lights off for one hour a year.

Of course, this is totally unfair on what Earth Hour is meant to represent, as it's founder Andy Ridley explains:

People are mistaken if they believe that Earth Hour is basically a lights-out campaign. In fact, 40 per cent of the countries that take part in Earth Hour have blackouts, so turning off the lights is meaningless to them.

Earth Hour has always been about a sense of unity and a sense of community, something that western society in particular has lost. So a child in Beijing can be doing Earth Hour, at the same time as a child in Rio and another in London. There is a sense of sharing this planet together.

Unfair my concern might be; but life certainly isn't fair.

Certainly the facts on CO2e emissions are telling a dismal story. Since the IPCC's latest report, which came six years ago, emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase, except for a slight decrease during the financial crisis of 2008. Between 2000-2010 they grew faster than ever and correspond, according to recent media reports, to the worst scenarios in the IPCC's next report with projected temperature increases of four degrees by 2100.

None of this is Earth Hour's fault; it's ours. We are collectively to blame. It's no use blaming a remarkably successful advertising campaign for our own collective inability to act decisively. As Marshall summed up back in 2007:

Please don't misunderstand me. All of these actions are worth doing as part of a greener lifestyle. And I do all of them - I also turn off my tap when brushing my teeth, share my baths, and watch the telly in the dark - wearing three jumpers if need be. But it is a serious distortion to imply, as the top 10 lists of green living usually do, that there is any equivalence between these lifestyle preferences and the serious decisions that really reduce emissions - stopping flying, living close to work and living in a well-insulated house, for example.

Use Earth Hour to do more!

So come Earth Hour, by all means turn off those lights. Send a message of unity across the world that every politician will hear. But use that hour to make decisive changes about what else you're going to do to tackle global warming. If you've been thinking of getting solar power or hot water, make a decision to do it. Been thinking of cutting down on consumer goods? Stocktake what you actually already have and decide how to use it without buying more. Plan your next holiday - without flights or long drives. 

I'll even help you take the first steps: want to invest in commercial sized renewable energy? Bookmark this blog, or send Renewable Community Power an email at renewcommpower@gmail.com and we'll let you know when we have some renewable energy infrastructure ready to invest in. Breaking the back of coal in Queensland, and Australia, is something the world desperately needs.

And keep recycling :)

Germany's huge lessons about solar energy

Climate Denier Crock of the Week has done a brilliant analysis on how solar is working in Germany. In summary:

1. Feed in tariffs work
2. Prices will get lower. Much lower
3. More streamlined permitting works
4. Feed in tariffs democratise the grid
5. Democratising the grid gets more citizens involved
6. The grid will not fall apart with 5% solar penetration, or 10% or 20%...
7. Solar power brings down the price of wholesale electricity
8. Even when solar power capacity is equal to 50% of electricity demand, utility execs, fossil fuel execs, and their allies in government and the media won’t stop fighting tt

Some extracts:

Feed In Tariffs Work

Well, maybe there are other things that could drive even stronger growth, but nothing else has done so to date. Germany leads the world in solar in many respects. As of the end of 2011, it had more solar power per capita than any other country, it has more solar power relative to electricity production than any country other than Italy (which has also used FiTs), and it has more solar power per GDP than any country other than the Czech Republic (which also followed Germany’s lead and implemented FiTs).

Democratizing the Grid Gets More Citizens Involved

Guess what happens when you democratize the electric grid. People become more interested in energy, more informed, more motivated to save energy and get involved in the politics of energy. As someone once noted (sorry that I can’t recall the source), Germany may be the only country in the world where the taxi drivers can talk to you at length about energy policy. The same goes for energy use, the cost of energy, etc.

Solar Power Brings down the Price of Wholesale Electricity

Electricity suppliers get their electricity on the grid through a bidding process. The suppliers that can sell their electricity to the grid for cheapest win. Because the costs of solar and wind power plants are essentially just in the process of building them (the fuel costs are $0 and the maintenance costs are negligible), they can outbid pretty much every other source of power. As a result, 1) they win the bids when they produce electricity; 2) they drive down the price of wholesale electricity.

Because solar power is often produced when electricity demand is the greatest (and electricity is, thus, the least available and most expensive), it brings down the price of electricity even more than wind.

Lessons not learned and Depression could be in the offing: economist

TIM PALMER: A top economist is warning that the world has failed to learn the lessons of the global financial crisis and that the next downturn is likely to spark a Depression.

The global strategist at Morgan Stanley, Gerard Minack, says history is repeating itself as central banks keep interest rates close to zero and ramp up quantitative easing - effectively the printing of money.

But Mr Minack - who was one of the few economists to predict the last financial crisis - says the loose monetary policy is only increasing debt levels and the risks that investors are prepared to take.

Gerard Minack is speaking with our business editor Peter Ryan.

PETER RYAN: Gerard Minack, are we at the point in the economic recovery where there is a risk that history might be repeating itself?

GERARD MINACK: Yes, I think history is repeating itself in a funny way. We're doing it all again. But I think the next downturn, whenever it comes, and I'm not saying it's this year, it could be exceptionally difficult because central banks simply have less firepower to respond to a renewed crisis.

PETER RYAN: So if there is another serious downturn in the proportion of another Lehman Brothers collapse, central banks would be left with little ammunition?

GERARD MINACK: Yes, that's my view. The only thing I'd say is what history suggests is the cause of one crisis is rarely the cause of the following crisis so I'm not so sure it will be banks that pop the bubble. I'd look at other things - perhaps low-grade corporate lending or even some of the emerging market economies. They could be the catalyst for the next downturn but the underlying causes will be very similar.

PETER RYAN: So in terms of the massive or continual quantitative easing or money printing that we've been seeing over the last several years, that just would not be possible in a new type of crisis?

GERARD MINACK: They could try to do that and in fact they probably would. The problem is what they've been able to engineer over the last three or four years is interest rates going to rock bottom low levels and of course there is a limit to how low you can push rates and that's about zero.

So the forward looking problem is how do you engineer another reduction in borrowing costs if borrowers get into trouble? And that's the sting the in the tale of the success so to speak of what central bankers are now trying to achieve.

PETER RYAN: Is there a risk that when interest rates start moving higher in the United States for example that borrowers might find themselves under the pressure that they saw in the lead-up to the sub-prime crisis?

GERARD MINACK: I think that's a risk for sure but we've got a group of central bankers now who have told us they will "do what it takes," quote, unquote, to keep this expansion going.

So we're really looking at I think the end game here not being central banks tightening and killing the expansion but a bubble inflating in some risky assets and that bubble popping. Not this year as I said, perhaps a couple of years away.

PETER RYAN: So given that the world averted a full on meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, is there a point where the music would actually stop in the event of a different scale or a new crisis?

GERARD MINACK: Well that is the really big risk. We've really now seen 30 years where debt has ratcheted higher every cycle. As a result interest rates have ratcheted lower. We've never had the sort of cleansing, the outright debt reduction that you'd think you'd need to put expansion on a sustainable basis.

The scary point is those big debt reductions tend to go hand in hand not with vanilla recessions but with deep crises or depression. We saw that in the 1930s, we saw that in Asia in the crisis of 97/ 98.

Policy makers by having averted this time that big debt reduction may just be storing up even more problems down the track. We've really just kicked a massive can down the road.

Melting ice board game shows children effect of global warming

To demonstrate the consequences of global warming, this board game literally melts. ‘Meltdown‘ was created by GEOlino, a German science magazine for children, to show its young readers the effects in a playful way.

The aim of the game is to save a polar bear family by guiding them from melting ice to the safety of the mainland. The game teaches children about global warming in an engaging, easy-to-understand way.

The game board for Meltdown is made out of sponge and the game blocks are made of ice. Before playing, the accompanying mold needs to be filled with water and placed in the freezer.
When frozen, the blocks can be removed and arranged to form a small version of the Arctic. After the game begins, it is a race against time to guide the polar bears to safety across the slowly melting ice blocks.

Players also work together - rather than compete against each other - to save the bears. Now there's a thought...

New wind turbine blades from high-tech fabric

A little while back I watched a WWII documentary about the British Wellington bomber that was made from doped fabric literally sewn over a honeycomb frame. ('Doping' tightens the fabric and toughens it). Remember this thing had to be strong enough to carry a heavy payload into combat.

Now the same idea is being applied to....wind turbine blades ("War against global warming" anyone??)

The structure of the blade will remain pretty much the same except instead of fiberglass, a super-strong architectural fabric will be wrapped around the blade frame.

According to GE, this swap will allow for turbine blades that perform just as well, but can be made on site for a much lower cost — up to 40 percent less.

From an energy generation standpoint, the use of fabric, which is lighter than fiberglass, would allow for the production of much longer blades. Longer blades can capture even more of the wind’s energy.

I just love it!

Flashback: Scientists find US$1240 Trillion in climate impacts on current emissions path

Back in 2009 Thinkprogress wrote about a study that received too little attention at the time. Given the unrelenting lies about the science behind global warming and its impacts, it's timely to take another look at what it said:

Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [warn] that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts. 

The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)...

The study finds that the mean “Net present value of climate change impacts” in the A2 scenario [850 ppm atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in 2100] $1240 TRILLION with no adaptation, but “only” $890 trillion with adaptation. 

The mean [annual] impacts in 2060 are about $1.5 trillion….with a small probability of impacts as large as $20 trillion.
But here’s the key point the media and the authors failed to convey.  In the “aggressive abatement” case (450 ppm), the mean “Net present value [NPV] of climate change impacts” is only $410 trillion — or $275 trillion with adaptation.  So stabilizing at 450 ppm reduces NPV impacts by $615 to $830 trillion.  But the abatement NPV cost is only $110 trillion — a 6-to-1 savings or better.

Permafrost: The Tipping Time Bomb

Greedy Lying Bastards

Featuring the Kochtopus and I am not a Lord, Monckton.

Can't wait!

It's a f*#king angry summer alright!

I am not a Lord, Monckton

With the un-Lord back in Australia preaching his peculiar brand of 'socialists are leading us into climate change tyranny' to audiences of, well about 50 actually, let's take a quick look at I am not a Lord, Monckton's errr...unusual history.

Sure, we know I am not a Time Lord, Monckton's claims about global warming are easily debunked as raving nonsense, and the House of Lords' is none-too-pleased about his Lordship's claims concerning them, but that's just the tip of the iceberg! Scientist Barry Bickmore has compiled a long, looong list of I am not a Law Lord, Monckton's doings in Lord Monckton's Rap Sheet... such as:

• he won the Falkland's War for Britain! I kid you not!
• Monckton claimed that he has developed a cure for Graves’ Disease, AIDS, Multiple Schlerosis, the flu, and the common cold
• Monckton lied about his personal circumstances to sell more of his Eternity puzzle, and admitted it.  Later, he tried to talk his way out of the lie
• Monckton claimed to be a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC because he supposedly sent the IPCC a letter pointing out something that needed to be corrected in a draft report
• Monckton cites scientific literature that actually refutes his points, or refers to papers in such a misleading way that the authors of the papers say that Monckton has misinterpreted their results
• he really wants the Medieval Warm Period to have been warmer than today, and will latch onto any piece of “evidence” that seems to support this.  For example, he wrote that “There was little ice at the North Pole: a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found none.”  He apparently got this claim from Gavin Menzies, but it has been shown to be complete garbage
• he made up data on atmospheric CO2 concentration and global mean temperature that he claimed were IPCC predictions
• he threatens to instigate academic misconduct investigations against professors who have exposed his misrepresentations
• He accused NASA of crashing its own satellite so it wouldn’t have to deal with more data that contradicts the scientific consensus about climate change
• On the Michael Coren show, Monckton butchered the history of the DDT ban so badly that he claimed JFK did things after he was dead
• In 1987 he suggested rounding up all AIDS-sufferers and isolating them for life
• Monckton suggested it might be a good idea to require scientists to have some kind of religious certification before being allowed to practice in a field like climatology
• Lord Monckton has repeatedly accused scientists and others of lies, fraud, and conspiracy to impose a Communist world government.  He routinely calls people who disagree with him “bed-wetters,” “zombies,” and “Hitler Youth”

Goodness it just goes on and on and on....and it was written back in 2010 so there's even more now!

Oh, I am not a War Lord, Monckton; you make a sane world that little bit crazy...

Dealing with deniers

Graham Readfearn (see link to the right) has done a brilliant piece on how journalists like Fairfax's Ben Cubby deal with the utterly inane drivel being pushed out by deniers like the Galileo Movement's Malcolm Roberts. It's a lead everyone should follow.

The whole thing can be summed up in one beautifully succinct sentence: “how does one critically analyse a pile of horse shit?”

For those who haven't heard of the gloriously mis-named Galileo Movement you haven't missed much. Here's a small sample:

Roberts wraps this whole global conspiracy theory neatly into a heading for one section: “The objective is global control through global socialist governance by international bankers hiding control behind environmentalism”.

“The core problem is massive over-government through international bankers seeking to control,” writes Roberts. “We now know WHY they push climate fraud. They’re pushing global control.”

At one point, Roberts claims that “it’s likely that during John Howard’s prime ministership socialist bureaucrats pulled the strings” which leaves you wondering why these evil socialist puppet masters failed to get Howard to sign the United Nations’ Kyoto protocol?

Oh how Galileo would spin in his grave if he knew these clowns had taken his name to promote their "scientific" denier agenda.

Even Andrew Bolt thinks GM are too crazy for him.

Funnily enough though, Gina Reinhardt and Alan Jones are still supporters of GM. No surprises there.

More blizzards, less snow overall - Climate changes northern winter?

And the problem is...?

The Keystone XL Tar Sands Climate Threat

Obama is undoubtedly a great orator - certainly one of the greatest in the modern era.

But when he recently said that action had to be taken to deal with global warming, did he actually mean it? The first great test he has to pass is to stop this monstrosity. No ifs, no buts; it has to be stopped.

Minding Nemo: Dr. Jeff Masters on Snowstorms and Climate Change

Links Between Powerful Storms and Ocean Temperatures

Like RCP on Facebook and keep in touch!

http://www.facebook.com/renewcommpower

It's easy :)

It takes a special kind of stupid to be in the Queensland government

A NEWMAN Government MP says he would rather spend the rest of his life taking a banned performance-enhancing substance than drink fluoridated water.

Nudgee MP Jason Woodforth made the statement after The Courier-Mail raised the fact his bodybuilding supplement store sold a protein powder with an ingredient that is banned by sports anti-doping authorities and linked to heart, lung and liver damage.

Good news! Renewable energy is now cheaper in Australia than coal or gas!

A new analysis from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance has concluded that electricity from unsubsidised renewable energy is already cheaper than electricity from new-build coal and gas-fired power stations in Australia.

The modeling from the BNEF team in Sydney found that new wind farms could supply electricity at a cost of $80/MWh –compared with $143/MWh for new build coal, and $116/MWh for new build gas-fired generation.

A plethora of reasons why Australian governments can not be trusted to deal with the fossil fuel lobby

The past week has seen a virtual avalanche of stories about how the fossil fuel lobby has bought (in some cases quite literally) both Labor and LNP governments across Australia. Believing that either of the two major parties can deal with global warming alone is like believing fairies at the bottom of the garden will deal with global warming.

First up, some very dishonourable mentions for the federal Minister for (Destroying) the Environment, Tony Bourke. Not letting a little thing like outright lies concerning environmental offsets get in his way, the Minister for Destruction has approved the Maules Creek and Boggabri coal mines:

"These decisions represent a disgraceful failure of government policy on mining and gas development,” Nature Conservation Council of NSW Chief Executive Officer Pepe Clarke said.

"These mines will carve the heart out of Leard Forest, destroying almost 3,500 hectares of woodland in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion, a nationally-listed biodiversity hotspot.

"This decision sounds the death knell for this extraordinary area, and will leave a permanent scar on the landscape.

“These decisions seriously damage Minister Burke's credibility as an effective environmental regulator.

"These are simply the latest in a series of destructive mining and gas proposals waved through by the Minister in recent months.

"It is especially troubling that the Maules Creek mine appears to have been approved without detailed offset requirements, despite serious concerns about the adequacy and accuracy of the company's offsets proposal."

“It is unconscionable that a Federal Environment Minister has permitted these important public lands to be destroyed for short-term profit.

“Our state forests should be managed in perpetuity for the benefit of the people of New South Wales.”

This comes in the wake of the Minister ignoring the Australian Heritage Council's recommendation to protect Tasmania's Tarkine wilderness and protecting it from strip mining. Even the former senior Labor figure Carmen Lawrence said 'she deeply regretted Environment Minister Tony Burke's decision to rule out natural heritage listing for Tasmania's Tarkine wilderness': 

Dr Lawrence, a former ALP federal president and chairman of the Australian Heritage Council, said Mr Burke showed a fundamental misunderstanding about an already weak heritage act. 

'To read [it] as prohibiting development is simply wrong,'' Dr Lawrence said on Friday. ''I'm very disappointed, and I'm sure I speak for other members of the council.'' 

Mr Burke overruled the AHC's recommendation to add to the National Heritage List about 447,000 hectares of rainforest, moorland and remote coastal hinterland in the island's north-west on natural heritage grounds...

Instead, only the Tarkine's two-kilometre coastline will be protected in recognition of an ancient Aboriginal presence in rock carvings and middens.

Remember, this is the same Minister who has no problem with the planned doubling of coal exports from Australia, including establishing a whole series of new or expanded coal ports along the length of the great Barrier Reef. Dredging of Gladstone harbour has literally destroyed the entire commercial fishing industry run out of Gladstone because of mysterious red lesions on caught seafood.

Thankfully, the Queensland Department of Environment (under both the previous Labor government and current conservative LNP government) confirms that stirring up heavy metals etc by dredging is not the cause of this unprecedented disaster. Phew, that's a relief!

Remember, these are the same Labor and LNP governments who both approve of doubling coal exports and open slather coal seam gas extraction. 

Speaking of CSG tracking, the previous Labor government pressured its own public servants to ram through approvals of major Queensland CSG projects:

Public servants at the two departments tasked with giving the official go-ahead to Queensland's new coal seam gas industry were blindsided by Bligh government demands that two of the gigantic projects be approved within weeks of each other.

Documents obtained through a Courier-Mail investigation reveal that as the $18 billion Santos GLNG project was nearing its approval in May 2010, public servants were hit with the demands from the government to also tackle the $16 billion QGC project - and then the Origin-led APLNG proposal, approved in November of the same year. 

And just days before the QGC approval was granted, public servants were warning the directors of the government's assessment team that they still had not been given any detailed information on pipelines and the location of wells.

But wait, it gets worse!

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in New South Wales is in the process of uncovering almost endless allegations of how the huge sums of money involved in coal mining corrupted the former Labor NSW government via the Obeid saga:

Former NSW minister Ian Macdonald has told a corruption inquiry that it was simply "by chance" that a mining exploration licence was granted over land owned by the family of Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is probing whether Mr Macdonald, 63, rorted a coal mining tender process in the NSW Upper Hunter's Bylong Valley in 2008, and how Mr Obeid and his family may have profited from it.

The ICAC alleges Mr Macdonald gave the Obeids inside knowledge that allowed the family to profit, potentially by $100 million.

Let's face it, unless people like you drive the change to renewables, governments across Australia will happily drive us to environmental destruction regardless of which 'side' of politics is in power.

As Greens Senator Christine Milne neatly summed it up today "A vote for Labor or the Coalition is a vote for Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer, the mining lobby and accelerated global warming."

And the new world record goes to...

Arctic ice cracking up when winter still hasn't finished - update 1

Clearer shot of the ice cracking

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there

Like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in South America causing a cyclone here, the heat build up in the Arctic causes chaos far away. Peter Sinclair's Climate Denial Crock of the Week video on superstorm Sandy looks at how Sandy was pushed westwards into the coast by a high probably resulting from last year's record ice melt.

At the same time, an Arctic cyclone formed, weakened and reformed again because of the higher than average water temperatures in the Arctic, pushing a waves of freezing air down into Europe and another into the US.

Arctic ice cracking up when winter still hasn't finished

The photo below is a bit confusing at first but take a close look...the dot in the upper centre is the north pole, Greenland is outlined to the lower right, northern Canadian islands to the bottom stretching out to Alaska on the far left.

See that gigantic crack extending out from Alaska? That's a crack that's widening by the hour right now, just off Barron, Alaska.

Gigantic ice crack off Barrow, Alaska

Since the middle of December, the ice has been breaking up much as it did last year in March. Last year's breaking up in March was a couple of months early. Last year also saw a record low sea ice volume for the Arctic by a long way.

Freezing temperature may cause this to re-freeze, but if these cracks and leads persist until the end of the winter (if the ice remains thin and weak), then the ice is going to vanish really fast, once the sun gets to work in summer.

Watch an animated gif of this here.

As always, superb work from Arctic Sea Ice blog (see links upper right).

US carbon emissions fall to lowest levels since 1994 - we hope

The Guardian is reporting that Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy, the report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said.

As described by Bloomberg, the US is in the throes of a major shift in energy production. Coal fell to just 18.1% of America's energy mix last year, down from 22.5% in 2007. Oil use also declined.

The explosion of natural gas production, thanks to fracking, filled much of the gap. America got 31% of its electricity from gas-fired power plants last year.

But the report found steadily expanding installation of wind, solar, hydro and geothermal energy. Renewables represented the largest single source of new growth last year, reaching $44bn in 2012, the report said, the report said.

At least, that's what we hope.

Unfortunately you can justify any argument using the right statistics. So how useful are the stats used here?

Certainly increased investment in renewables and efficiency are having a beneficial impact. But it's a stretch to say this alone is responsible for the 13% drop in CO2 emissions.

A quick look at Net Generation by Energy Source figures shows that electricity generation in the US fell from 4,156.745 GW in 2007 to 4,100.656GW in 2011; a 1.3% decrease caused by economic recession. (Something similar is happening in Australia, too.)

The same recession has caused total distillate usage in the US to plummet to 2009 levels:

A reduction in emissions is a good thing, but we simply can't rely on the destructive impacts of economic decline to produce the majority of the cuts required.

Finally, much of the "decrease" is attributed to CO2 reductions from 'fracking' gas rather than using coal. However, as recent research from Queensland gas fields shows, the fugitive emissions from these fields may be so drastically underestimated that the conversion to gas may well be as bad as (or even worse) than coal.

Ultimately all this underlines the simple point: only renewable energy sources cut emissions; and gas is just another fossil fuel.

Fitzroy catchment miners release 'diluted' cocktail of toxic wastewater into flooded river

This story from Queensland shows again why no government in Australia can be trusted to deal with the coal industry.

The recent floods have been used as a convenient way to dump 250GL of water contaminated with high levels of salt and toxic heavy metals.

The only way to change this is for the public to move towards 100% renewable energy. That's what RCP is here for.

Greenland

Two starkly contrasting views of what Greenland might do in a warming world.

First, a new paper in Nature, Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice core(NEEM Community Members, (2013)) carries the big news is that this group has managed to obtain and use the information in ice from the Eemian — the peak of the last interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago — in Greenland. Getting usable Eemian ice from Greenland has been a Holy Grail of ice core research for the better part of two decades.

The good news: the implications from this data for the Greenland ice sheet seem to indicate that it is less sensitive to climate warming than some of the higher-end estimates suggest. The NEEM ice core record suggests both that temperatures may have been warmer than once thought, and and that the ice sheet mass loss was unlikely to have been >2 m of sea level. In essence, the new data show that Greenland, while evidently contributing significantly to Eemian sea level, cannot have contributed more than half the total — despite the strong forcing.

The bad news: This once again points to Antarctica as the major source of Eemian sea level rise. There are only about 3 m of sea level rise available from West Antarctica, and it remains unclear whether all of West Antarctica may have collapsed.

Read more here: The Greenland melt

And here: Greenland defied ancient warming

Now the contrary view.

Humans have already set in motion 69 feet of sea-level rise

Jason Box is one of the premier experts on the Greenland ice sheet, having spent, in total, more than year camping on the ice over the course of  the last 2 decades. He states that we’ve already pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide 40 percent beyond Eemian levels. What’s more, levels of atmospheric methane are a dramatic 240 percent higher — both with no signs of stopping. “There is no analogue for that in the ice record,” said Box.

And that’s not all. The present mass-scale human burning of trees and vegetation for clearing land and building fires, plus our pumping of aerosols into the atmosphere from human pollution, weren’t happening during the Eemian. These human activities are darkening Greenland’s icy surface, and weakening its ability to bounce incoming sunlight back away from the planet. Instead, more light is absorbed, leading to more melting, in a classic feedback process that is hard to slow down.

“These giants are awake,” said Box of Greenland’s rumbling glaciers, “and they seem to have a bit of a hangover.”

Dr. Box is the creator of the Dark Snow Project, an ambitious attempt to Crowd-fund an arctic expedition this summer.  Over the last decade, Jason’s measurements indicate that the surface of Greenland has become darker, more absorptive of the sun’s light and heat.  There are a number of processes that could be causing it – some natural, some manmade. DarkSnowProject is designed to sample snow at various points on the ice sheet, and determine if  soot from increasing numbers of large wild fires could be one of the significant reasons for darker snow.

The ultimate irony - George Bush slashes worldwide carbon emissions

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8681&page=0

As referred to below in Welcome, my article from four years ago. A few highlights:

If you’re concerned about global warming, you’ve probably already changed to energy-efficient light bulbs, you take your own reusable bags to the shops, compost your scraps and turn your TV off standby. That will solve the problem. After all, that’s what the government and environment groups tell us to do, right? Except of course this type of demand-reduction behaviour, while slowing the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions, will never solve the problem....

Simple actions capture people's attention and provide an entry-level activity. Present people with the daunting big-ticket solutions and they turn away. Give them something easy and you have them moving in the right direction and, in theory, ready to make the step up to the next level.
That is the theory, but, as plentiful social research confirms, it doesn't work...  

While George wasn’t the slightest bit interested in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, eight years of his presidency have resulted in the credit crisis which looks set to decimate worldwide productivity and perhaps result in the first reduction in atmospheric CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution... 

In his article The decline of the American superpower, Roubini set out the main reasons for the credit crisis, which have the fingerprints of Bush all over them:
But since 2001 the further worsening of the US current account deficit was driven instead by growing fiscal deficits - especially in the 2001-2004 period - caused by unsustainable tax cuts and by the buildup of spending on foreign wars and on domestic security and since 2002 by the collapse of household savings and boom in investment in unproductive stock of housing capital that the housing bubble induced ... By now the US is the biggest net borrower in the world - running current account deficits still in the 700 billion dollars range - and the biggest net debtor in the world with its foreign liabilities now over 2.5 trillion dollars.

See how it all falls together by following the link above.

Welcome!

When it comes to the environment, everything matters!

The environment obviously cares nothing for national borders. Whether emmissions come from this country or that, it makes no difference in the end. Same as an improvement here means an an improvement for all. But what about things that we don't readily identify as being 'environmental' issues - do general economic, political, and social events similarly ignore how we categorize them and become environmental issues regardless?

That's what this blog will explore.

Four years ago I wrote a provocative piece titled 'The ultimate irony - George Bush slashes worldwide carbon emissions'. It looked at how the only decrease in world-wide emissions had come because of Bush's extraordinarily incompetent economic policies, rather than via the good intentions of environmentalists. So when it comes to global warming, economics matters.

What happens politically or militarily in the Middle East may be one of the biggest short-term influences on the environment imaginable. A significant disruption to the supply of oil would affect the entire world economy, which in turn affects emission levels. As well as our choice of energy supply in future years. If someone was insane enough to use nuclear weapons in the Mid East, or attack Iran's nuclear facilities, the fallout (both literally and figuratively) would have immense social, economic and environmental impacts.

The same goes for many things we don't readily label 'environmental issues'. There are no set boundaries.

When it comes to the environment, everything matters.

Like the Facebook page Renewable Community Power http://www.facebook.com/renewcommpower this blog will report on the science of global warming and advances in the field of renewable energy supply. But it will also take a wider view and explore other issues which, one way or another, tie in to the environment.

After all, everything matters.