Here we are again, another fabulous Earth Day, as if every day wasn’t “Earth Day”. Every year it seems more and more ridiculous, like tidying your house while it’s on fire. It’s become a panacea for many, an opportunity for folks to feel like they’re doing something to ease their conscious, when in reality it’s akin to doing almost nothing. Oh well, at least it might raise awareness in some to learn and do more.
Along those lines, here are some important stories from around the web that do matter. We start with dueling studies, one says the most accurate climate models are predicting the direst outcomes, while another says that the worst-case climate scenarios are not credible. We follow that up with some more positive news about retraining coal workers in Wyoming to work on wind farms. And we close with some thoughts about our carbon footprint and the meat we eat. Enjoy!
Alarming or not so much?
A recent paper in the prestigious science journal Nature, by Patrick Brown and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, Greater future global warming inferred from Earth’s recent energy budget, compared the outcomes from various climate models to actual measurements. They found that those models that best accounted for the effects of clouds in the high atmosphere gave the best predictions that matched recent observations. Interestingly, these are the models that also predict worse outcomes in the future, bumping up estimates of warming by about 15%.
A different study by Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter, and others, also in Nature, titled Emergent constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity from global temperature variability, used a new way to calculate the impact of CO2 emissions, Their work cut in half the possible worst case outcomes by the end of the century, but also reduced the possibility of less worse outcomes at the lower end. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a range of 1.5 C to 4.5 C (2.7 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by the end of the century (2100 AD). While Cox’s work results in a range from 2.2 C to 3.4 C, with a best estimate of 2.8 C (5 F). Just to be clear, 2.8C of warming is still catastrophic (we are currently at about 0.8C of warming and rising).
The Cox paper used all the models to come up with a new value on something called the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which is a theoretical response to an instantaneous doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. So they’ve taken an abstract theoretical metric and applied some fancy statistics. I can’t help but be skeptical. I also wonder how their output would change if they only used the “best” models as determined by Brown and Caldeira.
Anyhow, which of these studies are we to believe? I think if you use geologic history as a guide, you can see that the Earth has been DRASTICALLY different place in the past. And at those times with the highest levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, the ice caps have been nonexistent and the Earth’s shorelines were 300 feet or more higher than now. The Cox paper is interesting, and it may give some hope that the rate of change will not be so fast, but I think it’s a bit of false hope. They admit that they do not account for anomalous events, black swans, tipping points, or whatever you’d like to call them– things that are all too prevalent in the geologic past. Most drastic changes occur rapidly, with long periods of stability in between. Humans are forcing rapid change to occur, with unforeseen consequences.
Coal is Dying, hoorah! Let’s find work for the displaced.
The news for the coal industry is more dire by the day. And that is a wonderful thing. Coal is the dirty, dangerous fuel of your great-grandfather. The environmental destruction done by coal is stupendous, let alone the damage to the atmosphere by release of CO2. Coal has also sickened hundreds of thousands of people, those that work and live in coal-producing areas. Ironically these are the same folks that fight for coal despite all that, probably because they have no alternative.
The coal industry directly employs about 58,000 people in the US, a tiny fraction of the number of people employed by alternative energy. Paying for a generous early retirement, with full retraining and education benefits for every single coal worker would be a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, and probably the just thing to do.
Along those lines, GreenCarReports.com brings us a story of Goldwind Americas, a Chinese wind company that wants to set up 850 wind turbines in Wyoming coal country. This company is specifically seeking coal workers to retrain. They need 200 permanent workers on site to maintain the wind farm. That’s not counting all the construction and support jobs that go along with that. To me this is a great thing, but also very shrewd on the part of Goldwind. They are not only retraining coal workers, but also generating local grass-roots support for their wind farm, and taking away workers from the coal industry. Crafty. I wish them all possible success.
Carbon Tax on my Steak?! The hell you say!
A recent NY Times opinion piece by Richard Conniff, titled The Case for a Carbon Tax on Beef, talks about the environmental impact of beef consumption and how we might mitigate it. According to the article 14.5 percent of global emissions come from livestock — “more than the emissions produced from powering all the world’s road vehicles, trains, ships and airplanes combined.” All of these CO2 emissions are produced by the petroleum used to grow crops to feed the cows, then to transport and process them.
Also, cattle worldwide contribute 120 million tons of methane a year to the atmosphere. Methane, though short-lived, is 100 times more potent a heat trapping gas than CO2. The author discusses a French study about a carbon tax on beef. Although this would be a very tough sell, he makes a good point that taxing beef in this way would drive down consumption, thereby reducing the huge environmental burden of beef, including not only CO2, but land, water, and health impacts. Hmm, maybe it’s time to at least cut back on the beef??
Bonus!
The NAACP Joins Sierra Club in Calling for (#SwampMonster) Pruitt to resign as head of the EPA.
Couldn’t let this one get by without a mention. The Washington Post reported that the NAACP joins environmental groups in calling for Scott Pruitt’s ouster. You may have seen this headline and thought “that’s nice”, but really this is a BIG deal. This is the first mention I’ve seen where an organization not directly involved in environmental work has weighed in on such an issue. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sees Scott Pruitt’s dismantling of environmental protections impacting people of color more so than others, making this a social justice issue. Minorities and poor persons are often the ones that live next door to the many factories, refineries and other facilities in this country whose pollution is regulated by the EPA. Scott Pruitt is going all out to dismantle the EPA and weaken it’s control on pollution, thereby disproportionally effecting persons living near those sources of pollution.
Scott Pruitt is a disgusting excuse for a human. He is corrupt and ignorant to the core. History will judge him harshly. It’s ironic that Trump came to Washington to “drain the swamp”, but in reality he has let the swamp creatures take over — industry shills running roughshod over the federal agencies meant to preserve and protect American’s health, resources and environment. This nightmare can’t end soon enough.
Hopefully, this will be the first of many more of these collaborations as traditionally non-environmental organizations join in the fight. In the meantime, you can join in the fight too! Not just on Earth Day, but every day.
Here’s an article written on this blog a while back about how to do just that. Click to read more –> Five Ways You Can Fight Climate Change Without Washington’s Help
Happy Earth Day, today and forever!