Lethal Heating: 09/08/17

08/09/2017

Texas Wind Turbines Went Right On Turning Under Harvey’s Impact, As Refineries Shut Down

Common Dreams - Juan Cole

Wind turbines in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo: Lloyd Wilson via Sandia Labs/flickr/cc)

Extreme weather is in our future. Caribbean hurricanes of the future will be more and more violent and destructive because of manmade global heating. Sea level rise will open the coast to bigger storm surges. The number of coastal floods has already doubled since the 1980s because of people driving their gasoline cars and running their air conditioners off burning lumps of coal. Hotter air over hotter water will have more moisture in it, setting the stage for regular flooding. Hotter water creates more powerful winds within hurricanes.
So the bad news is that a fossil fuel energy system does not deal well with extreme weather.
Even just by Thursday, Harvey had shut down so many oil refineries that it had taken 20% of daily US gasoline production off line. By Friday it was being announced that so many refineries had been damaged that the major pipeline that brings 3 million barrels a day to the east coast, had been shut down. Altogether, 4.4 mn b/d of refinery capacity is off line now. About half a million barrels a day of refining capacity will remain shut down well into next winter.
Reuters quoted a market analyst as saying, “Imports can’t make up for this. . . This is going to be the worst thing the U.S. has seen in decades from an energy standpoint.”
Not only is gasoline going to be more expensive as a result, but the pollution dangers from the damaged refineries are horrific.
But guess what? Texas’s wind turbines weathered Harvey. Some were pushed to the max by its powerful winds, but they just went on making electricity! Turbines shut down if the wind is 55 mph or more, but most wind farms affected by Harvey were able to keep operating. One shut down because the electrical wires were knocked down, not because the turbines stopped working!. On an average day, Texas gets 20% of its electricity from wind. That only fell to 13% the day of Harvey’s landfall.
Harvey also menaced a nuclear reactor, a la Fukushima, but we dodged that bullet this time.
Nuclear reactors no longer make any sense, and they remain dangerous and vulnerable to extreme weather events. Even if wind turbines did get damaged by a storm, they don’t explode or spread around radioactive fallout.
Duke Energy has just abandoned plans for a nuclear reactor and is instead putting $6 bn into solar and wind.
So it turns out that not only would a rapid turn to 100% green energy, as California plans, forestall further global heating, it can help keep us safe during the extreme weather caused by . . . burning fossil fuels in the first place.
The problem of fossil fuels and global heating is only going to get worse. The National Institutes of Health warns,

“The public health impacts of climate change in U.S. Gulf Coast states—Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—may be especially severe and further exacerbated by a range of threats facing the coastline areas, including severe erosion, subsidence, and—given the amount of energy production infrastructure—the ever-present potential for large-scale industrial accidents. The Gulf Coast population is expected to reach over 74 million by 2030 with a growing number of people living along the coastlines. Populations in the region that are already vulnerable because of economic or other disparities may face additional risks to health . . . The Gulf region is expected to experience increased mean temperatures and longer heat waves while freezing events are expected to decrease. Regional average temperatures across the U.S. Southeast region (which includes Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina as well as the Gulf Coast) are projected to increase between 4 °F to 8 °F (2.2 °C to 4.4 °C) throughout the century. Hurricanes and sea level rise, occurring independently or in combination with hurricane-induced storm surge, are major threats to the Gulf Coast region [11]. Some portions of the Gulf Coast—particularly coastal Louisiana and South Florida—are especially vulnerable to sea level rise due to their low elevation.”

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Liddell: Climate Change And Air Pollution Medical Negligence

RenewEconomy - David Shearman*

Image Source: AAP

Most members of the community will recognise the team-work, devotion and skill of doctors, nurses and technical staff in delivering new life in cardiac, brain or trauma surgery or freedom from the misery of pain conferred by hip and knee surgery
Those of us who travel to other countries will recognise the excellence of Australian clinical health services. In contrast there is a coal-black hole of Government indifference to the health consequences of inadequate energy and climate policy.
There are an estimated 3000 deaths pa and many illnesses in Australia due to heart and lung disease from air pollution caused by coal combustion in power stations and from vehicle exhausts.
Every move from coal-fired power to renewable power saves lives. Every reform of air pollution laws saves lives.
In this context the Prime Minister’s proposal to keep open heavily polluting Liddell as the solution to his government’s failures in energy policy must be condemned.
The PM’s Trumpian statement evades mention of the high cost of coal when health externalities are included, and his government rails at renewable subsidies when those of coal are greater.
The health costs of pollution in the Sydney to which Liddell contributes are estimated to be $8.4B p a.
The medical indictment over failure of climate policy arises from the increasing numbers of deaths and injuries associated with extreme weather events. Australia, unlike many other developed nations, lacks a climate adaptation policy to protect its people from such ravages, another government failure
Many doctors experience despair and frustration at the lives being lost now and, increasingly, will be lost in the future. There has been a decade of political bickering and standoffs on this matter which, in medical terms, is negligence.
If medical care teams behaved similarly, the Medical Boards would act, courts would become busy, hospitals would be censured and resignations would occur.
Parliament must recognise that the effects of climate change are now operating and accelerating on the world’s physical and biological systems and that they can come like an express train.
Australia’s response, instead, is invested in a slow train, trailing further and further behind the express. Indeed, some of our elected representatives have missed the train or even deny that trains exist.
Parliamentarians know that every election has, as its main issues, cost of living, education and health services and it is these that decide votes. Given the increasing impacts of climate change, successful governments will need to offer an extra dimension to their repertoire.
This dimension is called Leadership and the first step in leadership is to determine secure scientific, technical and delivery options for a way forward.
It is against this background of disarray and incompetence that the Senate is conducting an inquiry into the impacts of climate change on infrastructure including energy.
Does this reflect the glimmer of light before the dawn?
Or that the expected global trillion dollar costs of climate change and billion dollar costs of air pollution have become a worry?
Or that impacts and costs are already are occurring in Australia?
Did the terms of reference reflect sudden haste because some vital infrastructure, such as agriculture and defence, was overlooked?
In essence, ‘cost’ means budget difficulties and electoral problems. The Business Round Table reported that the cost of Extreme Weather Events (EWE) in the 2010-2011 Queensland floods was a tangible asset loss (infrastructure) of $6.7B, and that this was further exceeded by intangible losses of $7.4B.
The latter figure represents on-going health and social costs for the Queensland Health Services. Similar figures were quoted for other climate-change related EWE in Australia.
The Business Round Table report said that these tangible costs were expected to rise to an average of $33 billion per year in real terms by 2050, unless steps were taken to increase resilience and address mitigation.
Business now has a clear understanding that the multiple risks of climate change are real, that ignorance of them is no longer an excuse. Companies now know that their funds and infrastructure are exposed and, yet, because emission reduction is mired in a political swamp, we have no plan to alleviate the ravages of accelerating climate change.
There may be another belated recognition behind this senate Inquiry. Presently, the world’s entire economic system depends on progressive growth. Climate change is eating into the budgets of many countries and of the states in Australia. In 2005 the Stern report predicted a cost to the world of $9 trillion.
Growth may well continue in its present trajectory, but will consist increasingly of reparation and not a rise in living standards. Now, this is an electoral problem to galvanise the mind of Senators, and even Treasurers, obsessed with simply tweaking the threads of the spider-web of taxes.
The reason it hasn’t induced an appropriate response is that politicians hide or deny difficult issues or push them beyond the next election. Hopefully the fiscal impact of Hurricane Harvey may be the equivalent of ECT therapy.
Parliamentary Inquiries have many limitations. While submissions are made from organisations with significant expertise, the outcome of the Inquiries depends on the ability of the Committee to grasp complexities. In fact, often the report is bedevilled by political position and ideology and any dissenting report produced is ignored.
The health dangers of climate change, as evidenced by EWEs, were detailed by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) in submissions to the Senate committee on EWEs in 2013. The AMA said:

One of the fundamental issues that has undermined preparedness across the health sector is a gap in policy leadership at the federal level and from the federal health bureaucracy. In 2007, COAG identified the need for a national strategy specifically designed to drive and coordinate actions to reduce the health impacts of climate change and climate-related events. Despite the recognised need for this coordinated and strategic response, policies to support the preparedness of the health sector are yet to be put in place,……

Four years later the Senate is asking the same questions and getting the same advice from health experts.
DEA’s current submission to the Senate addresses health aspects of energy and climate policy and calls upon the Federal Government to accept responsibility, across the nation, for ensuring:

co-ordination and consistency of adaptation measures impacting on health
appropriate standards for new infrastructure
adequate research funding where necessary
compliance by state and territory authorities.

In our view, to act successfully, this responsibility will require a Statutory Authority linked to and working with a National EPA, to which Health Departments provide input, independent from political bias and with an Australian panel on climate change. A national taskforce of stakeholders and government could develop the necessary framework.
Doctors believe in a world where basic health needs are a human right. Advances in health care over the past few decades, both clinical and preventative, have been well beyond expectation.
We see these benefits to humanity being eroded by the confluence of damaging human activity and climate instability, and their ‘external’ costs. What we really need to develop is secure treatments for political blindness and impotence.
If only.

*Dr David Shearman AM FRACP, is Hon Secretary Doctors for the Environment Australia.

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This Week In Climate Change – What You Need To Know

Huffington Post - Charley Ross

You're busy, we get it. We've made keeping up with all things green super easy for you. Here's everything you need to know from the last seven days.

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Aerometrex via Getty Images

Australia has reported its hottest summer on record.
Studies have reported a "long-term warming trend" in Oz, with peak day temperatures hitting almost 2 degrees Celsius above the national average. Phew.
Read more here.

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stellalevi via Getty Images

California is set to pass one hundred per cent renewable energy law.
In defiance of the Trump administration's attitude towards the Paris Agreement, California is in the final stages of voting in a complete commitment to renewable energy by 2045.
If the law is passed, the Golden state will become the second one after Hawaii to commit to a one hundred percent renewable energy target.
Read more here.

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ARINDAM DEY via Getty Images

Deadly floods have hit Africa and Asia, leaving more than 1,200 dead.
An already difficult monsoon season has reached deadly levels in countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
Experts have confirmed that rising sea temperatures in South Asia due to climate change will have contributed to moisture in the atmosphere, and the devastating effects of the monsoon.
At least 41 million people have been affected in just three of the countries facing these floods, with thousands of villages across the affected areas cut off from food and clean water.
Read more here.

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Getty Images/iStockphoto

Low-income homes in England and Wales will receive solar panel installations in next five years.
Up to 800,000 homes are set to receive free solar panel installations, a movement that is expected to cut hundreds of pounds from energy bills.
Read more here.

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Global_Pics via Getty Images

Foreign fish are arriving in British waters due to changes in ocean temperatures.
Us Brits may have to change up our seafood preferences. While household favourites cod and haddock are headed north due to rises in sea temperatures, American razor clams and Pacific oysters are making an arrival in British waters.
Read more here.

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