Lethal Heating: 03/24/19

24/03/2019

Harvard Scientists Want To Limit How Much Sunlight Reaches Earth's Surface In Order To Curb Global Warming

Business Insider - Melina Seiler | Ruqayyah Moynihan

Climate change and global warming are among the greatest challenges mankind has faced up until now.
Researchers at Harvard have put forward a new solution — they want to reflect some of the sun's heat back out to space.
The process is referred to as "solar geoengineering" or "solar geotechnics".

How we can curb the devastating effects of climate change is still hotly debated among politicians and scientists alike. NASA/SDO

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges mankind has faced up until now.
How we'll be able to curtail global warming and its devastating consequences is still very much a hot potato among politicians and scientists alike — and so far, the outcome of all these debates hasn't been particularly fruitful.
However, researchers at Harvard may have come up with a solution that sounds just a little too good to be true.
In conjunction with researchers from MIT and Princeton, the group has suggested slowing down global warming by diminishing the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth's surface.
Yes, you read that right. The technology is called solar geoengineering or solar geotechnics.
According to a study published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers are considering what might happen if they were to introduce sunlight-reflecting particles into Earth's atmosphere.

Researchers at Harvard have suggested dimming the sun as a partial solution to help slow down global warming. Shutterstock

The most important thing to note is that the researchers aren't suggesting the method is a solution to rising global warming trends; it isn't designed to bring temperatures back to pre-industrial levels nor does it address the real crux of the problem — the amount of carbon dioxide we're producing.
In fact, too high a dose of "dimming" could even worsen the situation.
Postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Peter Irvine, was the lead author of the study.

As well as this measure, carbon dioxide emissions still need be reduced worldwide. J. David Ake/AP

"The analogy is not perfect," he explained, "but solar geoengineering is a little like a drug which treats high blood pressure. An overdose would be harmful, but a well-chosen dose could reduce your risks. Of course, it's better to not have high blood pressure in the first place but once you have it, along with making healthier lifestyle choices, it's worth considering treatments that could lower your risks."
The study suggests that this technology could the rate at which temperatures are increasing in half, which could offer global benefits without exacerbating problems in other parts of the world.
Alongside this measure, however, carbon dioxide emissions would still need to be reduced across the globe.

More water and fewer hurricanes

The scientists found that halving global warming with solar technology not only cools the planet but would also compensate for over 85% of hurricane intensity. David Goldman/AP

In order to better understand which regions might end up worse off if this geoengineering technology were combined with emission reductions, the researchers used a state-of-the-art, high-resolution model to simulate extreme rainfall and tropical hurricanes.
This is the first time a model of this sort has been used to look into the possible effects of solar geotechnics.
The researchers studied temperature and precipitation extremes, water availability, and also measured the intensity of tropical storms.

The researchers emphasised that our main response to climate change still ought to be to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions. Gian-Reto Tarnutzer/Unsplash

They found that halving global warming via geoengineering would not only cool the planet but also moderate changes in water availability and extreme precipitation in many places.
While the science surrounding geoengineering technology is over half a century old, it's only recently — since our attention has been drawn Earth's climate change — that scientists have intensified their researched the field.
Researchers at Harvard University have stressed, however, that our main response to climate change should be to curb carbon dioxide emissions; geoengineering alone simply wouldn't be capable of fully remedying the root of the environmental problems.

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How 34,500 Tonnes Of Food Waste Is Powering Melbourne Homes

Herald Sun

Less than two years after Victoria’s first waste-to-energy facility opened in Wollert, the plant is proving the system of transforming food to power is a sustainable way to address climate change and food waste.
Sitting next to Yarra Valley Water’s Aurora sewage treatment plant, the ReWaste factory receives about 140 tonnes of waste from 20 food manufacturers, supermarkets, shopping centres, and fruit and vegetable wholesalers each day.

The plant converts everything from fruit to airline catering waste into energy.

ReWaste services manager Damien Bassett said among the rotting apple cores and expired products, the four full-time staff members at the facility also converted airline catering waste, dehydrated egg waste and vaccine by-products into energy.
“ReWaste treats food waste via a biological process called anaerobic digestion,” waste to energy services manager Damien Bassett said.
“This process produces biogas, mainly made up of methane, which is converted to electricity via our combined heat and power engines.
“This electricity is then used to power our facility and our neighbouring treatment plant with the remainder being exported to the grid.”

Second Facility
The 34,500 tonnes of waste processed since the plant opened produced 7.8 million kWh of energy, 70 per cent of which has been fed back to the grid.
The amount of waste diverted from the landfill equated to growing over 1.2 million tree seedlings across 10 years, Mr Bassett said.
Yarra Valley Water managing director Pat McCafferty said the facility was proving so efficient plans had already begun for a second facility, about 1.5 times bigger than the current one, to be operational within “the next couple of years”.

ReWaste services manager Damien Bassett at the Wollert plant.

When both facilities run at full capacity, they would generate 50 per cent of YVW’s energy needs.
Combined with large scale solar projects, the Wollert plants would enable YVW to operate on 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, Mr McCafferty said.

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Climate Change Could Make Insurance Too Expensive For Most People – Report

The Guardian - Arthur Neslen

Munich Re, world’s largest reinsurance firm, warns premium rises could become social issue

An aerial view of a neighbourhood destroyed by the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Insurers have warned that climate change could make cover for ordinary people unaffordable after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24bn (£18bn) of losses in the Californian wildfires.
Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climatologist, told the Guardian that the costs could soon be widely felt, with premium rises already under discussion with clients holding asset concentrations in vulnerable parts of the state.
“If the risk from wildfires, flooding, storms or hail is increasing then the only sustainable option we have is to adjust our risk prices accordingly. In the long run it might become a social issue,” he said after Munich Re published a report into climate change’s impact on wildfires. “Affordability is so critical [because] some people on low and average incomes in some regions will no longer be able to buy insurance.”
The lion’s share of California’s 20 worst forest blazes since the 1930s have occurred this millennium, in years characterised by abnormally high summer temperatures and “exceptional dryness” between May and October, according to a new analysis by Munich Re.
Wetter and more humid winters spurred new forest growth which became tinder dry in heatwave conditions that preceded the wildfires, the report’s authors said.

After comparing observational data spanning several decades with climate models, the report concluded that the wildfires, which killed 85 people, were “broadly consistent with climate change”.
Nicolas Jeanmart, the head of personal insurance, general insurance and macroeconomics at Insurance Europe, which speaks for 34 national insurance associations, said the knock-on effects from rising premiums could pose a threat to social order.
“The sector is concerned that continuing global increases in temperature could make it increasingly difficult to offer the affordable financial protection that people deserve, and that modern society requires to function properly,” he said.
Munich Re’s insurance cover in hurricane-prone regions such as Florida is already higher than in northern Europe, by an order of magnitude.
Premiums are also being adjusted in regions facing an increased threat from severe convective storms which hold an energy and severity primed by global warming. These include parts of Germany, Austria, France, south-west Italy and the US midwest.
Increases in the intensity and frequency of California’s wildfire season are predicted by climate models, and the Munich Re analysis combines monthly meteorological data with financial losses to graph the trend’s rise since 2001.
Average annual wildfire losses trailed well below $5bn even within this millennium, until 2017 and 2018, when they leapt to more than $20bn. Munich Re believes that global warming made a “significant contribution” to this.
No insurer has linked wildfires to climate change before, although a Lloyds report into Superstorm Sandy in 2014 found that global warming-linked sea level rises had increased surge losses around Manhattan by 30%.
Climate scientists say that linking extreme weather events to climate change is akin to attributing the performance of a steroid-taking sportsman to drug use – the connections are clearer in patterns than in individual disasters.
Paul Fisher, the Bank of England’s former coordinator on climate change, and a fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said: “In general, one can’t prove that a single event is the result of climate change but it is likely to cause more such events of greater severity.”
“It is very interesting if insurers conclude that climate change was a significant contributory factor to the event and will make the insurance companies think carefully about the pricing and availability of similar insurance policies.”
It may also influence several court cases testing the liability of fossil fuel companies for the effects of global warming.
Dr Ben Caldecott, the director of Oxford University’s sustainable finance programme, said: “Company directors and fiduciaries will ultimately be held responsible for avoidable climate-related damages and losses and urgently need to up their game to avoid litigation and liability.”
Munich Re has divested its large thermal coal holdings. However, it maintains some gas and oil investments.

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