False Alarm By Bjorn Lomborg; Apocalypse Never By Michael Shellenberger – Review

The Guardian - Bob Ward

Two prominent ‘lukewarmers’ take climate science denial to another level, offering tepid manifestos at best

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice lead a walk-out at the company’s HQ in Seattle. Photograph: Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty 

Bob Ward is policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics

It is no longer credible to deny that the average temperature around the world is rising and that other phenomena, such as extreme weather events, are also shifting. People can now see with their own eyes that the climate is changing around them.

Nor is it tenable to deny that the Earth’s warming is driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, resulting from human activities, such as the production and burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Such denial is only now promoted by cranks and conspiracy theorists who also think, for instance, that the Covid-19 pandemic is linked to the development of the 5G network.

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg is published by Basic Books. Apocalpyse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger is published by HarperCollins.

So instead, a different form of climate change denial is emerging from the polemical columns of rightwing newspapers. They paint a Panglossian picture of manmade climate crisis that will never be catastrophic as long as the world grows rich by using fossil fuels. The “lukewarmers” are on the march and coming to a bookshop near you.

Two prominent lukewarmers are now launching new manifestos: False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg, and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger.

Although they are aimed primarily at American audiences, they will appeal to anyone who, like the authors, proclaims themselves to be an environmentalist, but despises environmental campaigners.

Both books contain many pages of endnotes and references to academic publications, conveying the initial impression that their arguments are supported by reason and evidence. But the well-informed reader will recognise that they rely on sources that are outdated, cherry-picked or just wrong.

Shellenberger claims that windfarms might be responsible for an alarming decline in insect populations in Germany

The content of False Alarm will be familiar to those who have read Lomborg’s previous books, The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It. New findings and evidence are twisted and forced into the same haranguing narrative for his new contribution. Shellenberger’s book is far easier to read, at least near the beginning, but gradually descends into a bitter rant against environmentalists, the media and politicians who do not share his fervour for nuclear power.

Not everything that Lomborg and Shellenberger write is wrong. They are both correct in saying that the world should be investing far more in making populations, particularly in poor countries, more resilient to our changing climate. Even if the world is successful in its implementation of the Paris Agreement and limits global warming to well below 2C by the end of the century, the impacts will continue to grow over the coming decades, threatening lives and livelihoods across the globe.

But their argument that adaptation to climate crisis impacts is easier and cheaper than emissions cuts is undermined by their admission that the economic costs of extreme weather are rising because ever-more-vulnerable businesses and homes are being built in high-risk areas.

Lomborg is also right that the world should be spending far more on green innovation to develop technologies to help us to tackle climate breakdown. But he is pinning all his hopes on the breakthrough discovery of a magical new energy source that will be both zero-carbon and cheaper than fossil fuels.

This is wrong-headed for at least two reasons. The first is that most innovation occurs through the incremental improvement of existing technologies and we will probably need several different sources of affordable and clean energy. The second is that climate crisis results from the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that is already happening, so we cannot afford to delay the deployment of today’s alternatives to fossil fuels.

I also have some sympathy for Shellenberger’s argument that nuclear power has a role to play in creating a zero-carbon energy system. However, instead of calmly explaining its advantages over fossil fuels, he attempts to promote it by trash-talking about new renewable technologies, particularly wind and solar.

Walney Extension, the world’s largest offshore windfarm, on the Cumbrian coast. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

He is right that we cannot yet store energy affordably on the scale needed to power an entire electricity grid with intermittent renewables. But he also claims that windfarms might be responsible for an alarming decline in insect populations in Germany, which entomologists have blamed on agricultural practices. And he complains that the turbines “are almost invariably loud and disturb the peace and quiet”, although he stops short of repeating Donald Trump’s ridiculous falsehood that the noise causes cancer.

Both Lomborg and Shellenberger also make some legitimate criticisms of “alarmism” by environmentalists. One of the most difficult problems in making the case for action on climate crisis is that the elevated levels of greenhouse gases we create over the next few decades will have consequences not fully realised until the next century and beyond. Some campaigners deal with this communications challenge by wrongly warning of imminent catastrophe.

However, many scientists do suspect that we are approaching, or have already passed, thresholds beyond which very severe consequences, such as destabilisation of the land-based polar ice caps and associated sea level rise of several metres, become unstoppable, irreversible or accelerate. Lomborg and Shellenberger both downplay these huge risks because they fatally undermine the fundamental basis for their lukewarmer ideology.

Lomborg’s book relies heavily on the creative use of the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (Dice). William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2018 for his pioneering work on climate change, created the Dice model, but it has been strongly criticised for omitting the biggest risks.

A graph in Lomborg’s book shows that he has used Dice to predict that 4.1C of global warming by the end of the century would only reduce global economic output, or GDP, by about 4%. He also finds that even more extreme warming of 7C would lead to a loss of GDP of just 15%. These are hard to reconcile with the scientific evidence that such temperature changes would utterly transform the world.

We cannot afford to delay the deployment of today’s alternatives to fossil fuels

Lomborg also exaggerates the costs of action by automatically doubling researchers’ estimates for reducing emissions. He justifies this by referring to an obscure study in 2009 that concluded it may prove twice as costly as the European commission expected for the member states to cut their collective emissions by 20% by 2020. But the European Union reached its target ahead of schedule in 2018, with the price of emissions permits over the previous decade usually at less than half of the level anticipated by the commission.

Nevertheless, Lomborg doubles Nordhaus’s estimates of the costs of global action and concludes that the “optimal” level of global warming, balancing both damages and emissions cuts, would be 3.75C by 2100.

This calculation made me laugh out loud because modern humans have no evolutionary experience of the climate that would be created by such a temperature rise. The last time the Earth was more than 2C warmer than pre-industrial times was during the Pliocene epoch, three million years ago, when the polar ice caps were much smaller and global sea level was 10 to 20 metres higher than today. Only lukewarmers would claim that modern humans are best suited to a prehistoric climate!

In short, these new books truly deserve their place on the bookshelf among other classic examples of political propaganda.

Links

• Book Review: Are We Overreacting On Climate Change?
• Five Must-Read Novels On The Environment And Climate Crisis
• Footprints By David Farrier Review – Fossils Of The Anthropocene
• Book Reviews: The End Of The World Is Coming, And You Are Responsible
• A Glacier’s Pace: A Haunting Meditation On Climate Change In Iceland
• 7 Climate Change Novels That Imagine Our Possible Futures
• Facing The Climate Change Crisis, Three Books Offer Some Ambitious Proposals
• Everyone, Everywhere: The Global Challenge Of Climate Change
• Gift Guide: 12 Books On Climate Change And The Environment

(AU) Fight For Planet A: The Team Behind War On Waste Want To Put Climate Crisis Back On The Agenda

The Guardian - Brigid Delaney

Host Craig Reucassel uses balloons to give Australia’s emissions a visual representation and we’re left in no doubt there are too many of them

Craig Reucassel in Fight for Planet A. ‘We need a population that is knowledgeable and engaged.’ Photograph: Eren Sener/ABC TV

Fight For Planet A: Our Climate Challenge Tuesdays 8.30pm on ABC + iview Craig Reucassel tackles one of our planet's biggest challenges: climate change, exploring where our energy comes from, health effects of transport and travel emissions plus the carbon footprint of what we eat. Episode 1 iview

There’s a scene in Fight for Planet A that is both absurd and thrilling.

The host, Craig Reucassel, has tracked down the prime minister, Scott Morrison, at an event at a Sydney beach.

A pile of black balloons representing Australia’s carbon emissions have been attached to the back of his shirt and as he runs down the beach chasing Morrison, one really does wonder if he’ll just lift off and float away.

The prime minister’s minders stop Reucassel before he can tackle the prime minister who, in bare feet and boardshorts, is walking away as quick as you can in soft sand.

But the metaphor is obvious: Morrison does not want to engage with Australia’s outsized emissions problem.

Over three episodes, the team that made the ABC’s highly successful War on Waste delve into the more abstract but urgent issue of carbon emissions, and with it a vital question: how do you convince Australians that something they cannot see represents their greatest existential threat?

Fight for Planet A uses balloons to give Australia’s emissions a visual representation, and right from the first episode, we’re left in no doubt that there are too many of them. But what to do about it? And do we have the bandwidth to deal with the climate crisis now given everything else that’s going on in the world?

Fight for Planet A: Our Climate Challenge explores how we can all reduce our individual and collective carbon emissions. This three-part documentary aims to empower and motivate Australians to take action on climate change. 

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic initially meant the air date for the show, which was filmed last year, was pushed back from June to August. Stephen Oliver, manager of documentaries at the ABC, thinks that now is the time to get the climate back on the agenda.

“No one knew how long the pandemic would last, how serious it would be, how it would change people’s psychology. It’s still bad, but to some extent, with the exception of the situation in Melbourne, we have come to terms with it,” he says.

And although global lockdowns have caused emissions to plummet, it is long-term behaviour and policy change that will make a difference in the long term. So how do we make that happen?

Fight for Planet A is a solutions-based show that aims to empower viewers to cut their own emissions at home and in their communities.

By way of example, five Australian households were chosen to take on the show’s “climate challenge” to reduce the carbon emissions generated by the energy they used, their modes of transport and their food production.

Can the wealthy family with underfloor heating and a massive TV for their pets cut their electricity bill? Can the share house of five blokes use less hot water and skateboard to uni instead of driving an old banger?

Those strategies for individuals wanting to reduce their carbon footprint include everything from changing showerheads so less water is used, to ditching the car, to switching to solar panels. There’s a good segment on how easy it is to cut emissions in schools by turning off power points at the end of the day.

Craig Reucassel with members of the community of Oatlands public school. Photograph: ABC TV

Other solutions are more expensive and thus more difficult – such as trading in your old fossil-fuel-guzzling car for an electric vehicle (the cheapest in Australia starts at around $50,000).

When asked if a lot of the individual environmental fixes are geared towards the rich, Reucassel told Guardian Australia: “People who are wealthier – say, in the top 50% of income – have a larger carbon footprint. They travel more, their houses are bigger, they use more energy. We need to call on the rich people first – we shouldn’t be putting more of the burden on poorer people.”

But does all this community and individual empowerment let the government and big business off the hook?

Reucassel says: “I wouldn’t have done this show if it had only been about individual change. But people becoming involved and interested in an issue changes the political debate and more strongly influences the business debate. We can underestimate the role that the public can take in leading.”

Councils too have proven to be proactive when it comes to grassroots climate action, says Reucassel, “much more so than leadership at a federal level, which tends to be really depressing”.

“Unlike coronavirus, we know the solutions to climate change,” says Oliver. “We can actually do something about climate change, whereas with the pandemic we’re sitting there waiting for the experts to find a vaccine. We wear a mask and stay distant but we’re not actually solving the problem, we’re waiting for experts to solve the problem.

“But we can all solve the problem of climate change. This is empowering. We can give people solutions rather than just bunker down waiting for more horror to hit us.”

“The hardest part is getting people to visualise emissions,” says Reucassel. But knowledge is power. “In Australia, change is up against far more vested interests – that’s why we need a population that is knowledgeable and engaged.”

Oliver agrees. “It’s about getting people to be more engaged in the issue instead of feeling a bit angry and hopeless. If you only focus on the big corporations and the government you can get angry, frustrated and just kind of retreat from the conversation.”

Links

• Climate Change TV
• Representing climate change on public service television: A case study
• We Tried to Write a Blog About TV Shows Tackling Climate Change. Here’s What Happened
• TV’s climate change problem
• Broadcast news networks paid more attention to climate change in 2019
• Children's educational TV falls short on climate change
• Climate Communicators

(AU) Don’t Rush Into A Hydrogen Economy Until We Know All The Risks To Our Climate

The Conversation - Graeme Pearman | Michael Prather

Alexander Kirch/Shutterstock. 

There is global interest in the potential for a hydrogen economy, in part driven by a concern over climate change and the need to move away from fossil fuels.

This month, for example, Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, released a report showing the use of clean hydrogen as a fuel could slash aviation emissions, including a complete transition from conventional jet fuel around 2050.

A hydrogen economy could tap Australia’s abundant solar and wind energy resources, and provides a way to store and transport energy.

But, to date, there has been little attention on the technology’s potential environmental challenges.

Using hydrogen as a fuel might make global warming worse by affecting chemical reactions in the atmosphere. We must know more about this risk before we dive headlong into the hydrogen transition.


Australia’s hydrogen dawn

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. On Earth, it’s found mostly in water, from which it can be extracted. When renewable energy is used to power this process, hydrogen can be produced, in principle, with no emissions.

Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy, released last November, identified hydrogen export as a major economic opportunity.

Countries such as Germany, Japan and South Korea have large energy demands and commitments to emissions reduction. But they have limited opportunities to develop their own renewable resources. This creates a major opportunity for Australia to ship hydrogen to the world.

Hydrogen projects in Australia are gearing up. For example, the Queensland government recently announced A$4.2 million for a trial project to inject hydrogen into the gas network of Gladstone.

A similar project is also proposed for South Australia, supported by a A$4.9 million state government grant. In New South Wales, a proposal is afoot to blend hydrogen into the existing gas network.

But little consideration has been given to the possible environmental consequences of hydrogen as an energy source.

A hydrogen station for fuel-cell vehicles in Japan, which is a major export opportunity for hydrogen produced in Australia. Kydpl Kyodo/AP

Reactions in the atmosphere

In the atmosphere, ozone and water vapour react with sunlight to produce what are known as hydroxyl radicals.

These powerful oxidants react with and help remove other chemicals released into the atmosphere via natural and human processes, such as burning fossil fuels. One of these chemicals is methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

But hydrogen also reacts with hydroxyl radicals and, in doing so, reduces their concentration. Any hydrogen leaked into the atmosphere – such as during production, transport or at the point of use – could cause this reaction.

This would reduce the number of hydroxyl radicals available for their important cleansing function.

Hydrogen reacts with hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere. Shutterstock

Hydrogen on the rise

Hydrogen concentrations in the atmosphere are monitored around the world. Collectively, the data show an increase over time. This includes in Ireland and at Cape Grim in Tasmania’s northwest, where hydrogen concentrations have increased by about 4% in the past 25 years.



With our current understanding of the hydrogen cycle, it’s not possible to say why this has occurred. Indeed, this is the challenge: improving understanding so we can anticipate any effects of hydrogen leakage and decide what acceptable leakage rates might be.

Based on what we do know, hydrogen may increase global warming by 20-30% that of methane if leaked into the atmosphere.

Our understanding so far suggests that if a hydrogen economy replaced the fossil fuel-based energy system and had a leakage rate of 1%, its climate impact would be 0.6% of the fossil fuel system.

But we need to better understand the hydrogen cycle, such as how land surfaces absorb hydrogen. In the meantime, we must try to minimise leakage of hydrogen in production, storage and use.

Lessons from methane

A commitment to a hydrogen economy must avoid pitfalls that accompanied the expansion of the natural gas economy.

Research published this year found emissions from our increased use of fossil methane is about 25% to 40% greater than previously estimated.

Other research shows methane emissions grew almost 10% from 2000-2006 to the most recent year of the study, 2017.

Coming to grips with methane leakage is difficult because of the many ways it occurs, including:

• during coal mining
• from natural gas well blow-outs
• during exploration and exploitation of shale gas
• via faulty plumbing during industrial, commercial and domestic gas distribution.

By contrast, hydrogen emissions will likely mainly occur during distribution and end use via faulty pipe fittings, given the absence of mining in the hydrogen economy.

Technicians examine pipes at a shale gas facility in China. Such operations are a source of methane emissions. Hu Qingming/AP

Looking ahead

It’s possible the emission of hydrogen from reticulation and distribution systems will be low. But specifying how low this should be, and what engineering approaches are appropriate, should be part of the development process.

A hydrogen-based energy future may likely provide an attractive option in the quest for a zero-carbon economy. But all aspects of the hydrogen option should be considered in an holistic and evidence-based assessment.

This would ensure any transition to a hydrogen economy brings climate benefits far beyond fossil-fuel-based energy systems.

Links

• Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy
• The Hydrogen Council
• Opportunities for hydrogen in commercial aviation
• An Environmental Experiment with H2?
• Emissions of methane – a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide – are rising dangerously
• Carbon pricing works: the largest-ever study puts it beyond doubt
• Hydrogen fuels rockets, but what about power for daily life? We're getting closer
• Ocean warming threatens coral reefs and soon could make it harder to restore them
• Coronavirus lockdown will have ‘negligible’ impact on the climate – new study
• Wind farms built on carbon-rich peat bogs lose their ability to fight climate change

(AU) Australia Aims To Become Renewable Energy Export Superpower

Financial Times - Jamie Smyth

Government backs megaprojects that hope to use undersea cables to power Asian economies

Australia is home to the world’s largest battery, which is backed by the government and electric car maker Tesla. © REUTERS/David Gray

Australia has shipped vast quantities of coal and gas to fuel Asia’s rapid growth for decades. But amid global concerns over climate change, investors and a previously sceptical conservative government are now backing plans to build a renewable energy export industry to help diversify its economy.

Last month the Australian government awarded “major project status” to Sun Cable, a A$22bn (US$16bn) solar power project in Northern Territory, a remote region more typically known as a source of liquefied natural gas.

The designation aims to fast track construction of the world’s largest battery, a solar farm and a 3,700km electricity cable to supply A$2bn a year of green energy to Singapore by 2027.

 “We are creating a new industry by building these high-voltage direct current submarine cable networks that enable the development of massive scale renewable energy, wherever the resource is most abundant,” said David Griffin, chief executive of Sun Cable.

“Ultimately we are looking at a network that extends from India to New Zealand.”

Despite a bruising decade-long political debate in Australia over the future of fossils fuels, the Liberal-National government has begun preparing for a future without its A$55bn-a-year coal industry.

Sun Cable is one of several green energy export projects planned in Australia, which is deploying solar and wind capacity at a rate four to five times faster than in the EU, US, Japan and China on a per capita basis, according to a report by Australian National University.

Macquarie Bank and energy groups Vestas, CWP Energy and InterContinental Energy are backing the Asian Renewable Energy Hub, a rival project, which aims to use wind and solar power in Western Australia state to make hydrogen products for export to Asian markets.

In Victoria, the government is co-funding a A$500m pilot project to generate hydrogen from coal and store the emissions produced in an undersea basin. “

As technologies change, we can capitalise on our strengths in renewables to continue to lead the world in energy exports,” said Angus Taylor, Australia’s energy minister, when announcing Canberra would support Sun Cable in gaining state and federal approvals.

Sun Cable's plan to supply renewable energy to Singapore

Sun Cable backers include two of Australia’s richest men: Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of software company Atlassian, and Andrew Forrest, founder of mining group Fortescue. It aims to disrupt Asia’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels by making large amounts of renewable energy generated in Australia available at reasonable cost.

Proposals to export renewable energy across vast regions date back at least a century when German architect Herman Sörgel proposed building a hydroelectric dam across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Sharp falls in solar and wind costs and technical advances in cabling are turning this vision into reality. The UK, for example, is constructing the longest subsea power cable in the world — a €2bn electricity interconnector to Denmark, which stretches for 765km with a capacity of 1.4GW.

Sun Cable’s proposed cable is almost five times that length and double the capacity of the UK’s Viking Link, which would enable it to supply a fifth of Singapore’s total electricity demand. It must be laid at a depth of 1,700m below sea level — eight times that of the UK-Denmark interconnector — which will pose technical and financial challenges.

“For such long distances it is quite likely we have to go for multiple lines increasing the cost and complexity,” said Srinivas Siripurapu, chief R&D officer at Prysmian, a world leader in subsea cabling.

He said the deepest cable sits at depth of 1,600m, linking Sardinia to the Italian mainland but Prysmian is developing new technology that can go down to 3,000m.

The Asian Renewable Energy Hub initially planned to build a subsea cable to supply Indonesia with green power generated at massive 15GW solar and wind farms based in the Pilbara, a desert region in Western Australia. But it changed its approach about two years ago due to the estimated A$20bn-plus costs and because it limited the customers it could supply.

“We’ve pivoted our vision to exporting energy in chemical form primarily in the form of hydrogen derivatives including ammonia,” said Andrew Dickson, development manager. “Shipping product means we have a much wider range of potential customers.”

The hub plans to use low-cost renewable energy to make green hydrogen and ammonia, which can be stored and transported to energy hungry markets such as South Korea and Japan.

Mr Dickson said ammonia can already be used in coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions by a fifth and there were opportunities in multiple sectors from power generation to shipping fuels.

The hub plans to sell power to iron ore mines and LNG facilities in the Pilbara to “unlock electrification at a large scale” and provide extra revenue to help it realise its export potential, he added.

Both projects must still prove to investors they are bankable and the technical challenges are not insurmountable. But advocates believe Australia’s abundant wind and solar resources and the pace of technological development puts the nation in pole position to create a viable renewables export industry.

“We have a rich energy export history and renewables is our next big step,” said Mr Cannon-Brookes. “We have the technology. We have the economics. And we have an opportunity to become a renewable energy superpower.”

Links

• Pathway to 100% Renewable Electricity
• Renewable energy: Australia bets on a ‘water battery’
• Politics is biggest hurdle to action on climate
• Inaction on climate change is not an option
• Time to add in the true cost of climate inaction
• Carmakers are recognising the climate imperative

(AU) 'Two Global Health Emergencies': Doctors Group Backs Green Stimulus

Sydney Morning Herald - Nick O'Malley

Peak medical groups representing about 75 per cent of Australia’s 90,000 doctors have written to the prime minister to ask him to make a response to climate change central to the government’s post-coronavirus economic stimulus plans.

The groups, which include bodies such as the Australian Medical Association and the College of Intensive Care Medicine of Australia and New Zealand, have called on the government to redirect funds from fossil fuel subsidies in stimulus efforts to renewable energy projects and infrastructure to promote walking, cycling and public transport.

The letter comes after a similar appeal sent on Monday by finance and industry heavyweights, including the big four banks and major corporations, also urging the government to make “sustainable investments” in areas such as health, education, clean energy and urban infrastructure as it helps rebuild the economy.

Bushfire smoke last summer led to 3000 hospitalisations for heart and lung problems, the doctors told Mr Morrison. Credit: Wolter Peeters

On the advice of the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission, the government has been advocating for a gas-led recovery on the grounds that cheaper energy would help stimulate manufacturing in Australia.

But speaking in support of the doctors’ letter, Dr Kate Charlesworth, a public health physician and PhD who is a member of the Climate Council, said that including fossil fuels in a recovery package was like “including support for the tobacco industry in an anti-smoking campaign”.

She said the government had a unique opportunity to make investments that not only created jobs during the economic recovery, but greener, healthier and cooler cities.

The letter thanks the prime minister for his leadership of the national cabinet in crafting the early response to the crisis based on scientific advice.

'Every year this silent killer is linked to the premature deaths of 3000 Australians.'

“We now join international health voices in urging our political leaders to put health at the centre of economic recovery plans,” it says.

“The world is in the middle of two global health emergencies: the viral pandemic and climate change. As we continue efforts to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we must ensure that we also have a whole-of-government approach towards addressing climate change, which also has potentially catastrophic health impacts.

“Carbon pollution and associated global warming will have profound consequences on the fundamentals of human health: clean air, water, access to food and a safe climate.”

The letter says that global warming is already exposing Australia to more frequent and severe bushfires, extreme heat events, droughts and storms, while fossil fuels were both exacerbating health problems and costing the public purse.

“The 2019-20 ‘Black Summer’ bushfires claimed 33 lives, while associated smoke engulfed our cities for weeks, causing respiratory, cardiovascular and ocular complications,” the doctors write.

“The smoke resulted in over 1300 presentations to emergency departments with asthma, more than 3000 hospitalisations for heart and lung problems and 417 excess deaths. The mental health impacts of the bushfires are likely to be present for decades.

"The fossil fuel combustion that drives global warming is also a major contributor to air pollution —every year this silent killer is linked to the premature deaths of 3000 Australians.”

According to the doctors, the annual cost to Australia from air pollution mortality alone is estimated to be between $11.1 and $24.3 billion.

Links

• Rising Temperatures Will Cause More Deaths Than All Infectious Diseases – Study
• Climate Change: Summers Could Become 'Too Hot For Humans'
• (AU) Climate Change Is The Next Health Crisis We Face
• Climate Change Is Making Mosquito-Borne Diseases Deadlier
• (AU) Australia’s ‘Failing’ Environmental Laws Will Fuel Further Public Health Crises, Nobel Laureate Warns
• How Climate Change And The Coronavirus Are Linked
• Health Impacts Of Climate Change On Children Don't Need Exaggerating
• (AU) Coalition Inaction On Climate Change And Health Is Risking Australian Lives, Global Report Finds

Sunlight Could Solve Drinking Water's Biggest Problem In 30 Minutes

Inverse - Sarah Wells

This sustainable technique can create nearly 40 gallons of clean drinking water per cycle.

Image: GETTY

Clean drinking water is one of life's essentials. However, safe drinking water isn't a reality for over 2 billion people across the world. These individuals are at risk of contracting potentially fatal waterborne illnesses like typhoid and polio.

This at-risk population is expected to grow over the next five-years as the climate crisis creates more and more water-stressed areas, according to the World Health Organization (WHO.)

Scientists have been working to solve this problem for decades, and while some solutions have found success in effectively cleaning water, those energy-heavy solutions can be hard to implement in communities without a stable electric grid.

Now, a team of scientists from Australia and China has proposed a sustainable solution that relies on sunlight to jump-start the filtration process instead of heat or electricity.

Using a super porous material to suck up salt from brackish, salty water, researchers were able to sustainably create nearly 40 gallons of clean drinking water per single kilogram of a metal material. Better yet, this drinking water was even cleaner than WHO's official guidelines.

This finding was published Monday in the journal Nature Sustainability.

"Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable source of energy on Earth."

The study's lead author Huanting Wang, a professor of chemical engineering at Monash University in Australia, says that his team's approach makes use of the planet's most abundant resource: sunlight. Their solar-powered method desalinates brackish, or stagnate, water more sustainable than previous methods.

"[T]hermal desalination processes by evaporation are energy-intensive, and other technologies, such as reverse osmosis, has a number of drawbacks, including high energy consumption and chemical usage in membrane cleaning and dechlorination," Wang says. "Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable source of energy on Earth."

Wang and his colleagues explain in the study that a sustainable energy source, like sunlight, would be especially useful for communities that may not have access to a reliable electric grid necessary for other methods of desalination.

Using darkness as well as visible light, researchers can coax this special material into absorbing salt from water at incredibly fast speeds. Nature Sustainability

How does it work — While sunlight is an important part of this process, another key player is the material the researchers chose to use. This material is a type of metal compound that is composed of metal ions configured into a crystalline pattern — not unlike the salt it aims to absorb.

Because of its unique crystalline structure, this compound is incredibly porous, with so many nooks and crevices within it that its overall surface area is actually the largest per unit measure of any known material.

So large in fact, that scientists estimate the entire area of a football field could fit within a single teaspoon of this material. A characteristic that makes it really effective at sucking up salt from water.

The researchers further enhanced the absorption of this material by adding another material to its pores, called PSP-MIL-53. This material is characterized by having "breathing effects," and is able to promote efficient absorption.

After testing this material on both natural saltwater and synthetic saltwater, they found that the compound was able to absorb enough water in 30 minutes to create nearly 40 gallons of fresh drinking water per single kilogram of the material.

When analyzing the resultant water, the researchers measured its total dissolved solids (TDS) to be less than 500 parts per million — a standard even above that recommended by WHO, which categorizes clean drinking water as having TDS no greater than 600 parts per million.

The initial absorption is done in the dark but a four-minute exposure to sunlight causes the material to release its collected salt and begin the absorption process again for many more cycles.

"This study has successfully demonstrated that the photoresponsive [metal compounds] are a promising, energy-efficient, and sustainable adsorbent for desalination," said Wang. "Our work provides an exciting new route for the design of functional materials for using solar energy to reduce the energy demand and improve the sustainability of water desalination."

What's next — In addition to helping provide a sustainable solution to creating clean drinking water for communities with poor energy infrastructure, the researchers also say that this approach could be repurposed in the future for the absorption of other compounds and minerals, creating a sustainable solution for mineral mining as well. What has to happen next is determining how to get this tech out of the lab, and into the field.

Links

• A sunlight-responsive metal–organic framework system for sustainable water desalination
• Breakthrough technology purifies water using the power of sunlight
• Water breakthrough: Device uses solar power to produce clean water - and electricity
• 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home, more than twice as many lack safe sanitation
• Environmental and social determinants of health
• Drinking-water
• Guidelines for drinking-water quality
• Solar Energy

This Worst-Case Climate Scenario Might Be The Most Realistic

Popular Science - Ula Chrobak

Climate scientists are still debating what's the most likely outcome, though none of them are looking good.

A worst-case climate scenario will mean many more severe storms in our future. Artur Aldyrkhanov/Unsplash

With news every day of environmental protections being stripped away, hotter summers, more powerful storms, and biodiversity in crisis, it’s perhaps easy to assume we’re on a dangerous path for climate change. However, among climate scientists, there’s a surprising amount of debate around the so-called “worst-case” scenario and whether it’s fair to say we’re going down that route.

The technical term for this worst-case scenario is Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first used the RCPs in preparing their Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014.

There are four main RCPs: 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, 8.5. The numbers represent different values for radiative forcing, a measure of how much of the sun’s energy the atmosphere traps. Starting with 2005, the RCPs project the trajectory of greenhouses gas into 2100. Each projection has different assumptions about future human population, economic activity, and fossil fuel use.

All except RCP 8.5 include climate change mitigation. For that reason, it’s sometimes also called a “business-as-usual” scenario—inA which we continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with abandon, including by increasing coal use by about 500 percent by 2100.

On Monday, Christopher Schwalm and colleagues at the Woods Hole Research Center published a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that argues we are indeed in line with RCP 8.5′s trajectory. But other scientists argue that RCP 8.5 doesn’t provide an accurate picture of what’s happening now, and is especially unlikely as a future scenario moving into 2100.

Schwalm found that, since the RCPs were developed, we’ve been closest to that worst-case pathway. For the past 15 years, our greenhouse gas emissions have tracked most closely with those projected under RCP 8.5.

“It was designed to track the high end of what might be plausible,” says Schwalm. But it appears to match what’s happened since then and into the near future. “It is a very good characterization of where we are going to be if current trends are simply extrapolated out forward in time … And it tracks historical emissions within 1 percent.”

Schwalm and his team also considered where we might be heading. Putting together historical emissions, energy-related emissions forecasts created by the International Energy Agency, and policy commitments by countries, they projected where we might end up in 2030 and 2050. That pathway, it seems, is somewhere between the emissions of RCP 4.5 and 8.5.

The authors argue that if you consider some of the factors the RCPs don’t include—including complex feedback loops like permafrost degradation that will probably result in greater emissions—it’s best to plan for an RCP 8.5 world.

Schalm thinks that, considering how close we are to matching the RCP 8.5 path now and into the next couple decades, it’s worth using it as a tool in planning. If you’re building a dam today that needs to sustain the impacts of a warmer climate, it may be wise to consider what an RCP 8.5 world will do to the intensity of storms in 2050 just in case.

“The overall terms of the debate, in terms of trying to understand what a useful scenario is, really have to be much more focused on the near term as opposed to the end of the century,” says Schwalm. “That is much more important, both from a policy standpoint and just from a standpoint of human relatability, than some technical discussion about the level of coal use that may or may not happen 80 years from now.”

Not all climate scientists agree with Schwalm. Some, including Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, have issues with describing RCP 8.5 as similar to our current track because its underlying assumptions about energy use don’t match reality.

For example, it projected that the  world will use five times as much coal as it did in 2005, due to a growing population and weak market for alternative energy. As Hausfather explains, global coal use peaked in 2013 and the especially-dirty fossil fuel seems to be slowly losing steam. Although our emissions on the surface are similar to the 8.5 track right now, we’ve already started moving away from it’s assumptions on fossil fuels.

Hausfather says that framing this climate scenario as the one we’re on track for is misleading. He says that RCP 8.5 way underestimates emissions that rise from changing land uses (think, a forest being chopped down for use in agriculture), and conversely overestimates energy emissions.

Therefore, while total emissions so far match the worst-case projection, it’s not because we’ve been burning fossil fuels at quite the rate projected by RCP 8.5. As Hausfather put it, “It’s the right answer for the wrong reason.”

The RCPs were formulated in 2005, and a lot has changed in energy and policy since then. Experts have estimated that, based on the policy commitments countries have made since then, we’re most likely on track to warm the planet by 3°C at the end of century. RCP 8.5, however, puts us at around 5°C.

This is important because numerous studies use the 8.5 trajectory to predict the resulting impacts of a world warmed under that scenario. Hausfather thinks researchers should use less-extreme climate scenarios than RCP 8.5 to provide a clearer picture of what we’re potentially in store for.

Where the two scientists agree is that we should not just throw away this worst-case pathway. As Hausfather explains, there are certainly scenarios in which we could reach an RCP 8.5 level of warming by 2100, or at least close to it. And it’s probably best not to ignore a worst-case scenario with something as profoundly impactful as climate change.

Adding another dimension to the RCP projections could help. As part of its next assessment, the IPCC has developed Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, or SSPs, which interact with the RCP scenarios to influence the pathways of our emissions.

For example, in a world of “resurgent nationalism,” as one SSP describes, countries may fail to cooperate on climate agreements, and spiral toward a future of 4°C warming in 2100. Considering these SSPs, which also include information about land use change, will help scientists make better predictions.

Even as climate scientists improve these projections, though their main message hasn’t shifted much over the decades. “The overall narrative that was articulated some 30, 40 years ago, is really the exact same one that we have today, which is we have to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels,” says Schwalm. “And the sooner we do that, the better.”

Links

• Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)
• The latest summer forecast calls for deadly heat waves
• Global warming is forcing species to reorganize their ecosystems
• The Arctic might be a methane time bomb—or not
• Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading
• The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview
• Trump’s latest executive order could let agencies shirk environmental responsibility