US polar vortex: killer cold snap to give way to historic warm-up after brutal weather leaves 21 dead and millions stranded

A killer polar vortex gripping parts of the US is set to ease up and give way to a dramatic, never-before-seen warm-up.

Brutal U.S. cold leaves 21 dead and yet temperatures are to soar within days.

Brutal winds sent the mercury plummeting to -34C in the Midwest, which has been struck by a historic deep freeze, but temperatures are expected to soar by up to 80 degrees within days.

Meteorologists said past record-cold waves have never dissipated so quickly as they predicted that the region would be seeing “spring-like” temperatures by the week’s end.

Temperatures in Chicago have been at near-record lows. Amid the freezing conditions, the city reportedly experienced “frost quakes” with residents reporting loud booms.

Read the story from the Evening Standard - ”US polar vortex: killer cold snap to give way to historic warm-up after brutal weather leaves 21 dead and millions stranded.”

Winds of change: Britain now generates twice as much electricity from wind as coal

Just six years ago, more than 40% of Britain’s electricity was generated by burning coal. Today, that figure is just 7%. Yet if the story of 2016 was the dramatic demise of coal and its replacement by natural gas, then 2017 was most definitely about the growth of wind power.

Wind provided 15% of electricity in Britain last year (Northern Ireland shares an electricity system with the Republic and is calculated separately), up from 10% in 2016. This increase, a result of both more wind farms coming online and a windier year, helped further reduce coal use and also put a stop to the rise in natural gas generation.

Read the story by a Teaching and Research Fellow from the Chemical and Biological Engineering at the  University of Sheffield, Grant Wilson, on The Conversation - “Winds of change: Britain now generates twice as much electricity from wind as coal.”

Queensland land clearing could become 'tsunami', say conservation groups

A dramatic land-clearing surge in Queensland could turn into a “tsunami” in the coming year, say conservationists, the rate of notifications of planned clearing rising 30% in the past year compared with the previous three-year average.

 Queensland is already marked as a global deforestation hotspot. 

If that translates to a 30% jump in land clearing, Queensland – a region already marked as a global deforestation hotspot – could experience rates of land clearing seen just twice since detailed observations began in the 1980s.

Since July last year, 1,608 properties in Queensland have notified an intention to clear a total of almost 945,755 hectares of land. Almost all of it is “remnant” forest or bushland – a term used to describe forest that hasn’t previously been cleared. There was also an additional 80,200ha of “high-value agriculture” land approved for clearing, making a total of 1.02m hectares of clearing in the pipeline.

If it goes ahead it would undo the work of more than $1bn the federal government has spent paying other landholders not to clear their land, in order to cut carbon emissions under the Coalition’s Direct Action policy.

Read The Guardian story - “Queensland land clearing could become 'tsunami', say conservation groups.”

Trump’s energy plan doesn’t mention solar, an industry that just added 51,000 jobs

The White House website may not even mention it as part of Trump’s “America First Energy Plan” — but the U.S. solar industry continues to post dramatic job growth numbers.

Solar panels are part of the
Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric
Association’s community
gardens in Rockford, Minn. 

According to a new annual report by the nonprofit Solar Foundation, more than 51,000 solar industry jobs were added in 2016, a 24.5 percent increase over 2015. Overall, the foundation finds, some 260,000 Americans now work in the solar industry.

“Jobs have nearly tripled since we first started tracking them in 2010 and this is the fourth consecutive year that the solar industry increased its jobs number by 20 percent or more,” said Andrea Luecke, president and executive director of the Solar Foundation. (The latest numbers are as of November 2016 and are compared with November 2015.)

Read The Washington Post story - “Trump’s energy plan doesn’t mention solar, an industry that just added 51,000 jobs.”

The World Bank urges us to Turn Down the Heat!

This third report in the

Turn Down the Heat series two covers three World Bank regions: Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC); the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); and parts of Europe and Central Asia (ECA).

The data show that dramatic climate changes, heat and weather extremes are already impacting people, damaging crops and coastlines and putting food, water, and energy security at risk.

Across the three regions studied in this report, record-breaking temperatures are occurring more frequently, rainfall has increased in intensity in some places, while drought-prone regions are getting dryer.

In an overview of social vulnerability, the poor and underprivileged, as well as the elderly and children, are found to be often hit the hardest. There is growing evidence, that even with very ambitious mitigation action, warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century is already locked-in to the Earth’s atmospheric system and climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable.

If the planet continues warming to 4°C, climatic conditions, heat and other weather extremes considered highly unusual or unprecedented today would become the new climate normal - a world of increased risks and instability.

The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources change, diseases move into new ranges, and sea levels rise. The task of promoting human development, of ending poverty, increasing global prosperity, and reducing global inequality will be very challenging in a 2°C world, but in a 4°C world there is serious doubt whether this can be achieved at all.

Immediate steps are needed to help countries adapt to the climate impacts being felt today and the unavoidable consequences of a rapidly warming world.

The benefits of strong, early action on climate change, action that follows clean, low carbon pathways and avoids locking in unsustainable growth strategies, far outweigh the costs. Many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming to below 2°C. But, the time to act is now.

This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Europe and Central Asia.

Building on earlier Turn Down the Heat reports this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day (0.8°C), 2°C and 4°C warming above pre-industrial temperatures on agricultural production, water resources, ecosystem services and coastal vulnerability for affected populations

We can adapt, but other species can't, and we need them

Humans have a spectacular ability to adapt, but sadly many other species don’t.

Our native flying
 fox  - falling victim
to increased
temperatures.

The gradual increase of global temperatures has changed human behaviours a little, but the impact on other species has been dramatic.

Just this summer we witnessed the most dramatic dies-offs ever seen in Australia when more than 40 000 flying foxes died on one extremely hot day in south-eastern Queensland.

The death of the foxes was explored in a story on The Conversation headed: “Killer climate: tens of thousands of flying foxes dead in a day”.

Although portrayed as noisy pests, the foxes are a protected native species and any drop in their populations will have significant environmental ramifications as the spread seed and pollinate native trees.

Avoiding the most difficult - we need to 'speak the words'

The obvious is being conveniently avoided by most in ongoing conversations about how we mitigate and address the damage we are doing to our climate.

The amazing and palatial
BMW Edge theatre.

Necessary changes are so extensive, dramatic, demanding, confronting and contrary to the contemporary understanding of the imagined good life that no one appears game to speak the words.

Many allude to what is needed in subtle ways, but fearing alienation from the mainstream or worse, a social shunning by most they avoid the direct spelling out of the urgent and needed action.

Let us be clear - everyone needs to stop doing anything that is the outcome of burning fossil fuels.

Melbourne’s February SustainableLiving Festival was wonderful and on show was a powerful exhibition of peoples’ innovative nature and skills, along with a fascinating array of speakers, films and demonstrations all aimed at helping us better understand how we could live in quieter and less energy intensive manner.

The festival, despite all the wonderment and energy it brought to the conversation about addressing climate change, would not have been possible, at least on that grand scale, with the input of fossil fuel powered energy.

Just on a personal sense, let’s consider my debt to fossil-fuels:

Journey to and from Melbourne by diesel powered train;

Travel within Melbourne on trams using electricity from fossil-fuel powered generators;

Food and drinks from establishments relying entirely on electricity;

Business cards, brochures and various handouts (some of which I brought home) were all available because of a finite resource;

The palatial beauty of the BMW Edge theatre (the venue of many presentations) was an exhibition of the power of fossil-fuels;

Many of those who spoke at the festival, or were exhibitors or worked on an exhibit, were able to participate because of energy derived from fossil-fuel;

In fact, most everything in sight, including the well-manicured plants and grass, existed because of fossil-fuel.

My trip, enjoyable and rewarding as it was, was made possible because of energy from fossil-fuels. That process, in itself, is not sustainable.

Clearly, if we are to slow the damage to our atmosphere and so slow climate change, we need to end our dependence today, not tomorrow, on fossil-fuels.

That, I know, is an unrealistic call, but the intent of the innovation on show at the Melbourne festival needs to be redirected from solving a particular problem, as important as that is, to rather helping the broader community understand how it can emotionally deal with a revolutionary change to their lifestyle.

Our way of living, even that of the Sustainable Living Festival, is predictably and scientifically impossible to sustain and so rather await the catastrophic collapse of society we should be devoting time, energy and effort to understanding an alternative.

The alternative is about close knit, resilient,  multi-use communities with a grasp on their governance, in which the basic method transport is walking or cycling, basic foods are available locally, and neigbourhoods, in which sharing is a way of life, are about people, rather than machines.

Arriving at that point will only happen with a significant “bottom-up” push accompanied by an equally courageous “top-down” leadership.