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Popular Mechanics is an American institution, a window on “how your world works” for 115 years. Amid its myriad pieces fascinating to tech geeks of all colors and strains (including Energy COOL-loving geeks), it has published quite a few pieces directly on or related to climate change over the years.  Little did I know, but that ‘climate change-related’ publishing history goes back at least 105 years.

https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/872872423049150465

The caption from the photo above:

The furnaces of the world are now burning 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly.  This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature.  The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

Here is Popular Mechanics, in 1912, talking about CO2 as a blanket around the earth, sounding somewhat like Al Gore a century later.

As to “effect may be considerable in a few centuries”, note that 1912 coal use was about 2 billion/tons/year.  We are a century later and, in addition to massive use of other fossil fuels (oil and natural gas), global coal use is about 8 billion tons/year. When you consider the increased fossil fuel use (and thus increased emissions), not surprising that a century after Popular Mechanics‘ ‘in a few centuries’ we’re already experiencing ‘considerable effect’ on the climate from increased emissions with even more significant ‘considerable effect’ in the decades to come (especially without serious mitigation efforts).

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One can’t step away from the news for a moment without something shocking. Just in: Donald Trump has evidently embraced the idea (certainly telling people it was his, but no …) of putting solar panels on the (likely never to be built) border wall.

Some days truth really is stranger than fiction… https://t.co/acXHgKsD13 pic.twitter.com/tt3EyJQiwJ

— Zeke Hausfather (@hausfath) June 6, 2017

Put aside any other issue, just how much electricity might this create?

Some very simple calculations (after the fold).

• If the solar panels cover the top of the wall, this would produce in the range of 23 million kilowatt hours (kWh) per day, on average, through the year (or 23,100 megawatt hours (mWh) or 23.1 gigawatt hours (gWh).  Per year, 8,431 gWh or 8.4 terrawatt hours (tWh).
• If solar panels were to cover the surface facing south (putting aside issues of angling or tracking), this could be increased roughly by an order of magnitude — e.g., in the range of 84 tWh/year.

Total US electricity demand is about 4000 terrawatt hours/year, thus Trump’s having solar on the top of Trump’s wall would would provide roughly 0.2 percent of total US electricity supply and about 2 percent if the entire wall were covered with solar panels when (okay, IF) constructed.

Notes:

• A Dec 2016 ‘positive’ vision of solar on the border wall.
• A 2008 vision of a US-Mexico DeserTEC (concentrated solar power, desalinization, agriculture) project.
• UPDATEs:
  • A FT calculus puts this at 3.6 tWh/year.
  • Jigar Shah estimates 6.6 tWh/year. One Way to Get Mexico to Pay for Donald Trump’s Wall
  • Business Insider
    • How much power Trump’s wall could generate if it was covered in solar panels
    • Trump floated a solar-paneled border wall with Mexico — here’s what it would look like

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Donald Trump has made the reckless announcement to turn the tide backwards, toward higher pollution options and away from great economic opportunities.

As is well known, when he goes out to golf, Trump brazenly gets away with cheating his way through a course. In seeking to communicate in language and images that Trump might understand, here is how nine swings and misses in Trump’s Paris decision.

Is this language Trump can understand?

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Debates are often presented as either/or, black/white, all/nothing when the complexity of reality is that most situations are not zero-sum, one-or-the-other.  And, that is especially true in complex environments and situations like energy systems and climate change (science, mitigation, adaptation).  In this overlapping space, some of the either/or, all/nothing type assertions:

• Consumption reduction vs clean energy growth
• Government regulation or market driven
• Nuclear power vs renewables
• Top-down vs bottom-up
• Human behavior vs technology
• Research vs deployment
• Etc … etc … etc …

Simple reality of energy is that it is ‘all-of-the-above’ (not the Obama (or a worse GOP version of) ‘All of the Above’ with full throttle pursuit of fossil fuels along with renewables) —

• Expanding renewable energy to displace fossil fuel polluting energy efficiency
• Changing consumption patterns — whether via boosting energy efficiency or shifting ‘how’ we understand/measure our success in life
• Changing business models
• Government regulations along with individual actions …
• Etc … etc …

The path toward a prosperous, secure, climate-friendly society involves a multitude of silver BBs (there is no single-point Silver Bullet), many rounds of silver buckshot. Anyone reading this space more or less ‘knows’ this, even if there will be lots of disagreement on details.  Some silver BBs (sometimes mistakenly seem by people as Silver Bullets, even as they are significant), like solar on the rooftop, are highly visible. Others — like how much insulation there is in a home — are remote from daily thinking, seemingly out-of-sight/out-of-mind and even obscure from most people’s conception of ‘energy solutions’.

For example, as to obscure for connectivity to climate change, reducing work weeks fosters higher productivity, increases happiness, and leads to improved societal functionality … and leads to lower consumption life-styles with, therefore, lessened climate impacts.

One of those arenas of ‘either/or’ relates to ‘techno-optimism’, both to those who seem to look to technology for ‘the’ solution and, conversely, those who decry technological ‘solutions’ in a perverse Luddite obsession.  Technology, obviously, has enabled humanity to dig (literally, when one considers mining machines that are some of the largest pieces of equipment in the world) the ‘climate hole’ while technology also offers multiples of paths toward both ‘stop digging the hole’ and starting to fill it up.

And, many of these ‘technology silver BBs’ re climate change aren’t really perceived nor were they developed with ‘climate’ as a central focus.  Take additive manufacturing (think 3D printing) and digitization of the economy. Both of these have a myriad of business-model reasons for development, have been significantly changing the world economy, and have the (very real) potential of massively shifting the global economy — perhaps quite rapidly.

Brian Motherway, who heads the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Efficiency Division, has a piece on ‘brightness as a service‘ that points to how 3D + digitization could drive major efficiency through the global economy.  The title of the post (liking those words sparked writing this post) comes from what might be the extreme example of that payoff:

Floating Barry Wilmore

When astronaut Barry Wilmore needed to carry out repairs on the International Space Station in December 2014, he lacked a socket wrench needed for the job. Previously, this would have meant waiting months for the next supply rocket, or sending a specific flight at great cost. Not anymore. Back on Earth, engineers designed the specific tool on their computer, emailed the file back to the space station where it was manufactured on a 3-D printer and used successfully.

This story probably holds a world record for the single-most impressive energy efficiency action: firing an email instead of a rocket to deliver a tool.

What is the value stream here for ‘firing an email instead of a rocket’?

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This guest post from Martin Smith provides a taste (and, truly, just a taste)  of the things happening around the world, related to clean energy and reducing fossil foolish dependences. If Team Trump would get their minds out of promoting 19th century energy, leveraging knowledge of 20th century energy, and turn to 21st century realities — they could put in place policies that would leverage the amazing solar, wind, efficiency, etc advances to truly #MAGA (economically and in terms of world standing).

This may sound a wee bit melodramatic but something just happened that changes everything. The discovery of fire, the wheel, electricity and fossil fuels, combined with our self-destructive nature, actually doomed mankind and the earth to extinction. In the past few years we pushed our atmosphere beyond a sustainable level of CO2 (400ppm). Our planet is hanging on by a thread.

But something truly amazing just happened.

In January 2017, China announced the cancellation of 104 new coal-fired power plants, which would have produced about the same amount of coal electricity currently produced in the United States.

 

China Cancels 104 Coal Plants

India just announced on Monday May 22, that it has canceled 14 gigawatts of coal-fired plants, about the same as the amount currently produced in the U.K.

India Cancels Coal Power Stations as Solar Prices Hit Record Low

These are world changing, historic developments and it’s not because China and India have a new found respect for the environment. It’s because the cost of utility-scale solar energy fell below the cost of coal for the first time in 2016, and it’s still falling.

Solar Was the Cheapest Source of Electricity in 2016

And then, this happened. Tucson Electric just signed a record power purchase agreement to buy solar power at under 3 cents per kilowatt hour ($30 per megawatt hour). This cut U.S. solar prices in half, well below any other available source. The average U.S. residential price for electricity is nearly 13 cents per kWh, and the average commercial price is 10.5 cents per kWh.

Arizona utility signs record deal, cutting US solar power prices in half

Millions of activists have been pushing hard for decades, but could barely slow the growth of coal. But now the ground has shifted. Even large investment firms like Goldman Sachs are pushing investors into clean energy. This is opening up capital markets and helping proven green technology scale up.

So the world is saved but only if enough of us pitch in to help push us over the top. To survive, we have to reduce our atmospheric CO2 to about 350 ppm. We are at a significant and positive tipping point. We no longer have to appeal to people’s better angels and hope they grow a conscience. We just have to let more people know what is happening and get more people to help. Everyone likes great news! Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your family. We can do this!

2016 was first year wind and solar came in lower than coal and natural gas

The cost of wind and solar has dropped dramatically over the past seven years

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Cue the world’s smallest violin for climate science denier/confuser Bret Stephens.

Hillary Clinton is emerging into more public engagement. There was her strong speech at Wellesley earlier today (full video after the fold).  And, here is an engrossing New York magazine article Hillary Clinton Is Furious. And Resigned. And Funny. And Worried. Much of that article focuses on ‘why’, just why is misogynist Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

Part of the reason … media both-siderism giving credibility to the incredible (the incredibly insane, damaging, etc … #AlternativeFacts) along with having ‘right-wing advocacy press’.  As per Clinton,

The press, she believes, didn’t make it any easier. “Look, we have an advocacy press on the right that has done a really good job for the last 25 years,” she says. “They have a mission. They use the rights given to them under the First Amendment to advocate a set of policies that are in their interests, their commercial, corporate, religious interests. Because the advocacy media occupies the right, and the center needs to be focused on providing as accurate information as possible. Not both-sides-ism and not false equivalency.”

False equivalency … as per giving equal weight to a peer-reviewed climate scientist and an industry-paid science-denialist lobbyist so that ‘both sides’ get equal time.

Sadly, Clinton (and others) don’t see the situation improving.

The impulse toward false equivalency is only getting worse, in her opinion. “The cable networks seem to me to be folding into a posture of, ‘Oh, we want to try to get some of those people on the right, so maybe we better be more, quote, evenhanded.’?”

This sparked a follow-on

When I mention MSNBC’s hiring of conservatives including George Will, and The New York Times’ new climate-change-skeptic opinion columnist, Bret Stephens, her brow furrows.

“Why … would … you … do … that?” she says. “Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people. So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision. But I don’t think it will work. I mean, they’re laughing on the right at these puny efforts to try to appease people on the right.”

Let’s take this in for a moment.

First, she’s right, who do they think they’re fooling? The NYTimes is begging people to provide them nice things to say about Trump and are hiring distorting columnists from the Wall Street Journal (Stephens). What do they think, all of a sudden Breitbart will suddenly start encouraging people to buy subscriptions? Clinton is right, “these puny efforts to appease” are being laughed at by the right while distressing those living in reality and concerned about real issues like climate change.

And, when it comes to reality, Hillary Clinton is (again) right — people want truthful engagement from outlets like the NYTimes and MSNBC.

People … would … appreciate stronger arguments on … the most existential challenges … climate change being one …

And, both George Will and Bret Stephens are columnists who have used their (pretty huge) soap boxes to promote confusion about climate science & the climate science consensus, to attack climate scientists and science, and to undermine efforts to make progress in addressing (mitigation and adaptation) climate change.

Hillary Clinton’s commentary evidently got under Bret Stephens’ skin:

https://twitter.com/BretStephensNYT/status/868237430167662592

Because Donald Trump was so egregiously bad that even right-wing pundits like Will and Stephens couldn’t stomach the situation, were #NeverTrump, evidently Stephens believes they are now beyond critique. Once they went #NeverTrump, reading Stephens’ implications, they evidently earned the right to be #NeverCriticized. Sorry Bret, the real world doesn’t work that way — no get out of jail card to play.

Let’s be clear, while there are a myriad of reasons for Donald Trump occupying the Oval Office even though Hillary Clinton received 3M more votes, not being sufficiently reverential to Never Trump Stephens isn’t one of them.

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Since about the middle of the Obama Administration, with the Shale Revolution driving down natural gas prices, exporting of natural gas via liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities has been ‘hot and heavy’. The Russian seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine along with use of gas as pressure on the Ukraine (and others around Europe) made international security an ever-stronger portion of the discussion.  Discussions of LNG exports, including those around the world advocating for significant U.S. LNG exports as insurance and balancing against Russia, seem to miss some significant issues.

After the fold, see some thoughts on this …

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This guest post from AstroCook is from just before Donald Trump took over the Oval Office but that timing is fundamentally irrelevant to the core of the discussion: an example of the challenge of leaping divides to spark changed thinking on climate science (and climate-science denial) even in a ‘civil’ conversation. From it:

“Faith, action, and climate change …”

“God gave us brains and the ability to learn about the environment around us, and we’d only have ourselves to blame if we fail to use them to protect the only planet we can live on.”

This was essentially the end of the conversation, as it did not progress beyond FoF’s reply that God will decide when the world will end, not humans.

I tried pleading, “But God made all the scientists too .. and they are here to understand the warning signs, so why dismiss them? Maybe God is giving us the people we need to help save ourselves.”

No answers here about how to solve/resolve bringing such a divide in weltanschauung but an interesting perspective.

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The mistaken priority of “Energy Independence” is in vogue in no small part because of the recklessly dangerous and backwards-thinking Trump Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth. The EO does not directly define the term “energy independence” (the word “independence”, for example, is only in the title) but the implication is clear. In short, that EO seeks to maximize (private profits from) exploitation of U.S. fossil fuel resources while minimizing any barriers (such as protecting human health and the environment (whether streams, wildlife, land reclamation, or the atmosphere)) to that exploitation.

[update] From today:

Today @EPAScottPruitt had a round table discussion with the Congressional Coal Caucus to talk about working toward energy independence. pic.twitter.com/tNpctACfPa

— U.S. EPA (@EPA) May 22, 2017

that sparked this great reaction:

Does @EPAScottPruitt truly not understand that nearly 100% of U.S. electricity is provided already by U.S. fuel & renewable energy sources? https://t.co/CM9p7GEBtP

— John Walke (@JohnDWalke) May 23, 2017

Recently, a journalist seeking to explore ‘just what is energy independence’ reached out for a conversation. After the fold are some musings as to ‘energy independence’, why it is simply a misleading term and rather absurd target, why energy resiliency/security/sustainability are likelier better terms, the power of efficiency, and how this EO really seems counter to any serious consideration or desire for energy independence and/or energy resiliency and/or energy security and/or energy sustainability.

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The US Geological Service issued a press release last Friday on an article/study about the threats sea-level rise create for US coasts, In Next Decades, Frequency of Coastal Flooding Will Double Globally.

Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding

Those words did not appear in the above-linked USGS press release — though they were in the press release’s draft.

“It’s a crime against the American people,” Neil Frazer, a geophysics professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa and one of the study’s co-authors, said of the line’s removal and of other efforts to limit scientific communication from federal agencies. “Because scientists have known for at least 50 years that anthropogenic climate change is a reality.”

He added: “The suppression of this information is a scandal.”

There are numerous stories of interest and concern here:

• The Team Trump anti-science censorship is real, ongoing, insidious in effects, and happening almost certainly in the shadows.
  • See The Washington Post article Interior Department agency removes climate change language from news release for more on this specific case.
• Sea-Level Rise is extremely serious, with impacts worsening in terms of coastal flooding: ‘The frequency and severity of coastal flooding throughout the world will increase rapidly and eventually double in frequency over the coming decades even with only moderate amounts of sea level rise.”
• People — including scientists — are hesitant about ‘crying foul’ …

As to the last, I tweeted this last Thursday about the press release:

Alternative world of @USGSNewsClimate in #Trump Era; #climate impacts w/o #climatechange. #1984 #NewSpeak. https://t.co/0vnTvAnkeg https://t.co/PVqNOfoBSY

— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) May 18, 2017

My tweet was after seeing this:

Note what is missing in this @USGSNewsClimate report on sea level rise and coastal flooding https://t.co/i8slvgWJEj

— Brad Johnson SUBSCRIBE TO HILLHEAT.NEWS (@climatebrad) May 18, 2017

I then shared the material with a range of climate scientists and communicators alongs with people specifically focused on sea-level rise (SLR).

From rather well-known, extremely knowledgeable, PhD expert, strong (even strident) climate hawk, the note:

The release is not shy about talking about sea level rise and SLR projections. It’s certainly possible that USGS edited out a mention of climate change, but  it equally possible that it was just a incidental omission.

After all, the actual study directly comments on climate change in its first paragraph:

Just the second and third words from the abstract of the study that page is reporting on. https://t.co/TmUJMSAy89

— Peter W (@techieshark) May 18, 2017

From a Director of a significant scientific institution, the note included (removing some potentially identifying information):

I don’t believe that there is any Trump influence on their writing and believe that they are all first rate scientists who are probably more focused on the immediate science of future sea-level rise rather than diving into climate change issues.

Neither of these people are anything close to Team Trump devotees.

Both are serious experts — in science and even in sea-level rise.

Both are well-aware of Bush Administration science censorship.

Both have expressed concerns about Trump’s lack of science knowledge and Team Trump’s anti-science passions/science denial.

Yet both were reticent, in private communication, to even suggest that they thought this was a situation of censorship.

They knew the ‘first-rate scientist’ authors and did not want, I suppose, to see the insidious hand of climate-denial censorship impacting those ‘first-rate scientists’.

Here is a situation where

• those “first rate scientist” authors were (see that Post story) willing (anxious even) to talk publicly about the censorship.
  • Note that their jobs are likely not on the line and, within their professional environments, they might actually ‘gain’ due to speaking out publicly rather than risk ‘losing their jobs’/hurting their status.
• the censorship was obvious simply through reading the piece —
  • just reading the press release made one wonder why ‘climate change’ wasn’t there in a sentence or two for context about SLR.
• the censorship did not impact the actual substance —
  • that SLR is accelerating and will lead to more coastal flooding.

Not hard to imagine situations where:

• People fear that they might lose their jobs and are reticent about speaking out;
• The censorship is more insidious and hidden, harder to discern; and,
• The censorship impacts the actual substance and conclusions, turning science into pseudo-science or actual science denial.

As to the above interlocutors, on sharing The Washington Post confirmation of the censorship, one hasn’t (yet…) responded and the other got back to me with a simple:

You were right!

I really wish that I had been wrong.

RELATED:

• Art can be powerful in communication, see Hands from the Sea about a Venice sculpture highlighting Sea-Level Rise along with a discussion of SLR issues.
• See Inside Climate News’ article Leaked Draft Shows How U.S. Weakened Climate Change Wording in the Arctic Declaration

UPDATE:  Is this ‘how’ the Post reporter found the key to getting the details?

So my husband came home this week pretty shaken up. And if any of you know Patrick, he is the most mellow guy ever. It takes a LOT to rile him.

To back up a second, let me just say (in case you don’t know), Patrick works for the US Geological Survey. In other words, he’s a federal employee.

Part of the year, Patrick drives an ATV along our California shorelines, taking data points of the sand. He and his team also drive jet skis in the surf zone in a grid-like pattern, taking more measurements of the sand below the water. He has a team of a dozen employees and is the research director of the Climate Impacts program.

So let’s get to what happened this week. A paper where Patrick wrote about his findings published. Nothing new there. He and his co-authors have been writing papers for over a decade, monitoring the shores so that we as a community can better protect the beaches and structures along the water (including airports, sanitation facilities, etc., etc.). But along the way, in his pursuit to monitor beach patterns, there’s been a distinct finding that sea level is rising and beaches are eroding–not a belief, but an actual fact he and other scientists from around the world can confirm through scores of data.

Keep in mind, Patrick’s been at the USGS for almost 14 years. Which means, he’s worked beneath the Bush, Obama, and now the Trump administrations. But here’s what’s different.

Never in the history of his career at the USGS has the government insisted on removing a phrase from a press release for one of his papers. Basically, the press release would NOT be released by the government with the phrase still in there.

What was the phrase you ask? Here’s the sentence:

“Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.”

The Department of the Interior removed the phrase “Climate change.” The first thing I though of was censorship. This administration doesn’t believe in climate change, so they removed the language from the press release. But that wasn’t the most disconcerting thing.

For every major paper Patrick’s authored or co-authored, he’s received dozens of phone interviews, and been interviewed on NPR and through local news stations to talk about the findings. Because this is important stuff, right? And reporters want to share with the community new findings so we can be more prepared as a community.

How many reporters called him after the government said they sent the press release to hundreds of reporters for the NATURE paper, one of the worlds biggest journals on the environment?

None.

Not one.

I think that’s weird. And kinda scary.