Stephan: As this article lays out it is possible to convert to 100% renewable energy, and as the climate change data makes clear the need to do this is undeniable and urgent.
Renewable energy scientists are advocating a “redesign of the global energy system.” Credit: yangna / E+ / Getty
Setting out to rebut defeatist and cynical claims that transitioning the entire global energy system to 100% renewables by 2035 is infeasible, a group of dozens of leading scientists from around the world unveiled a joint declaration Tuesday arguing that such a transformation of the fossil fuel-dependent status quo is not only necessary to avert climate disaster but eminently achievable.
What’s required, argue the 46 signatories of the new 10-point declaration, is sufficient political will, international coordination, and concrete action on a massive scale to institute a total “re-design of the global energy system.”
“We have lost too much time in our efforts to address global warming and the seven million air pollution deaths that occur each year, by not focusing enough on useful solutions,” said Mark Jacobson, director of the atmosphere/energy program and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
“Fortunately, low-cost 100% clean, renewable energy solutions do exist to solve these problems, as found by […]
Stephan: All of us have seen endless media reports about how the Covid-19 pandemic began in a Chinese lab in Wuhan. Well, the World Health Organization has been trying to ascertain if this is correct, and have concluded that it is not. Here is the story.
Wuhan Lab Credit: NBC
It is “extremely unlikely” that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged, according to the head of a team of experts that on Tuesday released the first details of its fact-finding mission into the virus’s origins.
Dr. Peter Ben Embarek from the World Health Organization said it was more likely that the virus, which has now claimed more than 2.3 million lives worldwide, had jumped to humans from an animal.
“Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research,” he said at a press conference.
The theory that the virus was introduced into the human population as a result of a lab accident did not warrant future study, he added.
There was speculation early on in the pandemic — partially fueled by then-President Donald Trump — that the virus was either manufactured at or accidentally leaked from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of […]
Stephan: If you have been reading SR regularly you know that I have been saying for the past year that Covid-19 may be the result of a virus mutation arising in response to climate change, and that it is likely as climate change goes on we are going to see additional such pandemics as other viruses and bacteria mutate to accommodate their changed circumstances. Well, the University of Cambridge seems to agree with me.
Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favoured by bats.
A new study published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment provides the first evidence of a mechanism by which climate change could have played a direct role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study has revealed large-scale changes in the type of vegetation in the southern Chinese Yunnan province, and adjacent regions in Myanmar and Laos, over the last century. Climatic changes including increases in temperature, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide—which affect the growth of plants and trees—have changed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland. This created a suitable environment for many bat species that predominantly live in forests.
The number of coronaviruses in an area is closely linked to the number of different bat species present. The study found that an additional 40 bat species have moved into the southern Chinese Yunnan province in the past century, harbouring around 100 more types of bat-borne […]
Fred Pearce, Contributing Writer - Yale Environment
Stephan: Recently I ran a story about the collapse of a dam in India as a result of the run-off of massive glacial melt in the Himalayas. This has brought into focus the vulnerability of thousands of aging dams worldwide being stressed by climate change. In the U.S. we have many such dams, and we are doing very little to prepare for the inevitable.
Water is released from the Sanmenxia Dam in Henan Province, China in 2019 to prevent the dam from overflowing. Credit: Sun Meng/VCG/Getty
Tens of thousands of large dams across the globe are reaching the end of their expected lifespans, leading to a dramatic rise in failures and collapses, a new UN study finds. These deteriorating structures pose a serious threat to hundreds of millions of people living downstream.
ho would want to live downstream of the 125-year-old Mullaperiyar Dam, nestled in a seismic zone of the Western Ghats mountains in India? The 176-foot-high relic of British imperial engineering cracked during minor earthquakes in 1979 and 2011. According to a 2009 study by seismic engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology, it might not withstand a strong earthquake larger than 6.5 on the Richter scale.
Three million people live downriver of the dam. But their demands for it to be emptied are held up by a long-running legal case in the nation’s Supreme Court between Kerala, the state under threat, and Tamil Nadu, the state upstream that operates the dam to obtain irrigation water […]
Russell Gold and Ben Foldy, - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan: More good news about the trend out of carbon energy, and the best assessment I have read on what is happening with the emerging battery technologies that are going to be a big part of the new non-carbon era.
Credit: Niclas Ortega
Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries were first commercially used in hand-held camcorders in 1991. Laptops soon followed. A decade later, batteries enabled the rise of tech titans such as Apple Inc. by powering smartphones and wearable devices, then made their way into electric vehicles. The basic technology throughout remained pretty much the same: Lithium ions move through a liquid from the cathode to the anode, and back again.
This, however, was just the beginning. After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the battery has reached a tipping point. No longer just for consumer products, it is poised to transform the way the world uses power.
In the energy sector, affordable batteries are making it possible for companies to store electricity and harvest renewable power. In the auto industry, they are set to challenge the gas-powered engine’s centurylong domination. Costs have come down so far and so fast that most car makers expect that electric vehicles, which are currently more expensive than their gas-powered counterparts, will cost the same amount to build within the next five years.
