2011 December 05

Chart: World Avoids Disruptive Carbon Emissions Cuts By Acting Now

If the world delays until 2020 to respect the established 2-degree limit in global warming, as appears to be the growing consensus at the Durban climate change talks, emissions cuts will much more disruptive than if sufficient action is taken now, an analysis by Climate Interactive finds:

(HT: Climate Progress)

Climate Flip-Flopper Mitt Romney: In 2004, He Supported Vehicle Carbon Limits

On Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he wanted to strip the EPA of its authority to set standards for cars and trucks that reduce tailpipe carbon emissions. Just a few short years ago, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had the exact opposite position when it came to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for our vehicles, in Romney’s landmark 2004 Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan:

IMPLEMENT STRONGER VEHICLE EMISSIONS STANDARDS

Massachusetts will adopt GHG emissions standards for new light-duty vehicles. Under Section 177 of the Clean Air Act, work will be as soon as California finalizes its standards. Starting immediately, the Commonwealth will undertake the necessary work to facilitate adoption of the new California standards as soon as they are adopted. In addition, the Commonwealth will work cooperatively with New York, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Connecticut, and other states to implement these rules and to seek regional approaches to reduce GHGs from the regional vehicle fleet wherever feasible.

The Clean Air Act authority California and Massachusetts were using to establish their own vehicle emissions standards is the very same legal authority EPA is using to move forward with its own carbon dioxide emissions standards for cars, trucks, power plants, and other very large polluters — authority reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney now says he disagrees with that decision.

GOP Strategy on Renewables: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Nissan LEAF 2.0 to Have Wireless Charging Capability, Longer Range, Cheaper Price!

Green Christmas Gift | Eco-Friendly Dog Bed by P.L.A.Y

We at GEN are undoubtedly animal lovers and for that reason are in the process of opening a cage-free boarding and training facility at our compound in Agua Dulce, CA. Seeing that we’re all about lowering our environmental impact wherever we can, we have been contacting many eco-friendly companies to try out their products for review. Enter P.L.A.Y — or Pet Lifestyle and You — a company dedicated to reducing environmental waste by recycling old bottles and turning them into pet beds. This awesome company offered to send us one of their swanky beds for large breed dogs. We tried it out and here is our honest opinion on their product:

Comfort-

This bed is SUPER plush especially considering it was made with recycled bottles. My husband decided to try it out himself and said that it is not only spacious enough for a person to lay on (in the fetal position, granted!) but its also provides ample cushion to keep him from sinking into our hardwood flooring. He also weighs about 200 pounds, by the way. It should be noted that my business partner purchased a few of Costco brand dog beds to cut costs, which are similar in size — and those beds don’t even come close to the padding that P.L.A.Y provides. Definitely a well made dog bed.

Durability-

About 4-5 dogs have already made their home on the P.L.A.Y bed, and every seam and stitch is completely in tact. In comparison again with Costco brand beds, P.L.A.Y is MUCH more durable – as the former already had snags at the seams before any dog even touched it. Since we’ve only been using the bed for about 2 weeks, it is too early to tell the true durability especially because we haven’t had too many dogs coming in and out of the facility yet. Photo below is comparing the cushion in the Costco brand bed (left) to the P.L.A.Y brand dog bed (right).

Design-

The style of this “Savannah” dog bed in the sepia/dark chocolate color scheme is absolutely stunning. The top of the bed features a glossy, almost elephant skin looking design, but colored to fit the African desert. They also have an ash grey/cool grey option that actually much more resembles elephant skin, but the brown tones were more appropriate for our indoor dog lounge area. This bed could definitely fit the more upscale home decor.

Eco-Friendly Factor-

The best part about P.L.A.Y beds, as we mentioned before, is the fact that they are made to help reduce the world’s environmental waste. An astounding 92 recycled bottles made their way into the polyfiber filling for this particular bed. Not only that, but all the tags on their products are made from F.S.C. certified paper. While it would have been nice to see the entire bed being made out of re-purposed materials, the filling is a good start.

All in all, we couldn’t find too many negative aspects about this bed. However, with a price tag of $189 USD, it seems to be more well suited for the sophisticated dog owner looking to lessen their environmental impact a bit while still considering style.

As required by the FTC: I received no monetary compensation for this review. I received a product sample for the purpose of my review. All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.

Green Christmas Gift | Eco-Friendly Dog Bed by P.L.A.Y

We at GEN are undoubtedly animal lovers and for that reason are in the process of opening a cage-free boarding and training facility at our compound in Agua Dulce, CA. Seeing that we’re all about lowering our environmental impact wherever we can, we have been contacting many eco-friendly companies to try out their products for review. Enter P.L.A.Y — or Pet Lifestyle and You — a company dedicated to reducing environmental waste by recycling old bottles and turning them into pet beds. This awesome company offered to send us one of their swanky beds for large breed dogs. We tried it out and here is our honest opinion on their product:

Comfort-

This bed is SUPER plush especially considering it was made with recycled bottles. My husband decided to try it out himself and said that it is not only spacious enough for a person to lay on (in the fetal position, granted!) but its also provides ample cushion to keep him from sinking into our hardwood flooring. He also weighs about 200 pounds, by the way. It should be noted that my business partner purchased a few of Costco brand dog beds to cut costs, which are similar in size — and those beds don’t even come close to the padding that P.L.A.Y provides. Definitely a well made dog bed.

Durability-

About 4-5 dogs have already made their home on the P.L.A.Y bed, and every seam and stitch is completely in tact. In comparison again with Costco brand beds, P.L.A.Y is MUCH more durable – as the former already had snags at the seams before any dog even touched it. Since we’ve only been using the bed for about 2 weeks, it is too early to tell the true durability especially because we haven’t had too many dogs coming in and out of the facility yet. Photo below is comparing the cushion in the Costco brand bed (left) to the P.L.A.Y brand dog bed (right).

Design-

The style of this “Savannah” dog bed in the sepia/dark chocolate color scheme is absolutely stunning. The top of the bed features a glossy, almost elephant skin looking design, but colored to fit the African desert. They also have an ash grey/cool grey option that actually much more resembles elephant skin, but the brown tones were more appropriate for our indoor dog lounge area. This bed could definitely fit the more upscale home decor.

Eco-Friendly Factor-

The best part about P.L.A.Y beds, as we mentioned before, is the fact that they are made to help reduce the world’s environmental waste. An astounding 92 recycled bottles made their way into the polyfiber filling for this particular bed. Not only that, but all the tags on their products are made from F.S.C. certified paper. While it would have been nice to see the entire bed being made out of re-purposed materials, the filling is a good start.

All in all, we couldn’t find too many negative aspects about this bed. However, with a price tag of $189 USD, it seems to be more well suited for the sophisticated dog owner looking to lessen their environmental impact a bit while still considering style.

As required by the FTC: I received no monetary compensation for this review. I received a product sample for the purpose of my review. All opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.

Hurrah for Chicago’s First Protected Bike Lane!

GM Offers to Buy Back Volt From Owners Worried by Battery Fires

New Leak of Radioactive Water Hits Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant

Aptera, Maker of 3-Wheeled Aerodynamic EVs, Is Bankrupt

To Avoid Expensive, Disruptive Rates of Emissions Cuts In Coming Decades World Must Strengthen 2020 Pledges Today

by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and Dr. Lori Siegel, in a Climate Interactive repost

Postponing commitment to ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO2 emissions reductions in decades beyond 2020 that exceed those typically seen in the current generation of energy system models, making future efforts to limit temperature increase to 2°C more expensive and disruptive than needed. Without deeper reductions than are currently pledged by 2020, future generations will have sustain very rapid rates of reduction in emissions.

In the press and in the halls of the climate negotiations some parties, including the US, have been saying that 2020 pledges are essentially fixed in the form of the voluntary commitments made under the Cancun Agreement, and that current political and economic pressures mean that the time for more ambitious commitments to emissions reductions can come only after 2020.

Using the C-ROADS simulation, we examined two scenarios for future emissions reductions, both of which would limit temperature change to 2°C. The first scenario considers if the world were already on a ‘2-degree path’ in 2020 (the “Ambition now” scenario in the graph to the left). The second scenario sets 2020 emissions to the amount indicated by the current level of ambition of the Cancun Agreement (as calculated by our Climate Scoreboard), and includes a corrective action in 2050 to keep the 2°C goal in reach (the “Wait for 2020” scenario). For the “Wait for 2020” scenario we had emissions fall steeply enough after 2020 that by 2100 the increase in temperature approximated the temperature increase in the “Ambition Now” pathway.

We compared rates of reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use between the two scenarios for the period 2020 to 2050 (as a percentage of year 2000 emissions), and found that in the “Ambition now” scenario emissions fell at 2.1% per year. In contrast, the “Wait for 2020″ showed an average rate of reduction of 4.0%.

What would such a rate of decline mean for the world?

The 2010 Emissions Gap report reviewed scenarios generated by energy system models (Integrated Assessment Models, or IAMs) and reported that “the highest average rate of emission reductions over the next four to five decades found in the IAM literature is around 3.5 per cent per year.”

We also note that a 2011 paper by Rogelj et al (reference below) which examined mitigation scenarios from models with representations of the energy system. That paper found that the average rate of reduction of industrial CO2 emissions (as a percentage of 2000 emissions), even in stringent scenarios with a greater than 90% chance of limiting temperature increase to 2°C, ranged from 3.1 to 3.3 %.

While these studies do not set an absolute upper limit on the feasible rates of reductions of emissions they do contain realistic constraints on the rates of scale-up of low-carbon energy and the turnover of existing fossil fuel-using capital. Achieving higher rates of reduction after 2020 would likely entail more cost and more disruption than the rates of emissions reduction that would be needed if the world reached for a two degree path starting in 2020.

To reduce GHG emissions, the carbon intensity of the economy must fall faster than the rate of economic growth. Given the assumptions in C-ROADS about the future growth of world GDP (3.5 % per year in the reference scenario) the carbon intensity of the global economy between 2020 and 2050 would need to fall at a rate of 5.8% per year in the “Ambition Now” scenario and 8.0% per year in the “2050 correction” scenario. Even a 5.8% per year rate of reduction would be a strong departure from historical trends, estimated to be between about 1.3 and 1.7%/year over the past 40 years[i][ii]. Business as usual will not generate the emissions reductions we need.  Delaying more ambitious commitments, and the policies needed to implement them, until after 2020, will require even more aggressive actions, with even higher costs and disruption to the economy, and, as a result, even less likelihood of implementation.

If they do not commit to greater efforts in 2020, today’s decision makers leave future generations of policy makers, business leaders, and citizens with a very difficult task indeed.

To learn more, and see the data behind these results, click here.

– Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and Dr. Lori Siegel, in a Climate Interactive repost

Related CP Post:

• IEA’s Bombshell Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11°F Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy”

International Energy Agency:  “On planned policies, rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change.”

“… we are on an even more dangerous track to an increase of 6°C [11°F]….  Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

Colorado PUC: More Wind Means Better Rates for Consumers

2010 Saw Biggest Jump in Global CO2 Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution

December 5 News: Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

Others stories below: For Solar Power, Some Breaks in the Clouds (Wall Street Journal!); Scientists confirm Himalayan glacial melting

Source: Global Carbon Project

Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.

Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

Climate Progress reported on a similar analysis last month (see “Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010, Chinese CO2 Emissions Now Exceed U.S.’s By 50%“).  Here’s more on the new study:

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE OR COMMENT

The researchers said the high growth rate reflected a bounce-back from the 1.4 percent drop in emissions in 2009, the year the recession had its biggest impact.

They do not expect the extraordinary growth to persist, but do expect emissions to return to something closer to the 3 percent yearly growth of the last decade, still a worrisome figure that signifies little progress in limiting greenhouse gases. The growth rate in the 1990s was closer to 1 percent yearly.

The combustion of coal represented more than half of the growth in emissions, the report found.

In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year, the new analysis shows. This country is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year.

The United States was surpassed several years ago by China, where emissions grew 10.4 percent in 2010, with that country injecting 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions are usually measured by the weight of carbon they contain.

For Solar Power, Some Breaks in the Clouds (Wall Street Journal)

The collapse of Solyndra LLC in September sent shock waves throughout the solar industry, but the company’s spectacular flameout hasn’t completely scared investors away from the sector.

Thin-film solar panel maker HelioVolt Corp., a Solyndra competitor before the latter shut down, has collected a $50 million investment from South Korean conglomerate SK Group. The Asian connection could prove noteworthy—one of the reasons Solyndra and other solar manufacturers have caved is pressure from Chinese competitors that have benefited from lower production costs there.

Meanwhile, semiconductor-industry veteran Ashok Sinha’s solar manufacturing start-up, Sunpreme Ltd., recently raised $50 million in new funding. One lesson Mr. Sinha drew from Solyndra’s failure is not to take too much money too early. “We have to moderate our growth,” he says. “This is not the time to ask the investors, even if they were willing, for $500 million to set up a huge factory. We want to go a couple of steps and prove that we have a truly decisive cost advantage.”

In other recent solar funding,Firsthand Technology Value Fund has backed Skyline Solar Inc., a maker of solar systems. “It takes a little bit of faith, belief, courage, delusion—something like that—to invest in solar these days,” says Kevin Landis, portfolio manager at Firsthand. He says he believes that even as more bankruptcies will come in the solar industry, some companies will thrive….

Overall, clean-technology investments in the U.S. surged 73% in the most recent quarter from the third quarter of last year, to $1.1 billion, according to an Ernst & Young LLP analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource. The number of deals increased 36% from a year earlier, to 76.

Scientists confirm Himalayan glacial melting

KATHMANDU — Glaciers in the Himalayas have shrunk by as much as a fifth in just 30 years, scientists have claimed in the first authoritative confirmation of the effects of climate change on the region.

The findings, published in three reports by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), show Nepal’s glaciers have shrunk by 21 percent and Bhutan’s by 22 percent over 30 years.

The reports, launched on Sunday at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, form the most comprehensive ever assessment of the extent of Himalayan ice melting.

They follow a discredited announcement by scientists in 2007 that the region’s glaciers would be gone by 2035.

A three-year Sweden-funded research project led by ICIMOD showed 10 glaciers surveyed in the region all are shrinking, with a marked acceleration in loss of ice between 2002 and 2005.

Another study found a significant reduction in snow cover across the region in the last decade.

“These reports provide a new baseline and location-specific information for understanding climate change in one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said.

“They substantially deepen our understanding of this region… while also pointing to the knowledge gaps yet to be filled and actions that must be taken to deal with the challenge of climate change.”

Scientists say the effects of climate change could be devastating, as the region provides food and energy for 1.3 billion people living in downstream river basins.

Climate Pollution Spikes To 10 Billion Tons In 2010

Global carbon dioxide pollution jumped by the largest amount on record last year to a total of 10 billion tons, 50 percent higher than in 1990. Fossil-fuel emissions, dominated by China and the United States, rose 5.9 percent in 2010 to 9.1 billion tons, and emissions from deforestation and other land use change was another billion tons, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international group of climate scientists. The increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, “was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003,” scientists say.

Former Vatican Exorcist Goes After Harry Potter Again

Father Gabriel Amorth, the former Vatican chief exorcist who’s been warning about the risk that J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels will tempt children into Satanism since 2000, is at it again, and this time he’s inveighing against both kid wizards and yoga practitioners. Per the New York Daily News:

“Practicing yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” Father Gabriele Amorth said this week. Those seemingly “innocuous” Potter books convince kids to believe in black magic, he said. “In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses,” said Amorth. As for yoga, it leads to Hinduism and “all eastern religions are based on a false belief in reincarnation,” the 86-year-old priest said.

In an odd way, I respect the honesty of this kind of statement, even as I think it’s ludicrous and somewhat paranoid to see the Harry Potter novels as anything other than a reaffirmation of the power of Christian theology. There’s a refreshing honesty in admitting both the power of ideas, and the fact that your doctrine may have trouble competing with other worldviews. I tend to want to be in the scrum, in part because I think well-articulated progressive visions tend to have a pretty good shot at winning the battle of ideas, and because I don’t think those ideas can survive only if they don’t face competition or opposition. But I do respect people who withdraw from the things they consider temptation entirely.

The problem for folks like Amorth is that abstinence, whether from sex or from generation-defining young adult fantasy series, isn’t likely to be a particularly effective pitch. And when you can’t convince people to abstain from culture voluntarily, bans or purges from libraries like the one instituted by a Catholic priest in a Massachusetts parish school in 2007, who said he was just instituting a “spiritual peanut butter ban on Harry Potter,” like rules that are meant to avoid exposing children to possible allergens, seem likely to result even if only on a small scale. But if I were a member of the Catholic hierarchy, I look at book bans as a fallback position rather than a victory. There are only so many enclaves you can carve out that are untouched by the larger culture. And settling for enclaves at all is an acknowledgment that your ideas have a limited appeal.

Tokyo Motor Show 2011 Exclusive: Leaf is Car of the Year, Plus 5 More Nissan Electric Cars

100 Economists Urge Obama to “Create Jobs” With New National Parks, Monuments, and Wilderness Areas

by Jessica Goad, cross-posted from TP Green

Today over 100 economists from top universities, economic firms, counties, and other groups sent a letter to President Obama urging him to protect more national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas. The signatories make the case that because the western United States is shifting from a resource extraction-based economy to one founded in tourism and the migration of Americans wanting to live close to wide open spaces, protected places are valuable economically.

As the letter stated, “protected public lands are significant contributors to economic growth.” Ray Rasker, the executive director of Headwaters Economics, who holds a Ph.D from Oregon State University, further explained that:

In the last 40 years, the fastest growth in the West has been in communities that are adjacent to protected public lands. It’s one of the West’s competitive advantages, it’s one of the strengths of the West, and investing in these sorts of public lands—the wilderness areas, the national monuments, the national parks—is a way to protect the competitive advantage of the west. This is what is creating jobs currently, and at a time when we have high unemployment, we need policies that create jobs.

Watch it:

There is a wide variety of jobs created from protecting public lands, many of which are detailed in the Center for American Progress’ recent report, “The Jobs Case for Conservation.” These include outdoor guides, construction workers restoring trails and forests, manufacturers of outdoor goods like skis and hunting equipment, engineers, and park rangers, to name just a few. The Outdoor Industry Association notes that the outdoor recreation industry supports 6.5 million jobs and $730 billion in economic growth every year.

ThinkProgress recently reported that a handful of House Republicans, such as Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), have denied that protecting the West’s special places has positive economic impacts. At a hearing last month, Bishop stated, “Contrary to claims by the administration and others, the designation of national monuments and wilderness are not a boon to local economies, but rather a detriment in most scenarios.”

Additionally, members of the Congressional Western Caucus — a group made up entirely of Republicans — labeled the designation of national monuments and wilderness expansion as “job-killing” policies in a report last year.

Jessica Goad is Manager of Research and Outreach for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. This post was originally published at Think Progress Green.

Asia Report: Mixed Signals Over Emissions

The Tax-Dodging Owners Of Zuccotti Park Owe The City $139,000 In Back Taxes

It turns out that the owners of Zuccotti Park — the historic site of Occupy Wall Street — have been engaged in some of the very same tax-dodging that many of the protesters were enraged about. The “city Finance Department says park owner Brookfield Properties and its parent company, Brookfield US Corp., currently owe the city more than $139,000 in unpaid business taxes from 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.”