Stanford Scholar Mark Z. Jacobson Lays Out How The US Could Get To 100% Renewable Energy By 2050. David

Carbon dioxide emissions in the UK are falling. CO2 emission fell 5.8% in 2016 from the previous year. Current emissions represent a 36% reduction from 1990 levels, and are at their lowest level since 1894 (outside the 1920s general strikes).

Why? The decline of coal. Coal use in the UK has declined steadily from its peak in 1956, and has experienced a dramatic decline since 2012. Coal use in 2016 dropped 52% from 2015.

The reduction in coal use is a result of multiple factors. The biggest is the expanded use of natural gas and renewables displacing coal. Other factors include an overall reduction in energy demand, the closing of Redcar Steelworks in 2015, and the UK’s carbon tax.

Source

Climate change is hitting Georgia’s peach industry, where an unusually warm winter this year let to a dramatically reduced peach harvest.

From FiveThirtyEight:

For trees that fruit each year (such as peaches, cherries, blueberries, almonds and other fruits and nuts), cool weather is as important as warm. Cold air and less sunlight trigger the release of chemicals that halt trees’ growth, prepare them to withstand freezing temperatures and enable them to resume growing the following spring. When a tree enters this dormant state, it sets a kind of internal seasonal alarm clock that goes off once the tree has spent enough time in chilly temperatures. This countdown is measured in so-called chill hours — the amount of time the temperature is between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit. When crops don’t get the chill hours they expect, they can’t properly reset. Buds are delayed, and instead of ripening into juicy, delicious fruit, they remain small and underdeveloped.

This last winter, middle Georgia got about 400 chill hours during what Chavez described as the usual dormancy period for peaches (roughly Oct. 1 to Feb. 10). The winter before, while still on the low side, had closer to 600 chill hours. But that 200-hour difference meant several peach varieties that had produced fruit in 2016 never bloomed this year.

As shown in the last image, this reduction in chill hours is not unique to Georgia, and will impact farmers growing fruit and nut trees.

Most (59%) Americans say that stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the economic cost, but there is a sharp partisan divide. Democrats overwhelming (77%) favor stricter environmental laws and regulations, but only 36% of Republicans agree. But this 41-point opinion gap is relatively recent. In 1994, the gap was only 8 points. Yet over the decades views of Republican and Democratic voters have diverged, with the divergence occurring rapidly and dramatically starting around 2008. 

Glacier area on Mount Kilimanjaro on the Kenya/Tanzania border in East Africa decreased 85% 1912-2007; from 12.06km2 to 1.85km2. While the loss of glaciers in temperate regions (such as those in the U.S.) has been attributed to warming temperatures from climate change, glacier loss on Kilimanjaro is more likely a result of a local climate change in East Africa that occurred in the late 1800s, resulting in a drier climate. However, causes of the dramatic glacier loss remain largely unknown.

Source: Thompson, L. G., Hardy, D. R., Mark, B. G., Brecher, H. H., & Mosley-Thompson, E. (2009). Glacier loss on Kilimanjaro continues unabated. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(47), 19770-19775.

Oyster reefs are in rough shape over much of the world, threatened by over-harvesting in combination with pressures from exotic species (including disease) and pollution. This means those coastal areas are losing the valuable ecosystem services, such as water filtration and protection from storm surges, oyster reefs provide.

Source:

Beck, M. W., Brumbaugh, R. D., Airoldi, L., Carranza, A., Coen, L. D., Crawford,

C.,…Guo, X. (2011). Oyster reefs at risk and recommendations for conservation,

restoration, and management. BioScience, 61(2), 107-116. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.2.5

Changes in US tree cover since 2000 (purple is gain, red is loss)

Brad Plumer in the Washington Post explains a new study on the dramatic drop in carbon emissions in the U.S. over the past five years. This graph shows a hypothetical level of emissions that were projected based on trends from 1990-2005, compared to the actual level of emissions in 2012. It then breaks down the causes.

Plumer explains:

The recession and financial crisis, obviously, made a big difference. A weaker economy has meant less demand for energy — that was responsible for more than half the drop compared with business as usual.

Meanwhile, Houser and Mohan find the U.S. economy actually hasn’t become vastly less energy-intensive over time (the blue bar). Yes, overall efficiency has gone up — Americans are buying more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, etc. But the country is also no longer shedding manufacturing jobs as quickly as it was during the 1990s. So the amount of energy we use per unit of GDP has generally followed historical trends, improving only gradually.

The real change has come in the type of energy that the United States is using. The country is now relying more heavily cleaner forms of energy than it used to, and that explains about half of the fall in emissions

“[Electric vehicle] sales have been soaring worldwide. By 2025, more than 37 million fully electric vehicles are expected to be on the road globally, according to Navigant Research, and those EVs will be ‘cost competitive’ without subsidies.” - ThinkProgress

From the Washington Post:

"There are two ways to think about the cost of energy. There’s the dollar amount that shows up on our utility bills or at the pump. And then there’s the “social cost” — all the adverse consequences that various energy sources... end up foisting on the public."

"The blue bars represent the current market cost of various energy sources. On top of that, Greenstone and Looney have added estimated health damages from air pollution (the purple bar), as well as the cost of climate-changing carbon emissions that come with burning fossil fuels (the gray bar)."

"At the end of the paper, Greenstone and Looney argue that the government should put a price on the social costs of fossil fuels — either through a cap on emissions or a tax. “If firms and consumers faced the full cost of their energy use,” they write, “they would have a greater incentive to make more-informed and socially efficient decisions about energy consumption.”"

A recent report from the Energy Information Administration found that U.S. plant owners and operators are getting ready to retire 27 gigawatts’ worth of coal generation, or about 8.5 percent of the coal fleet, between now and 2016. Considering the substantial contribution of burning coal to climate change, coal plant retirements are one of the greatest ways to reduce carbon emissions.