Monday, June 9, 2014

One Million Views



Arctic-news blog has now received more than 1 Million views.

Thanks, contributors and all who read, shared, liked, commented and otherwise helped spread the word.

We feel strongly inspired, encouraged and obliged to keep on reporting on the dire situation in the Arctic.

Thank you!




Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Arctic sea ice in steep decline

Arctic sea ice area is in steep decline. The yellow line on the image below shows the sea ice area for 2014 up to June 1st, showing an almost vertical fall over the past few days.

[ click on image to enlarge ]
The Naval Research Laboratory image below compares the May 14, 2014, sea ice concentration (left) with the sea ice concentration forecast for June 10, 2014 (run on June 2, 2014, on the right).

[ click on image to enlarge ]
The NOAA image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies on June 3rd, 2014.


The NOAA image shows the huge sea surface temperature anomalies all over the Northern Hemisphere on June 3rd, 2014. Large areas with sea surface temperature anomalies up to 8 degrees Celsius and higher show up in and around the Arctic Ocean

[ click on image to enlarge ]
The image below shows sea surface temperature anomalies up to 1.5 degrees Celsius over the May-June 2014 period, with global average anomalies that hover just above 1 degree Celsius.



Above sea surface anomalies are very high, much higher than historic annual temperature anomalies over land and oceans, as shown on the image below for comparison.


In conclusion, the situation spells bad news for the sea ice, also given the prospect of an El Niño event projected to occur later this year. As discussed in earlier posts, the sea ice is already very thin, and as this image shows, ocean heat is melting the sea ice from beneath, while the sun is warming up the ice from above. At this time of year, insolation in the Arctic is at its highest, as Earth reaches its maximum axial tilt toward the sun of 23° 26'. In fact, insolation during the months June and July is higher in the Arctic than anywhere else on Earth, as discussed at this earlier post.

Feedbacks further accelerate warming in the Arctic, as described in the earlier post Feedbacks in the Arctic. Temperature rises of the water close to the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is very dangerous, as heat penetrating sediments there could cause hydrate destabilization, resulting in huge amounts of methane entering the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.

Obama's Power Plant Rules: Too Little, Too Late, Too Ineffective

On June 2, 2014, the Obama administration through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that states must lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted for each unit (MWh) of electricity they produce.

1. Too Little

Under the EPA rules, the nationwide goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector by 30% from 2005 levels. This will also reduce other pollutants.
Sam Carana: The goal should be an 80% cut in emissions. Reductions should not be averaged out over different types of emissions, but instead the 80% reduction target should apply to each type of emission, i.e. 80% cuts in CO2 and 80% cuts in CH4 and 80% cuts in black carbon, etc.
2. Too late

Under the EPA rules, states must meet interim targets during the 2020s, but they can delay making emission cuts provided they will on average comply with targets by 2030. Moreover, the EPA suggests that they can from then on maintain that level subsequently.
Sam Carana: For over six years, I have been calling for an 80% cut in emissions by 2020. When people now ask if I still believe such reductions are feasible given the lack of action over the years, I respond that, precisely because so little has been achieved over the years, it now is even more imperative to set a target of 80% emissions cuts by 2020. If we start cutting 13.4% off this year's emissions, and keep cutting emissions by the same amount each subsequent year, we'll be under 20% (i.e. at 19.6%) by 2020. 
3. Too ineffective

Under the EPA rules, states could comply by either reducing CO2 emissions from their power plants or buying credits or offsets from elsewehere, e.g. through cap-and-trade programs. States can choose to use existing multi-state programs or create new ones.
Sam Carana: The goal should be a genuine 80% cut in emissions in each and every state. It is good to delegate decisions to states regarding what works best locally to achieve such reductions. However, schemes such as cap-and-trade, carbon credits and offsetting keep local polluters dirty by allowing them to claim credit for progress made elsewhere. A state buying credits from beyond its borders does not genuinely reduce its own emissions, making it even harder for it to reach its next targets (which should be even tighter), while also making it harder for targets to be reached elsewhere.  
The bigger such schemes grow, the more they become fraught with difficulties, twisted with irregularities and riddled with political chicanery, making them prone to fraud and bribery, often beyond the administrative scope and legal reach of local regulators. 
Such schemes are inherently counter-productive in that they seek to create ever more demand for polluting activities; they will continue doing dirty business until the last possible 'credit' has been sold, burning the last bit of fossil fuel from irrealistic carbon budgets that are fabricated inside the dark politics of compromise, campaign-funding and complacency. 
Such schemes are designed to profit from keeping the dirtiest power plants going and prolonging their lifetime beyond any reasonable purpose, in efforts to perpetuate the scheme itself and extract further money that, instead of being used to benefit the cleaner solutions, is then often used to finance further pollution elsewhere and spread the reach of such schemes. Such dreadful conduct is typically hidden away in a web of deceit custom-made to avoid the scrutiny of public accountibility.
And what if states fail to reach targets? The EPA suggestion to use such schemes effectively delays much local action, while encouraging states to negotiate with each other. This opens up the prospect of states blaming each other and taking legal action rather than genuine action. If the trappings of such schemes make states fail to reach targets, penalties could be imposed, but that still does not guarantee that targets will be reached; furthermore, given the complexities of such schemes, policing them poses additional burdens on administrators, police, courts and lawyers. Huge amounts of money and time have already been spent on court cases to postpone action, rather than on building genuine solutions.  
The best way to cater for non-compliance is to prepare federally-administered fees, to be levied on sales of polluting products, and with the revenues used to fund federal projects that do reduce emissions. As said, it's good for the EPA to encourage states to each work out how best to reduce their respective emissions, provided that each state does indeed reach set targets. Where a state fails to take the necessary action, the EPA should resume control and call for federal fees to be imposed in the respective state. 
The Clean Air Act calls for the 'best system of emissions reduction' to reduce emissions from power plants. The best system is one that levies fees on pollution and then uses the revenues to fund rebates on the cleaner products sold locally.  
Such combinations of fees and rebates (feebates) are the most effective way to make our economy sustainable, as part of the comprehensive action that is needed to avoid climate catastrophe. For more details on comprehensive and effective action, see the ClimatePlan blog

Related

- Methane Man
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/01/methane-man.html

- Climate Plan
http://climateplan.blogspot.com

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Support methanetracker.org

by Harold Hensel


I keep thinking of this experience when I see that methane has now blanketed the entire globe with the highest concentrations in the northern hemisphere. I was signing up a young man for property insurance. We discussed coverage's and how much coverage he needed. We got almost to the end of the routine underwriting questions and I got to the one about if he had ever been convicted of arson. He said yes! Then he said, do you think that will make a difference? Do we think that the globe being blanketed with methane will make a difference?

Methanetracker.org is an important service and it is brought to you by one person, Omar Cabrera from Houston. There is nothing else like it on the internet. He has spent $30,000 of his own money to make methanetracker.org free to the public. He feels this strongly about the methane issue. If you notice the slider bar, it stops at 4/20/2014. He needs to upgrade and has run out of money to do it. He has not asked for money until he ran out of money. Methanetracker.org is very important and he should not be trying to go it alone. I think we should chip in to help him keep methane tracker going. He doesn't need that much. How to help is on the http://www.methanetracker.org/ web site.