SE Asia power plants seen clashing with UN climate goals
https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/specia ... recent_box
Almost 84% of Southeast Asia’s planned and existing fossil fuel power plants are incompatible with future scenarios that avoid catastrophic damage from climate change, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.
The report, which comes on the heels of a major United Nations-backed study of the impacts of global temperatures rising 1.5 degrees Celsius, is based on analysis of the amount of carbon expected to be emitted over the lifespan of the plants. Those estimates are then compared to how much carbon can be released without the planet reaching certain temperature-increase limits.
The Oxford study underscores challenges facing policymakers in government and finance about what kind of power technologies to support, especially in Southeast Asia, where developing nations are seeking to bring electricity and wealth to growing populations without exacerbating climate change.
The analysis will allow governments and investors to assess whether plants align with climate goals, said Ben Caldecott, one of the study’s authors and founding director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Programme.
“We are moving away from a situation where groups can make unsubstantiated claims about how their assets or investments are aligned with climate change mitigation or the Paris agreement,” Caldecott said, referring to the 2015 accord among nearly 200 nations. “We can now verify and evaluate such claims objectively and transparently, and this is essential if we are to move the power sector, and indeed other sectors, towards net-zero carbon emissions.”
Powering development
Developing nations, particularly in Asia, have been a focus in the debate over energy and climate change. Recent climate-friendly policy revisions by Japanese banks, among the biggest financial backers of coal power, drew scrutiny from advocacy group Market Forces, which estimated plants in Vietnam, Mongolia and Botswana that the banks support wouldn’t be eligible for financing under their new rules.
And when HSBC Holdings Plc announced in April it would stop financing coal power plants, it included “very targeted exceptions” in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam. The bank has a three-year partnership with Oxford University and funds activities that support the aims of the sustainable finance programme, according to Zoe Knight, managing director of HSBC Centre for Sustainable Finance. Thursday’s report was supported by a grant from the bank.
About 88% of existing and 56% of planned fossil fuel power plants, including gas-fired facilities, in Southeast Asia don’t meet the emissions thresholds for keeping global temperatures within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, Caldecott said. About 18% of existing and 47% of planned units are incompatible with a less-stringent goal of keeping temperature rise within two degrees.
Vietnam, which has the region’s largest fleet of fossil fuel-fired assets, has almost 87% of its 314 current and planned plants incompatible with a 1.5-degree scenario, according to the report. Half of the plants don’t meet the 2-degree threshold and 20% not even a 3-degree limit.
“This highlights the scale of premature closures required to meet climate change objectives and the potential for significant asset stranding in the future,” according to the report.
Global Warming 2
Re: Global Warming 2
May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil know`s you`re dead!
Re: Global Warming 2
Yes, they're heading into the 21st Century using the fuel of the 19th!
Incidentally, I think there might be a future in solar farming in Issan, the land is cheap, there isn't enough rainfall for much profitable agriculture and in some areas, you now have quite a bit of industry around to use the energy. I think that as long as you weren't too far from a city or other infrastructure, it would be a realistic solution to energy needs.
Incidentally, I think there might be a future in solar farming in Issan, the land is cheap, there isn't enough rainfall for much profitable agriculture and in some areas, you now have quite a bit of industry around to use the energy. I think that as long as you weren't too far from a city or other infrastructure, it would be a realistic solution to energy needs.
Re: Global Warming 2
Climate change: Can 12 billion tonnes of carbon be sucked from the air?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46345280
Is it remotely feasible to remove 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air? Every year. For decades to come.
That's the challenge posed by the latest conclusions of the UN's climate science panel.
It says that only by pulling this heat-trapping gas out of the atmosphere can we avoid dangerous climate change.
But according to one leading researcher, there's a bit of a hitch: "We haven't a clue how to do it".
The problem is that scientists reckon that even if the world manages to cut emissions of the gas, it will no longer be enough to avoid the worst impacts.
We've got to go a step further, they say, and find ways of doing something never attempted before: get rid of the gas that's already out there. And get started on it as soon as possible. On an unimaginable scale.
What ideas are around?
The most headline-grabbing solution is for giant machines to filter the air and strip out the gas, as my colleague Matt McGrath has reported.
But although the costs are falling, they remain very high and many wonder whether it's feasible to plaster the planet with so much hardware.
Forests do the job of soaking up carbon dioxide, because the trees need it to grow, but if they're left to rot or are burned, the gas will be released back out again.
There are schemes for fertilising the oceans to encourage plankton to flourish, absorb CO₂ and drag it to the ocean floor - but there are risks of unintended consequences.
Yet another avenue is to mimic a geological process known as weathering, in which rocks are broken down in a chemical reaction that draws carbon dioxide from the air.
This happens all the time naturally but took off in spectacular fashion more than 400 million years ago.
In an ancient chain reaction, as land-based plants evolved to become larger, it's believed their roots sought to extract more mineral nutrients from the rocks, eroding them and exposing them to the air.
That in turn led to a massive reduction in CO₂ in the atmosphere. Could the same effect be repeated?
Prof David Beerling hopes so.
A scientist at Sheffield University, he's leading a ten-year project with a £10m budget from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate the climate potential of rock.
How could rock help tackle global warming?
The concept is to take the volcanic rock basalt, grind it up into a powder and then scatter it on fields.
Trials on a research farm in Illinois have found that the basalt acts as a fertiliser, boosting crop yields, which might help persuade farmers to use it instead of high-carbon artificial fertiliser.
And early results from smaller experiments in Prof Beerling's lab in Sheffield show a more profound benefit: that the presence of the rock in the soil also boosts the amount of carbon dioxide that's taken up, maybe by as much as four times.
As part of the project, trials using basalt have started in Malaysia and Australia to see how different environments affect the results.
The vision is for the biggest emitters such as the US, China and Brazil to take this up, use basalt on their vast agri-businesses and - ideally - soak up a few billion tonnes of CO₂.
Prof Beerling knows that some regard this as over-optimistic but he is clear that a grand strategy is needed.
"Once CO₂ goes up into the air, it doesn't come down unless you do something about it, and the effects last for millennia. And once the ice sheets go, that's it," with millions of people living on or close to coastlines at risk.
"At the moment we have no idea how to remove billions of tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere… it's an enormous technological challenge that dwarfs anything we've seen before."
Where would all this rock come from?
If it all had to be freshly dug up, the environmental cost might doom the idea from the start.
But the industrial age has cleared billions of tonnes of the right kind of rock from open-cast mines and has also generated massive amounts of "slag" - waste from iron and steel production - which could also be used.
The practical challenges are obviously immense. But the slag itself, which historically was dumped unwanted in mountainous heaps, is surprisingly good at trapping CO₂.
Dr Phil Renforth of Cardiff University has been gathering samples from some forgotten corners of Britain's industrial heritage. I joined him on a dark hillside in south Wales.
"Globally we produce half a billion tonnes of slag around the world," he said, "and that could capture something on the order of a quarter of a billion tonnes of CO₂.
"So it's not going to do everything but it might be relevant for us."
When might any of these ideas be ready?
That's a question that usually produces shrugs. Too little is known at this stage.
I ask Prof Beerling when the basalt-spraying technique might be in use, assuming it's eventually proven to work on a large scale.
"The infrastructure for farmers to deploy basalt on their crops is already in place. If proven safe and effective, it might be deployable within a decade or two," he says.
Yet all the time, even more CO₂ is being added to the atmosphere - and with few options for reversing it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46345280
Is it remotely feasible to remove 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air? Every year. For decades to come.
That's the challenge posed by the latest conclusions of the UN's climate science panel.
It says that only by pulling this heat-trapping gas out of the atmosphere can we avoid dangerous climate change.
But according to one leading researcher, there's a bit of a hitch: "We haven't a clue how to do it".
The problem is that scientists reckon that even if the world manages to cut emissions of the gas, it will no longer be enough to avoid the worst impacts.
We've got to go a step further, they say, and find ways of doing something never attempted before: get rid of the gas that's already out there. And get started on it as soon as possible. On an unimaginable scale.
What ideas are around?
The most headline-grabbing solution is for giant machines to filter the air and strip out the gas, as my colleague Matt McGrath has reported.
But although the costs are falling, they remain very high and many wonder whether it's feasible to plaster the planet with so much hardware.
Forests do the job of soaking up carbon dioxide, because the trees need it to grow, but if they're left to rot or are burned, the gas will be released back out again.
There are schemes for fertilising the oceans to encourage plankton to flourish, absorb CO₂ and drag it to the ocean floor - but there are risks of unintended consequences.
Yet another avenue is to mimic a geological process known as weathering, in which rocks are broken down in a chemical reaction that draws carbon dioxide from the air.
This happens all the time naturally but took off in spectacular fashion more than 400 million years ago.
In an ancient chain reaction, as land-based plants evolved to become larger, it's believed their roots sought to extract more mineral nutrients from the rocks, eroding them and exposing them to the air.
That in turn led to a massive reduction in CO₂ in the atmosphere. Could the same effect be repeated?
Prof David Beerling hopes so.
A scientist at Sheffield University, he's leading a ten-year project with a £10m budget from the Leverhulme Trust to investigate the climate potential of rock.
How could rock help tackle global warming?
The concept is to take the volcanic rock basalt, grind it up into a powder and then scatter it on fields.
Trials on a research farm in Illinois have found that the basalt acts as a fertiliser, boosting crop yields, which might help persuade farmers to use it instead of high-carbon artificial fertiliser.
And early results from smaller experiments in Prof Beerling's lab in Sheffield show a more profound benefit: that the presence of the rock in the soil also boosts the amount of carbon dioxide that's taken up, maybe by as much as four times.
As part of the project, trials using basalt have started in Malaysia and Australia to see how different environments affect the results.
The vision is for the biggest emitters such as the US, China and Brazil to take this up, use basalt on their vast agri-businesses and - ideally - soak up a few billion tonnes of CO₂.
Prof Beerling knows that some regard this as over-optimistic but he is clear that a grand strategy is needed.
"Once CO₂ goes up into the air, it doesn't come down unless you do something about it, and the effects last for millennia. And once the ice sheets go, that's it," with millions of people living on or close to coastlines at risk.
"At the moment we have no idea how to remove billions of tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere… it's an enormous technological challenge that dwarfs anything we've seen before."
Where would all this rock come from?
If it all had to be freshly dug up, the environmental cost might doom the idea from the start.
But the industrial age has cleared billions of tonnes of the right kind of rock from open-cast mines and has also generated massive amounts of "slag" - waste from iron and steel production - which could also be used.
The practical challenges are obviously immense. But the slag itself, which historically was dumped unwanted in mountainous heaps, is surprisingly good at trapping CO₂.
Dr Phil Renforth of Cardiff University has been gathering samples from some forgotten corners of Britain's industrial heritage. I joined him on a dark hillside in south Wales.
"Globally we produce half a billion tonnes of slag around the world," he said, "and that could capture something on the order of a quarter of a billion tonnes of CO₂.
"So it's not going to do everything but it might be relevant for us."
When might any of these ideas be ready?
That's a question that usually produces shrugs. Too little is known at this stage.
I ask Prof Beerling when the basalt-spraying technique might be in use, assuming it's eventually proven to work on a large scale.
"The infrastructure for farmers to deploy basalt on their crops is already in place. If proven safe and effective, it might be deployable within a decade or two," he says.
Yet all the time, even more CO₂ is being added to the atmosphere - and with few options for reversing it.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
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laphanphon
- Guru
- Posts: 787
- Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:15 am
Re: Global Warming 2
Sounds like another way for the elite to tax you, then finance their overpriced, useless solution, to their made up crisis.
Think defense contracts, and preparing for the war that will never happen.
They'll be awarding themselves all the contracts, paid for with new tax revenues of course, for their 'CO2 removal'......saving us from the next apocalypse.....
Think defense contracts, and preparing for the war that will never happen.
They'll be awarding themselves all the contracts, paid for with new tax revenues of course, for their 'CO2 removal'......saving us from the next apocalypse.....
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handdrummer
- Addict
- Posts: 5389
- Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:58 am
Re: Global Warming 2
Think defense contracts, and preparing for the war tha..t will never happen.
If nations continue to build-up there war arsenals, at some point someone will start a large scale war. "Some folks got a lot of knives and forks and they gotta cut something." In the meantime, how many wars are going on now? Or maybe we'll have, "Peace in our time" Oh Neville, wherefore art thou.
?
If nations continue to build-up there war arsenals, at some point someone will start a large scale war. "Some folks got a lot of knives and forks and they gotta cut something." In the meantime, how many wars are going on now? Or maybe we'll have, "Peace in our time" Oh Neville, wherefore art thou.
?
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Dannie Boy
- Hero
- Posts: 12206
- Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 8:12 pm
- Location: Closer to Cha Am than Hua Hin
Re: Global Warming 2
Since we’ve had true “weapons of mass destruction” there have been no global wars -plenty of serious warfare (Korean, Vietnam, a number of ME Wars), so there is a valid argument that the ability to totally obliterate most of the world with nuclear weapons has brought about the longest period of relative stability within the past century - let’s hope that a rogue nation doesn’t change the status quo.
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Stargeezer
- Professional
- Posts: 461
- Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2013 7:30 am
- Location: Canada
Re: Global Warming 2
I only have a suggestion that the US president quit having 2 B747s fly each time he goes
out of the country. Maybe a bit less use of the gas guzzling helicopter as well. Even the Senators
use 2 jets when they all fly around. I wonder how many Americans realise just how wasteful their
politicians are. For the Green people who do not think that we need to use oil anymore, well there
are a few thousand articles that use oil to be made. Most of the interiors of your vehicles. Lots of stuff
in your houses, including your clothes. all the plastics in your washer and dryers, wiring in your stoves
and in your houses for your lights, your bike seats and sports wear for the athletic types, your ski boards
for snow, water etc. your sports shoes, like all the brands, a lot of the aircraft, prop planes and airline
jets. the plastics on your household pots and pans. your computers, laptops and tablets, as well as
smartphones. Oh and the solar panels, and Windmill plastics, of course the packaging on almost everything
, you buy at the stores, and I could go on. So I believe that the world will be needing oil for a few years yet.
out of the country. Maybe a bit less use of the gas guzzling helicopter as well. Even the Senators
use 2 jets when they all fly around. I wonder how many Americans realise just how wasteful their
politicians are. For the Green people who do not think that we need to use oil anymore, well there
are a few thousand articles that use oil to be made. Most of the interiors of your vehicles. Lots of stuff
in your houses, including your clothes. all the plastics in your washer and dryers, wiring in your stoves
and in your houses for your lights, your bike seats and sports wear for the athletic types, your ski boards
for snow, water etc. your sports shoes, like all the brands, a lot of the aircraft, prop planes and airline
jets. the plastics on your household pots and pans. your computers, laptops and tablets, as well as
smartphones. Oh and the solar panels, and Windmill plastics, of course the packaging on almost everything
, you buy at the stores, and I could go on. So I believe that the world will be needing oil for a few years yet.
Pluto is my favorite planet!, especially now that we all can see close up
pictures of it.
pictures of it.
Re: Global Warming 2
The reason that so much plastic is around is basically because the feedstocks used to make it are a byproduct of oil distillery for fuel and so very cheap. If you had to extract oil purely for making plastic, it would be much more expensive and people wouldn't be able to afford to pollute the world so much by throwing it away.
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laphanphon
- Guru
- Posts: 787
- Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2004 12:15 am
Re: Global Warming 2
Yea, and tourist can stay home also.
GW ... that's some funny sh*t right there ....
If I believed in GW, and or cared that much about the planet, then I'd be living in cooler climate (no AC needed) and my mode of transport would be bicycle or horse.
The Amish way ....
GW ... that's some funny sh*t right there ....
If I believed in GW, and or cared that much about the planet, then I'd be living in cooler climate (no AC needed) and my mode of transport would be bicycle or horse.
The Amish way ....
Re: Global Warming 2
An entirely new aspect of global warming. 
I say leave them as that is what most wanted or would want. Let nature take them.
Mount Everest: Melting glaciers expose dead bodies
......"Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed," said Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association.
"We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out."......
Photos at link......
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47638436
I say leave them as that is what most wanted or would want. Let nature take them.Mount Everest: Melting glaciers expose dead bodies
......"Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed," said Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association.
"We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out."......
Photos at link......
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47638436
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
-
handdrummer
- Addict
- Posts: 5389
- Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2014 11:58 am
Re: Global Warming 2
Reminds me of that 1950's movie, The Thing. It was preserved in ice for years and when it thawed out attacked everyone in sight.
Re: Weather in Hua Hin & Thailand
A warm pool in the Indo-Pacific Ocean has almost doubled in size, changing global rainfall patterns
https://climate.gov/news-features/featu ... ing-global
Due to human-caused climate change, our planet’s ocean has been heating up at a rate of 0.06 degrees C (0.11 degrees F) per decade over the past century. But this warming isn’t uniform. In fact, recent NOAA-funded research shows that a large pool of the ocean’s warmest waters, stretching across the Indian and west Pacific Oceans, has grown warmer and almost doubled in size since 1900. This expanding warm pool not only impacts ocean life; according to the study, it is driving changes in the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), a key weather and climate pattern, and in regional rainfall around the globe.
These maps show the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool—a region where sea surface temperatures remain above 28°C (82.4°F) year-round—in November-April for 1900-1980 (top) and 1981-2018 (bottom). Darker colors mean warmer temperatures. Across the full time period studied, from 1900-2018, the warm pool has expanded on average by the size of Washington State (230,000 km² or 88,800 mi²) per year. In recent decades, from 1981-2018, the warming rate has accelerated, adding an area the size of California (400,000 km² or 154,000 mi²) each year.
The warming is uneven across the region, with greater warming in the west Pacific. This unevenness creates a temperature contrast that enhances cloud-forming winds, moisture, and energy over the region, and it draws in warm moist air from the Indian Ocean. The uneven expansion of the Warm Pool has warped the MJO—a global pattern of clouds, wind, rain and pressure, active in the winter, that starts over the Indian Ocean and travels eastward around the tropics in 30-60 days. Though the total lifespan of its global trek has stayed the same, the study finds that the MJO’s clouds and rain now spend 3-4 fewer days over the Indian Ocean and 5-6 more days over the Maritime Continent and west Pacific, fueled by heat and moisture where the warming is greater.
These changes far away in the Pacific and Indian Oceans don’t just affect weather in the tropics. Along its journey, the MJO interacts with the global atmospheric circulation; it can influence everything from monsoons and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation to tropical cyclones and other extreme events like heat waves and snowstorms in the United States.
According to the study, the warm pool expansion is linked to altered winter-spring precipitation in regions across the planet. The east and west coasts of the United States, Ecuador, the central Pacific, the Yangtze basin in China, northern India, and east Africa have all seen dryer conditions, while the Amazon basin, northern Australia, southeast Asia, and southwest Africa have seen wetter conditions. The researchers noted they can’t say for certain that all these changes are caused by the warping of the MJO. The Warm Pool itself could be affecting global precipitation by influencing additional aspects of the large-scale atmospheric circulation. Regardless of the culprit, with climate models projecting that our oceans will continue to warm, we could see these impacts on the MJO and global rainfall patterns intensify further in the future.
https://climate.gov/news-features/featu ... ing-global
- IndianOcean_WesternPacific_WarmPool_620.jpg (163.3 KiB) Viewed 592 times
Due to human-caused climate change, our planet’s ocean has been heating up at a rate of 0.06 degrees C (0.11 degrees F) per decade over the past century. But this warming isn’t uniform. In fact, recent NOAA-funded research shows that a large pool of the ocean’s warmest waters, stretching across the Indian and west Pacific Oceans, has grown warmer and almost doubled in size since 1900. This expanding warm pool not only impacts ocean life; according to the study, it is driving changes in the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), a key weather and climate pattern, and in regional rainfall around the globe.
These maps show the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool—a region where sea surface temperatures remain above 28°C (82.4°F) year-round—in November-April for 1900-1980 (top) and 1981-2018 (bottom). Darker colors mean warmer temperatures. Across the full time period studied, from 1900-2018, the warm pool has expanded on average by the size of Washington State (230,000 km² or 88,800 mi²) per year. In recent decades, from 1981-2018, the warming rate has accelerated, adding an area the size of California (400,000 km² or 154,000 mi²) each year.
The warming is uneven across the region, with greater warming in the west Pacific. This unevenness creates a temperature contrast that enhances cloud-forming winds, moisture, and energy over the region, and it draws in warm moist air from the Indian Ocean. The uneven expansion of the Warm Pool has warped the MJO—a global pattern of clouds, wind, rain and pressure, active in the winter, that starts over the Indian Ocean and travels eastward around the tropics in 30-60 days. Though the total lifespan of its global trek has stayed the same, the study finds that the MJO’s clouds and rain now spend 3-4 fewer days over the Indian Ocean and 5-6 more days over the Maritime Continent and west Pacific, fueled by heat and moisture where the warming is greater.
These changes far away in the Pacific and Indian Oceans don’t just affect weather in the tropics. Along its journey, the MJO interacts with the global atmospheric circulation; it can influence everything from monsoons and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation to tropical cyclones and other extreme events like heat waves and snowstorms in the United States.
According to the study, the warm pool expansion is linked to altered winter-spring precipitation in regions across the planet. The east and west coasts of the United States, Ecuador, the central Pacific, the Yangtze basin in China, northern India, and east Africa have all seen dryer conditions, while the Amazon basin, northern Australia, southeast Asia, and southwest Africa have seen wetter conditions. The researchers noted they can’t say for certain that all these changes are caused by the warping of the MJO. The Warm Pool itself could be affecting global precipitation by influencing additional aspects of the large-scale atmospheric circulation. Regardless of the culprit, with climate models projecting that our oceans will continue to warm, we could see these impacts on the MJO and global rainfall patterns intensify further in the future.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
Re: Weather in Hua Hin & Thailand
The above article fails to state how humans have caused this minute increase in ocean temperature.
Can "altered winter-spring precipitation" really be blamed on us?
If it can, surely the article should say so!
Can "altered winter-spring precipitation" really be blamed on us?
If it can, surely the article should say so!
Re: Weather in Hua Hin & Thailand
I don't think it needed mentioning in the article. There is tons of evidence already available.This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the ocean. The ocean has absorbed between 20% and 30% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in recent decades (7.2 to 10.8 billion metric tons per year).
The main source of ocean heat is sunlight. Additionally, clouds, water vapor, and greenhouse gases emit heat that they have absorbed, and some of that heat energy enters the ocean. Waves, tides, and currents constantly mix the ocean, moving heat from warmer to cooler latitudes and to deeper levels.
Why are the oceans heating up?
A higher amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to higher global temperatures, which then results in thermal expansion of seawater and melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
Re: Weather in Hua Hin & Thailand
You shouldn’t be questioning this. The science is settled.
