Carbon Brief Daily/Leo Hickman: 99:

20th December 2017
New on Carbon Brief


Guest post: Bioenergy ‘flaw’ under EU renewable target could raise emissions
Europe is currently considering a renewable energy directive that would raise the requirements to use renewable energy from a level of roughly 16% of final energy demand in 2015 to a level of 27-35% by 2030. While this is a laudable target, policymakers do need to consider very carefully some potential unintended consequences of the rules that they are proposing, writes Professor Sir John Beddington, a senior strategy adviser at the Oxford Martin School, in a guest post for Carbon Brief. "The flaw is this: the directive will use an expansive classification of bioenergy products, allowing countries, factories and power plants to claim credit as renewable fuel for using trees harvested specifically for use in power plants and not merely residues and wastes," he writes. Professor Sir John Beddington, Carbon Brief

Deforestation and drought threaten carbon storage in Borneo’s rainforests
Carbon storage in Borneo’s tropical rainforests faces a dual threat from deforestation for agriculture and droughts caused by El Niño events, a new study finds. Despite these challenges, the remaining forests on the Indonesian island of Borneo have acted as a net carbon sink over the past five decades, the lead author tells Carbon Brief. This means they have removed more CO2 from the atmosphere than they released through natural processes. The findings add “critical data to a broader picture” of how the world’s tropical forests help to tackle climate change by removing CO2 from the atmosphere, a co-author tells Carbon Brief. Daisy Dunne, Carbon Brief


Climate & Energy News


China Unveils an Ambitious Plan to Curb Climate Change Emissions
China has unveiled its plan to drastically cut its greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon trading scheme. China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and has higher emissions than north America and Europe combined. Chinese government officials gave the go-ahead to plans a carbon trading system on Tuesday, the Guardian reports. The scheme will initially cover the country’s heavily polluting power generation plants, then expand to take in most of the economy. Under the trading system, power plants will be given "credits" allowing them to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. Plants that manage stay well below their targets, by cleaning up and becoming more efficient, will be able to sell their excess permits to other power generators. The announcement comes after months of delays and setbacks, the Financial Times notes. The largest difficulty has been establishing a comprehensive data collection system, which will be crucial to allowing policymakers to set target levels and allocate carbon credits accordingly. Bloomberg reports that policymakers stopped short of naming a date for trading to begin. “After several false starts and shifting priorities and nervousness around whether or not carbon speculation will make policy enforcement difficult, the regulators have decided to be even more cautious about the market deployment,” said Sophie Lu, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Beijing. Carbon Pulse, Time and Reuters also have the story. Carbon Brief recently reported on whether reforms to the EU's Emissions Trading System will raise carbon prices. Keith Bradsher and Lisa Friedman, New York Times

EPA to end controversial contract with conservative ‘media monitoring’ firm
The Environmental Protection Agency is cancelling a $120,000 “media tracking” contract with Republican "public affairs and opposition-research firm" Definers Public Affairs amid outrage from lawmakers. An agency spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the EPA and the company had agreed to end the contract. In a separate conversation, the company’s president, Joe Pounder, said the decision was a mutual one. “Definers offered EPA a better and more efficient news clipping service that would give EPA’s employees real-time news at a lower cost than what previous administrations paid for more antiquated clipping services,” Pounder said in an emailed statement. “But it’s become clear this will become a distraction.” The reversal comes days after Mother Jones first reported details of the contract with the firm, which specialises in conducting "campaign-style opposition research" but also offers “a full-service war room that monitors a wide-range of media platforms on a continuous basis,” according to its website. The Hill also has the story. Brady Dennis, Washington Post

Tenants lose out after landlord pressure halves UK home insulation cap
Tenants could lose out on energy bill savings after the UK government has relented to landlord pressure by lowering a cap on the costs they face to upgrade the country's draughtiest homes. Landlords must improve the energy efficiency of F- and G-rated houses from April next year thanks to new regulations designed to protect tenants and cut carbon emissions. But on Tuesday the government said the costs of the upgrade would be capped at £2,500, half of what officials had originally told buy-to-let landlords to expect. “This could leave a gaping hole in the government’s plans to meet its own fuel poverty targets,” said Richard Twinn, policy adviser at the UK Green Building Council. Adam Vaughan, The Guardian

Alaskan graves sink as permafrost is swallowed by swamp
Climate change is melting cemeteries dug into the permafrost of western Alaska, leaving families to watch the graves of their loved ones disappearing forever. In Kongiganak, a village of less than 500 people on the Yukon delta, the community stopped burying its dead a decade ago. By then it was becoming clear that the cemetery was turning into a swamp. Both villages are themselves slowly sinking too, scientists have found. Ben Hoyle, The Times


Climate & Energy Comment


7 Years Before Russia Hacked the Election, Someone Did the Same Thing to Climate Scientists
Seven years before Russia tampered with this year's US election by dumping private emails online, a similar tactic was used to smear the credibility of climate scientists, writes a news feature in Mother Jones. The 2009 Climategate scandal saw the hacking and release of emails from climate scientists working in the UK. "Climate change deniers claimed the messages showed scientists engaging in misconduct and fabricating a warming pattern that didn’t really exist," writes Rebecca Leber and AJ Vicens. "Multiple investigations ultimately exonerated the researchers, but not before a media firestorm undercut public confidence in the science—just as world leaders were meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, to attempt to rein in greenhouse gas emissions." Rebecca Leber and AJ Vicens, Mother Jones

Talking about climate change in Orwellian doublespeak doesn't make it go away
"If President Trump were a reader of books, we’d recommend a nearly 70-year-old novel to him, because it illustrates nicely both the absurdity and the danger of perverting language for political ends," reads an editorial in the LA Times. The book is George Orwell’s “1984,” which coined “newspeak”, a language invented by government ministries that do the exact opposite of what their names imply. For example, the "Ministry of Peace" is in charge of waging war. Using a similar tactic, Trump has dropped all mention of the term "climate change" from a list of threats to national security, the paper says. In Trump's administration, "the fight against climate change is the risk to national security, not climate change itself," the editorial argues. Editorial, Los Angeles Times

When US top brass links climate change to political instability, the world needs to listen
"Climate change does not cause conflict. Yet in areas of political instability it is the equivalent, to quote Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, formerly of the Royal Navy, 'of pouring a bucket of petrol on a smouldering fire'," writes Sir Nicholas Soames, a British Conservative Party politician and MP for Mid Sussex, in the Telegraph. In a comment piece, Sir Nicholas echoes the view of US Secretary of Defence James Mattis, arguing that a rise in extreme weather events as a result of climate change could drive food shortages and, in turn, a rise in global conflict. In The Independent, Sherri Goodman, a former US deputy undersecretary of Defence, says that Donald Trump is "ignoring one of the biggest threats to long-term US security: climate change". She writes: "Climate change is shaking these foundations and with that threatening livelihoods, affecting our ability to feed ourselves and so driving instability." Nicholas Soames, The Telegraph


New Climate Science


Will half a degree make a difference? Robust projections of indices of mean and extreme climate in Europe under 1.5°C, 2°C, and 3°C global warming
A new study assesses the benefits for the European climate of limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Compared to a 1.5C warmer world, a further 0.5C warming results in a robust change of minimum summer temperature over more than 70% of Europe, the researchers find, while significant changes in maximum temperatures affect around 20%. An extra 0.5C of warming also sees a more marked change in extreme rainfall, the study notes. Geophysical Research Letters

Climate engineering and the ocean: effects on biogeochemistry and primary production
New research uses an Earth System Model to investigate the potential impact of geoengineering on the amount of net primary production in the ocean (marine plant growth). All three geoengineering methods assessed see a reduction in primary production by 2100 (compared to 1971-2000), the study finds – by around 6% with stratospheric aerosol injection and marine sky brightening, and approximately 3% with cirrus cloud thinning. The result "stress the uncertain changes to ocean productivity in the future and advocate caution at any deliberate attempt at large-scale perturbation of the Earth system", the authors conclude. Biogeosciences


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The Near Future of Electric Cars: Many Models, Few Buyers
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Exploding stars are influencing our weather, scientists find
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Pruitt’s Plan to Debate Climate Science Paused as Science Confirms Human Link to Extreme Weather
Julie Dermansky, DeSmogBlog

A 12-Year-Old Bet on Global Warming Is About to Pay Out
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Tom Steyer on climate change discord - Video
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Plants used to variability most likely to adapt to climate change
Brook Hays, UPI

Green groups sue Trump administration over delay of methane rule
Timothy Gardner, Reuters

Climate Change And Global Poverty Can Only Be Solved Together
Jeffrey Rissman, Forbes

The Meaty Side of Climate Change
Shefali Sharma, Project Syndicate

Ukraine makes strides towards energy independence
Nataliya Katser-Buchkovska, Financial Times

Back in the pack: the rebuilding of BP
Andrew Ward, Financial Times

Here's How The BBC's Science Presenters Think It Should Cover Climate Controversies
Tom Chivers, Buzzfeed

Our selective blindness is lethal to the living world
George Monbiot, The Guardian

Climate change driving record snows in Alaskan mountains: study
Richard Valdmanis, Reuters

Ground Zero for Flooding: Washington’s Trump International Hotel
Christopher Flavelle and David Ingold, Bloomberg

Drought to hit South Africa's 2018 wine harvest
Tanisha Heiberg, Reuters

Missing link discovered in how rainforests react to climate change
Jane Clinton, The i

Burning wood instead of coal in power stations makes sense if it's waste wood
Tony Juniper, The Guardian