Arctic drilling Must Protect the Climate
April 30th, 2012 by Jonathan Banks, Senior Climate Policy Advisor, and Conrad Schneider, Advocacy DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Experts blog.
Two years ago the world turned its attention to the Gulf of Mexico and the tragedy that was unfolding there, with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. This disaster brought a reinvigorated focus to the safety of offshore drilling, but the term safety must now be understood to not just cover spills and leaks, but also the impacts that drilling has on the climate, especially when done in the fragile environment of the Arctic.
It is well understood that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion in our cars and power plants are responsible for the majority of earth’s global warming. Less appreciated, though, is that methane emissions account for nearly half as much of the warming we are currently experiencing as carbon dioxide. The oil and natural gas industries are the largest source of methane emissions from the US. Oil and gas extraction can also be significant sources of black carbon, another potent climate pollutant.
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Public Transit Buses: Diesel or CNG?
March 12th, 2012 by Conrad Schneider, Advocacy DirectorRecently, Pittsburgh’s mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, announced that his city would buy four new garbage trucks fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG) rather than diesel because, among other reasons, it would improve local air quality. Like Pittsburgh, many municipalities are dealing with an aging fleet of vehicles and weighing the environmental and economic costs associated with updating their fleet.
CATF commissioned a study on the environmental impacts of both new diesel and new CNG transit buses that concluded that while both have much smaller negative environmental impacts than the older buses currently in use, a new CNG bus is not necessarily better for air quality or climate impact than a new diesel bus. Specifically, the study found that while new CNG buses may have marginally lower particulate matter and volatile organic compound emissions, they may have higher greenhouse gas and nitrogen oxide emissions. Additionally, CNG engines are simply less efficient than diesel engines at traveling the same distance, which must be taken into account.
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Ice and Oil; Oil and Ice
October 17th, 2011 by Ellen Baum, Senior ScientistThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Expert Blog.
Last month, U.S. scientists confirmed that the Arctic has lost the second highest annual amount of ice since monitoring began. Of the remaining ice, much more is thinner, single-year ice resulting from melting and refreezing during the year. Older, thicker multi-year ice has declined by 60% over the past 30 years.
If Arctic summer sea ice continues to melt at its current rate, we will be presented with significant opportunities to harvest more oil and gas from new sources in the Arctic. Indeed, 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil might be under Arctic ice, as might 30% of undiscovered natural gas. So, Arctic nations are lining up to get at those reserves. So the formula looks simple: less ice = more oil and more gas. And, as those resources are harvested and consumed, we expect the resulting rise in CO2, methane and other climate-forcing emissions will mean even less sea ice.
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Live from Hanoi: Brick Kilns and Black Carbon, up close and personal
May 11th, 2011 by Ellen Baum, Senior Scientist
Two days into brick kiln measurements in Nam Dinh province of Vietnam.
We got off to a slower than expected start – or at least slower than expected by me. This is my first kiln, but the veteran team I met up with has been measuring since early March. When we rendezvoused in Hanoi a couple of days ago, they already had seven Indian kilns under their belt. And they had already experienced delays from over-heated instruments, strikers on railroad tracks, intermittent power, no power, fuses blown out by oversized back up generators, and lowest person on the totem pole to buy from the only ice provider in town. Yesterday was delayed to build bamboo scaffolding and a platform, able to hold up to seven people plus a lot of equipment, and chisel a 10-centimeter diameter measurement opening, through four layers of flue-gas baked brick. Somehow the specs of what was needed for monitoring had gotten lost in the pre-planning translation.
The monitoring team took this hold-up in stride. I’ve learned that there are people cut out for monitoring work and people who aren’t. Not everyone can roll with the unexpected punches that come their way, and those who can’t, quickly find something else to do with their life.
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A Cleantech Revolution in Four Easy Steps
November 18th, 2010 by Armond Cohen, Executive Director
A recent National Academy of Sciences report [PDF] notes that CO2 lasts thousands of years in the atmosphere, so if we really want to limit the damage from climate change, we’ll need to drop the world’s energy system to near-zero emissions by 2050. Yet the U.N.’s climate chief, Cristina Figueres, recently admitted: “I do not believe we will ever have a final agreement on climate change, certainly not in my lifetime.”
Is it time to give up? No, but a better strategy might help.
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Can we control black carbon in the Arctic by reducing agricultural fires?
November 9th, 2010 by David McCabe, Atmospheric Scientist
David McCabe
One long day down, and one to go at a global meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, where climate scientists, fire experts, farmers, regulators and NGOs have been discussing the role of springtime fires on climate change in the Arctic and what must be done to reduce the occurrence of set fires in northern latitudes. The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate, threatening not just regional ecosystems but coastal areas around the world that are vulnerable to sea level rise. Carbon dioxide is the main pollutant responsible for this warming, but recent research shows that black carbon, or soot, from incomplete combustion may also be responsible for much of the Arctic’s warming. Samples from snow indicate that most of the black carbon in Arctic snow comes from burning biomass, and much of that is from burning crops and grasslands in northern Eurasia.
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