how global warming is going cold in europe and in the USA...

cold cold

Global warming is upsetting the jet streams and the climate zoning...

Climate change and the jet stream

Rising global temperatures from global warming are affecting the jet stream and, in turn, the weather. Because the Earth's polar regions are warming more quickly than the rest of the world, the temperature contrast that drives jet streams has decreased. Slower, weaker jet streams have been linked to melting in Greenland and a potential rise in deadly weather events because they can lock weather systems into place, stalling them over regions.

Studies also have linked a warming Arctic with more severe winter weather in the United States, even though other reports note that on average, winter cold snaps are actually getting warmer because of climate change. Part of this link involves the polar vortex, a swirling low-pressure center at the North and South poles. An unstable polar vortex can expand and send cold Arctic air into the jet stream, leading to frigid winter weather and storms southward.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/jet-stream

cold, hot, windy texas...

In California, wildfires and heat waves in recent years forced utilities to shut off power to millions of homes and businesses. Now, Texas is learning that deadly winter storms and intense cold can do the same.

The country’s two largest states have taken very different approaches to managing their energy needs — Texas deregulated aggressively, letting the free market flourish, while California embraced environmental regulations. Yet the two states are confronting the same ominous reality: They may be woefully unprepared for the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change.

Blackouts in Texas and California have revealed that power plants can be strained and knocked offline by the kind of extreme cold and hot weather that climate scientists have said will become more common as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere.

The problems in Texas and California highlight the challenge the Biden administration will face in modernizing the electricity system to run entirely on wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other zero-emission technologies by 2035 — a goal that President Biden set during the 2020 campaign.

The federal government and energy businesses may have to spend trillions of dollars to harden electricity grids against the threat posed by climate change and to move away from the fossil fuels responsible for the warming of the planet in the first place. These are not new ideas. Scholars have long warned that American electricity grids, which are run regionally, will come under increasing strain and needed major upgrades.

“We really need to change our paradigm, particularly utilities, because they are becoming much more vulnerable to disaster,” Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, said about blackouts in Texas and California. “They need to always think about literally the worst-case scenario because the worst case scenario is going to happen.”

Mr. Meshkati, who served on National Academies committees that studied BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, said Mr. Biden should establish a commission to investigate the grid failures in Texas and California and recommend changes.

But it is not clear how much Mr. Biden will be able to accomplish, given the limited federal role in overseeing utilities, which are primarily regulated at the state level. He may not even be able to assemble a majority in Congress to advance an ambitious climate plan given the Democrats’ narrow hold on the Senate and strong opposition from most Republicans to policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In California and Texas, conservatives have blamed renewable energy for blackouts even though energy experts, grid managers and utility executives have said outages at solar and wind farms played a smaller role than poor planning and problems with the natural gas supply and other power sources.

That Texas and California have been hardest hit makes clear that simplistic ideological explanations are often wrong. Texas, for example, has relied on market forces to balance its electric grid. If there is not enough supply, the price for electricity in its wholesale market shoots up, which is meant to encourage companies to produce more power and businesses and consumers to use less. California also has a power market, but it requires power producers to maintain excess capacity that can be called upon in emergencies. Yet both systems buckled in extreme conditions.

The common theme in the two states is that many traditional power plants are much more sensitive to temperature changes than the utility industry has acknowledged, said Jay Apt, co-director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center.

“Coal plants and gas plants have problems in both heat and cold,” said Mr. Apt, who is also a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Last August, several power plants fired by natural gas stopped generating electricity as Californians were cranking up air-conditioners because equipment at the plants malfunctioned in the hot weather. Other plants were down for maintenance, which many experts found odd given that electricity demand typically peaks in the late summer.

Short of power just as demand was peaking, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s grid, ordered utilities to conduct rolling blackouts until the system achieved balance. The order came so abruptly that Gov. Gavin Newsom complained that the blackouts “occurred without prior warning or enough time for preparation.”

Separately, California utilities have also shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers in the last couple of years to prevent power lines and other equipment from starting fires during dry, windy days.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/energy-environment/california-texas-blackouts-utilities.html

By Gus Leonisky at 19 Feb 2021 - 9:04am
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june 2032...

John Kerry numbered himself among the massed ranks of the Climate Cassandras on Friday, repeating the well-trodden forecast of imminent global warming catastrophe without radical action to cut carbon dioxide emissions — amid freakishly cold weather around the world.

US Climate Envoy John Kerry has given humanity nine years to prevent a "climate crisis" — echoing decades of similar dire warnings.

Kerry issued the clichéd ultimatum in a TV interview on Friday, hours after the US formally re-joined the Paris Climate Accord less than four months after the former Trump administration finally abandoned it.

"The scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis," Kerry told CBS News. "We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left."— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 19, 2021"Even if we did everything that we said we were going to do when we signed up in Paris we would see a rise in the Earth's temperature to somewhere around 3.7 degrees or more, which is catastrophic," Kerry predicted. "There is no room for B.S. anymore. There's no faking it on this one."

On his first day in office a month earlier, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to return to the Paris pact negotiated when he was vice-president to Barack Obama — with Kerry serving as Secretary of State.

Amid freezing weather that has caused chaos across the country, CBS host Ben Tracy was anxious that viewers should not get "hung up on the term global warming and say 'I thought everything was supposed to get warmer'," adding "I heard one scientist say this is really 'global weirding'!"

"It is directly related to the warming, even though your instinct is to say: 'wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age'," Kerry insisted. "But it's not. It's coming from the global warming."

In fact environmentalists have been warning that mankind has ten years to save the planet from global warming since at least 1989, when UN Environment Programme director Noel Brown claimed entire nations would be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if action was not taken by 2000. That claim has been cited by climate change sceptics as an example of environmental alarmism.

London School of Economics economist Sir Nicholas Stern gave world leaders 10 to 15 years to save the planet in his 2006 report, while former US senator and failed 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore echoed that deadline the same year.

https://sputniknews.com/us/202102201082137663-another-nine-years-to-avert-climate-crisis-says-bidens-green-envoy-kerry/

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renewables for the future of the planet...

The past year is one that few of us will forget. While the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have played out unevenly across Asia and the Pacific, the region has been spared many of the worst effects seen in other parts of the world. The pandemic has reminded us that a reliable and uninterrupted energy supply is critical to managing this crisis.

Beyond ensuring that hospitals and healthcare facilities continue to function, energy supports the systems and coping mechanisms we rely on to work remotely, undertake distance learning and communicate essential health information. Importantly, energy will also underpin cold chains and logistics to ensure that billions of vaccines make their way to the people who need them most.

The good news is our region's energy systems have continued to function throughout the pandemic. A new report, "Shaping a sustainable energy future in Asia and the Pacific: A greener, more resilient and inclusive energy system", released today by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) shows the energy demand reductions have mainly impacted fossil fuels and depressed oil and gas prices. Renewable energy development in countries across the region, such as China and India, has continued at a healthy pace throughout 2020.

As the Asia-Pacific region transitions its energy system to clean, efficient and low carbon technologies, the emergence of the pandemic raises some fundamental questions. How can a transformed energy system help ensure our resilience to future crises such as Covid-19? As we recover from this pandemic, can we launch a "green recovery" that simultaneously rebuilds our economies and puts us on track to meet global climate and sustainability goals?

Clean and sustainable energy is central to a recovery from Covid-19 pandemic. By emphasising the importance of the SDGs as a guiding framework for recovering better together, we must focus on two critical aspects:

First, by making meaningful progress on the SDGs, we can address many of the systemic issues that made societies more vulnerable to Covid-19 in the first place—health, decent work, poverty and inequalities, to name a few.

Second, by directing stimulus spending to investments that support the achievement of the SDGs, we can build back better. If countries focus their stimulus efforts on the industries of the past such as fossil fuels, we risk not creating the jobs we need, or not moving in the right direction to achieve the global goals that are critical to future generations. The energy sector offers multiple opportunities to align stimulus with the clean industries of the future.

The evidence shows that renewable energy and energy efficiency projects create more jobs for the same investment as fossil fuel projects. By increasing expenditure on clean cooking and electricity access, we can enhance economic activity in rural areas and bring modern infrastructure that can make these communities more resilient and inclusive, particularly for the wellbeing of women and children.

Additionally, investing in low-carbon infrastructure and technologies can create a basis for the more ambitious climate pledges we need to reach the Paris Agreement targets of a 2-degree global warming limit. On this note, several countries have announced carbon neutrality, demonstrating a long-term vision and commitment to an accelerated transformation to sustainable energy. Phasing out the use of coal from power generation portfolios by substituting with renewables, ending fossil fuel subsidies, and implementing carbon pricing are some of the steps we can take.

The Covid-19 crisis has forced us to change many aspects of our lives to keep ourselves and our societies safe. It has shown that we are more adaptive and resilient than we may have believed. Nevertheless, we should not waste the opportunities this crisis presents for transformative change. It should not deflect us from the urgent task of making modern energy available to all and decarbonising the region's energy system through a transition to sustainable energy. Instead, it should provide us with a renewed sense of urgency.

We must harness the capacity of sustainable energy to rebuild our societies and economies while protecting the environment in the pursuit of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of ESCAP.

https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/sustainable-energy-key-covid-19-recovery-asia-and-the-pacific-2048825

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loss of crops...

New research has found that EU crop losses driven by heat waves and drought, as well as other extreme weather events, have tripled in 50 years, a startling figure which could upend food-chain supply dynamics around the globe.

The study examined agricultural production in 28 European countries (including the UK) from 1961 to 2018 and compared it with the prevalence of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, heat waves and cold snaps alike, all four of which increased in frequency over the study period.

The researchers found crop losses of 2.2% of total crop yield between 1964 and 1990, which surged to some 7.3% in the period between 1991 and 2015.

https://www.rt.com/news/519954-europes-heat-drought-crop-losses/

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julian

By Gus Leonisky at 3 Apr 2021 - 5:27am
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