Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City
Simon Romero, New York Times
Endowed with the Amazon and other mighty rivers, an array of huge dams and one- eighth of the world’s fresh water, Brazil is sometimes called the “Saudi Arabia of water,” so rich in the coveted resource that some liken it to living above a sea of oil.
But in Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city, a more dystopian situation is unfolding: The taps are starting to run dry.
As southeast Brazil grapples with its worst drought in nearly a century, a problem worsened by polluted rivers, deforestation and population growth, the largest reservoir system serving São Paulo is near depletion. Many residents are already enduring sporadic water cutoffs, some going days without it. Officials say that drastic rationing may be needed, with water service provided only two days a week…
US central plains face “megadroughts” later this century
Tim Radford, RTCC
The Central Plains and Southwest region of the US face “unprecedented” droughts later this century, according to new research.
While Midwest states have experienced ever more flooding over the last 50 years, the regions already suffering from extremes of aridity are being warned to expect megadroughts worse than any conditions in the last 1,000 years.
Climate scientist Benjamin Cook, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues report in a new journal, Science Advances, that they looked at historical evidence, climate projections and ways of calculating soil moisture.
They found that the drought conditions of the future American west will be more severe than the hottest, most arid extended droughts of the 12th and 13th centuries, which are thought to have played a role in ending the once- flourishing Pueblo culture of the American Southwest…
Global Divestment Day Was A Huge Success
Joshua S Hill, Cleantechnica
Over 450 separate events in 60 different countries helped make Global Divestment Day a huge success, according to the organizers of the event…
According to numbers provided by the Fossil Free, the group behind the campaign, an estimated $50,000,000,000 (that’s 50 billion) have been divested from fossil fuels to date. Over 181 cities, universities, and other institutions have committed to divestment…
Apple, Google and now Kaiser spend on renewable power
David R. Baker, SF Chronicle
Following in the footsteps of Apple and Google, health care giant Kaiser Permanente will announce on Wednesday agreements to buy enough renewable power to provide half the electricity used by its hospitals, clinics and offices in California.
Kaiser, based in Oakland, will buy electricity from both a massive solar power plant under development in Riverside County and a portion of the Altamont Pass wind farm, soon to be refurbished with new turbines. In addition, the company plans to install solar arrays on as many as 170 of its hospitals and other buildings throughout the state…
“Climate change isn’t a distant threat,” said Kathy Gerwig, Kaiser’s environmental stewardship officer. “The health impacts of a changing climate can be felt today in the form of increasing rates of asthma and respiratory ailments, spread of infectious diseases, heat stress and injuries from severe weather events.”…
Discoveries of new oil and gas reserves drop to 20-year low
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Ed Crooks, Financial Times
Discoveries of new oil and gas reserves dropped to their lowest level in at least two decades last year, pointing to tighter world supplies as energy demand increases in the future…
Small Earthquakes Linked To Fracking Could Lead To Major Ones, Government Scientist Says
Katie Valentine, Think Progress
The earthquakes that have been linked to oil and gas development so far might be minor, but they could be putting states like Oklahoma and Kansas at risk for a major earthquake later on, new research indicates.
The research, which hasn’t yet been published, was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science by U.S. Geological Survey scientist William Ellsworth. Ellsworth said that states in which small, hydraulic fracturing-related earthquakes are a fairly regular occurrence shouldn’t “expect a large earthquake tomorrow,” but they should know that these small earthquakes could increase the risk of a larger, more damaging one occurring eventually.
“The more small earthquakes we have, it just simply increases the odds we’re going to have a more damaging event,” Ellsworth said.
Germany moves to legalise fracking
Arthur Neslen, The Guardian
Germany has proposed a draft law that would allow commercial shale gas fracking at depths of over 3,000 metres, overturning a de facto moratorium that has been in place since the start of the decade.
A new six-person expert panel would also be empowered to allow fracks at shallower levels.
Shale gas industry groups welcomed the proposal for its potential to crack open the German shale gas market, but it has sparked outrage among environmentalists who view it as the thin edge of a fossil fuel wedge…
…but not so fast…!
German government did not just approve fracking
Craig Morris, Energy Transition
After an article in Euractiv claimed that the German government had approved fracking, the Guardian made a few phone calls, including to a French campaigner. Craig Morris says that German media have remained silent on the matter for good reason – the news item is a canard.
The English Euractiv article further explains that this “draft law (sic) permitting fracking in the country” has been “tabled.” Here, we must keep in mind that, by “tabled,” the British mean “put on the table for discussion,” whereas Americans understand the opposite: postponed. The US meaning is not applicable here, but even with the British meaning, the body of article lies uneasily with its title because no decisions have been made. (“Table” is a verb that all journalists working internationally should strike from their vocabulary.)
The German media are thus overwhelmingly silent on the matter, as you can see here from a search at Google News Deutschland. In fact, one article in German refers back to Euractiv and wonders why no one has picked up on the story…
The reason is that there is no story. Last July, I wrote on this matter and my title – “Did Germany give thumbs up or down to fracking?” – reveals the confusion even back then. Essentially, the German government just produced the bill promised last summer. As Euractiv points out, fracking opponents in Germany fear that anything short of a moratorium leaves the door open for fracking, and once the country gets started, there may be no stopping. Taking such a stand is, of course, the job of environmentalists…
…Germany won’t ban shale gas production; it will simply make extraction unenticing. Keep in mind that the current governmental coalition is more pro-business than any other we are likely to get. I’ll bet you a beer we are not going to see any major fracking in Germany ever.
Statistical realism
Jeremy Miller, High Country News
I first met energy analyst David Hughes last July in a miasma of diesel and gasoline fumes. It had taken me a three-hour drive and three ferryboats to arrive at beautiful and remote Cortes Island, one of dozens of islets wedged like ice floes in the Strait of Georgia, off the west coast of British Columbia.
Hughes, waiting in the cab of his Toyota pickup, surveyed the new arrivals as they disembarked the boat. Many were in their early 20s and, judging by their enormous backpacks and heavy boots, determined to experience this northern island paradise properly. Hughes swung a beckoning arm out the window. “You made it,” he said, in a tone that suggested that he’d had his doubts. “Are you ready for the whirlwind tour?”
I’d come in hopes of learning something about this reclusive man, who has stirred up debate among energy watchers over the last few years, mainly by the statistical thrashing he’s been giving to the so-called U.S. shale revolution. At the time, after all, domestic oil production was surging, as it still is — with U.S. fields coughing up 7.4 million barrels of oil per day, up 64 percent since 2008 — and energy prices had not yet begun their sharp plunge. Together, North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’s Eagle Ford fields were producing 2.8 million barrels per day, or 15 percent of the U.S.’s daily demand. The uptick is largely the result of hydraulic fracturing, a technique that has unlocked hydrocarbons from formations once technically and financially impractical. Continental Oil executive Harold Hamm believes U.S. shale plays hold a century or more worth of oil and gas and the key to American “energy independence.”…
Is the shale revolution becoming a casualty of its own success?
Max Fawcett, Alberta Oil
All revolutions come with a bit of bloodletting, and it tends to involve the blood of the people who built them in the first place. So it was with the so-called “shale revolution” and one of its key architects this past November. Harold Hamm, the brash and outspoken CEO of Continental Resources, announced that he had monetized all of his company’s forward hedges through 2016 for a one-time gain of $433 million. It was a brave bet given that oil prices had already fallen 25 per cent and had yet to show any signs of finding a bottom. But Hamm, it seemed, was spoiling for a fight with OPEC, which he’d referred to just a month earlier as a “toothless tiger.” Three weeks later to the day, Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s minister of petroleum and mineral resources, emerged from a pivotal OPEC meeting in Vienna to announce that the cartel had decided not to cut its collective production…
The real question was, and still is, how long can shale producers like Harold Hamm’s Continental Resources survive in this new oil price environment? Opinions on that are mixed. Some, like analysts at Citigroup, have suggested that with so-called half-cycle costs as low as $35 a barrel, shale producers could dig in and wait out the OPEC assault. Others, like independent geological consultant Arthur Berman, think the true break-even price is much higher than that…
Jeremy Grantham Divines Oil Industry’s Future
Jeremy Grantham, Barron’s
The simplest argument for the oil price decline is for once correct. A wave of new U.S. fracking oil could be seen to be overtaking the modestly growing global oil demand. It became clear that OPEC, mainly Saudi Arabia, must cut back production if the price were to stay around $100 a barrel, which many, including me, believe is necessary to justify continued heavy spending to find traditional oil. The Saudis declined to pull back their production and the oil market entered into glut mode, in which storage is full and production continues above demand. Under glut conditions, oil (and natural gas) is uniquely sensitive to declines toward marginal cost (ignoring sunk costs), which can approach a few dollars a barrel — the cost of just pumping the oil…
Huge Explosion Rips Through California Oil Refinery, Adding Fuel To Oil Worker Strike
Emily Atkin & Sacha Feinman, Climate Progress
A huge explosion occurred at the ExxonMobil oil refinery in Torrance, California on Wednesday morning, shaking the homes of residents miles away and injuring at least three people.
No serious injuries or deaths have been reported, and authorities are still looking into the cause of the explosion. Aerial photos of the refinery following the incident showed considerable damage. Large metal structures were ripped apart and nearby vehicles were destroyed. A good portion of the refinery was covered in grey ash…
How Coal Kills
Earthtalk, Scientific American
Coal combustion plants account for more than half of Americans’ electric power generation. According to Coal’s Assault on Human Health, a report by the non- profit Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), coal combustion releases mercury, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and other substances known to be hazardous to human health. The report evaluates the impacts of coal pollution on our respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems and concludes that air pollutants produced by coal combustion contribute to asthma, lung cancer, congestive heart failure and strokes.
“The findings of this report are clear: While the U.S. relies heavily on coal for its energy needs, the consequences of that reliance for our health are grave,” says Alan Lockwood, a principal author of the report and a professor of neurology at the University at Buffalo…
Belgian nuclear reactors riddled with 16,000 unexplained cracks
Oliver Tickell, The Ecologist
Thousands of cracks have been found in the steel reactor pressure vessels in nuclear reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2 in Belgium – vessels contain highly radioactive nuclear fuel cores.
The failure of these components can cause catastrophic nuclear accidents with massive release of radiation.
The pervasive – and entirely unexpected – cracking could be related to corrosion from normal operation, according to leading material scientists Professor Walter Bogaerts and Professor Digby MacDonald…
False solution: Nuclear power is not ‘low carbon’
Keith Barnham, The Ecologist
Claims that nuclear power is a ‘low carbon’ energy source fall apart under scrutiny, writes Keith Barnham. Far from coming in at six grams of CO2 per unit of electricity for Hinkley C, as the Climate Change Committee believes, the true figure is probably well above 50 grams – breaching the CCC’s recommended limit for new sources of power generation beyond 2030.
The UK government is committed to massively subsidising new nuclear reactors, based on the claim that they generate ‘low carbon’ electricity.
But what is the carbon footprint of nuclear power? I have trawled the literature and found that there is no scientific consensus on the lifetime carbon emissions of nuclear electricity.
Remarkably, half of the most rigorous published analyses have a carbon footprint for nuclear power above the limit recommended by the UK government’s official climate change advisor, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC)…
23-year-old hasn’t produced any trash in two years
Chelsea Huang, Aol
At first glance, Lauren Singer seems like a typical 23-year-old post-graduate living in New York City. Clad in slouchy black slacks, black crop top and leather moto vest, Singer’s style is congruent with her stylish one-bedroom apartment in a South Williamsburg development.
But a closer look beyond the shabby-chic decor and fresh flora revealed something unexpected. A small mason jar filled with a few colorful wrappers and bits of plastic sat behind her atop the pristine, white kitchen counter.
"It’s been two years, and that’s my trash," she said with a smile…
