[GWSG] New battery; carbon exchange shuts; planning for slr; SE US in for more summer droughts & storms

[Tilley, Al]

1.  A new flow battery intends to make it possible to run a home entirely with solar energy for about $7500 above the cost of the panels.  The battery’s life is 30 years, a little less than the expected life of many solar panels.   http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/flow-batteries-coming-into-homes/

2.  The Chicago Climate Exchange will cease its voluntary cap and trade program next month.  Legislative emission control no longer seems imminent in the US so corporations are less willing to undertake programs on their own in anticipation of a price placed on carbon.  We now must rely on regulatory controls and actions organized below the federal level. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS83245215220101108

3.   The New York Times provides an informative and only occasionally irritating story on the stability of the polar ice sheets and their contribution to the rate of sea level rise.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/science/earth/14ice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss  I question whether, as the story asserts, an informed consensus has formed around a projection of three feet of sea level rise for 2100.  The three feet mentioned in the story is a figure derived from a linear projection of rise in the past century.  However, it ignores the accelerating conditions of ice sheet disintegration.   I do not sense that a consensus has formed at all.  Informed opinion tends toward a century’s end figure of a few to several feet beyond that.

The most urgent question is, for what sea level should we plan?  Orrin Pilkey’s suggestion in the story of at least five feet by 2100 proposes a minimum.  It would be a poor plan which was based on a minimum figure though, given the stakes involved.  A car planned that way wouldn’t have seat belts, much less air bags and crumple zones.  Best case scenario planning would give us a world of increased danger.  Worst case scenario planning, though, is too constricting.  To continue the travel analogy, such planning would leave us unwilling to venture out of the house.  What are the proper sea level expectations for rational “no-regrets” planning, neither too heedless nor too constricting?  We need at least a planning figure for 2050 and another for 2100.  Planners would probably develop scenarios at regular increments of rise, but it matters for the course of planned actions what date is assigned to what sea level.

On the difficulty of forming a consensus on sea level rise, see James Hansen’s 2007 paper:  http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/2/024002/fulltext
His paper is linked in the NYT article as an example of extreme opinion.  That mischaracterizes the paper.  It is based on the historical evidence, and the main point is to indicate and account for the presence of scientific reticence on sea level rise.  Notice that the “three foot” projections for 2100 are said in the NYT article to have been done in reaction to Hansen’s article—already a tipoff that the projections are suspect, because the implied intention is to minimize the projection, not to arrive at the most likely figure.  We still need the sea level rise panel for which Hansen called.

Meanwhile, the Miami-Dade Climate Change Task Force found that we can expect at least a foot and a half of sea level rise by midcentury.  A no-regrets planning figure in the neighborhood of two feet for 2050 seems reasonable.  Orrin Pilkey recommends seven feet as of 2100 for coastal planners.  These seem reasonable places to start, to be adjusted as regional variations warrant (we are expected to get as much as a foot more rise along the East Coast), and as our knowledge increases.  Perhaps some of the better informed list members would share their opinions.  Here is an excerpt from Orrin Pilkey and Rob Young’s The Rising Sea (2009) recommending a planning figure of seven feet for 2100.    http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/03/12/article/sea_level_at_nc_coast_could_be_7_feet_higher_by_2100   FL Institute of Technology’s database on climate change adaptation, with special reference to sea level rise: http://research.fit.edu/sealevelriselibrary/region.php?id=470

4.  The Southeastern US is in for more summer droughts and thunderstorms as climate change strengthens the Bermuda High.  http://www.nature.com/nclimate/2010/101116/full/nclimate1012.html