[GWSG] Record heat; warm Ant. currents; retreat?; US drilling limits; emissions flat; saving $4.2tr; efficiency gains; coal failures

[Tilley, Al]

1.  February’s global temperature broke January’s record for increase over the historical average for a given month.  Stefan Rahmstorf: “We are in a kind of planetary emergency now.  This is really quite stunning. . . it’s completely unprecedented.”  https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/14/february-breaks-global-temperature-records-by-shocking-amount  Peter Sinclair provides further reflections, and reminds us that heat spikes are associated with El Niño years, though this is a whopper and could lead to a lasting increase—a new state of the climate.  http://climatecrocks.com/2016/03/14/2016-year-of-the-black-swan/



2.  Warming ocean currents are destabilizing Antarctica’s ice shelves.  Floating ice shelves act to impede the flow of ice from the land so that their dissolution would increase sea level rise.  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/uoca-wow031416.php



3.  Orrin Pilkey, Professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke, calls for an end to most development on the US Atlantic coast and a planned retreat from the rising sea.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/14/developers-dont-get-it-climate-change-need-retreat-coast  Pilkey’s The Rising Sea (with Rob Young, 2009) remains the best book I know on adapting to sea level rise.



4.  The Obama administration has provisionally restricted new oil drilling in the Arctic, reversing last year’s policy.  The action may indicate a new emphasis on restricting not only emissions at the smokestack but extraction of fossil fuels.  The new rules are up for public comment, and include a no-drilling option as well as the possibility of three Arctic drilling leases (see page S-3 in the program draft).  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/obama-to-kill-off-arctic-oil-drilling   The program draft:  http://www.boem.gov/2017-2022-DPP/   The administration has ended near-offshore oil and gas drilling on the US Atlantic coast until at least 2022 (but is allowing ten leases in the Gulf, as listed on page S-3 of the draft, and provides for one possible drilling site at least fifty miles offshore on the Atlantic coast—see section S.2.3 of the draft).  Local opposition has already ended drilling on the West Coast; such objections appear to have also been important to the restriction of drilling on the East Coast, along with commercial and military objections to drilling, and market considerations.    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/15/obama-to-kill-off-arctic-oil-drilling



5.    The International Energy Agency reports that for the second year in a row global greenhouse gas emissions were flat while the global economy grew.  Renewables accounted for about 90% of the new electrical generation last year, with wind power supplying about half of that.   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/16/surge-in-renewable-energy-stalls-world-greenhouse-gas-emissions



6.  Doubling the share of renewables in global energy production to 36% by 2030 could save up to $4.2 trillion a year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/17/doubling-global-renewables-2030-save-42tn-research-global-warming



7.  Improvements in energy efficiency have led to successive drops in electricity consumption in the US even as new building adds more square footage.  The trend means that we will need to add less, or no, new energy production.     http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/electricity-sales-keep-falling-in-the-us?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=GTMDaily



8.  Peabody Energy (A Private Enterprise Council Member of ALEC) has missed an interest payment and signals that it may begin bankruptcy proceedings.  Peabody is the world’s largest private coal mining company.  Arch Coal, the second largest coal company in the US, went bankrupt two months ago.  The three largest coal companies in the US get (or got) most of their coal from federal lands on a heavily subsidized basis.   http://insideclimatenews.org/news/16032016/coal-companies-rely-heavily-public-lands-coal   ?

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