writeaboutwarming

In 2007, the amount of solar power installed in the U.S. was 1.1 gigawatts (GW). As of 2017, that amount has increased to 47.1 GW. Enough to power 9.1 million average American homes. If you're thinking "we've still got a long way to go," you'd be right. On the other hand, increasing installed power by 4300% deserves some attention.  How'd we do it? The Department of Energy played an important role. In 2011, they initiated a program called The SunShot Initiative. They set targets for the years 2020 and 2030, by which times generating solar power would have become more affordable. More affordable on a utility scale, more affordable on a commercial scale, and more affordable on a residential scale. Thus far, they've succeeded in hitting the 2020 goal for utility-scale generation. Needless to mention, they reached that goal three years early. The goals, it should be mentioned, don't take subsidies into account. It's the technology, in the case of uti...

September 4, 2017 - Wildfires are burning throughout the Pacific Northwest. Hurricane Harvey has decimated the greater Houston area and parts of Louisiana. Hurricane Irma glowers out in the Atlantic. In other words, forecasts made decades ago are proving accurate. Four hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was regarded as a tipping point, the point at which climate change would take on a life of its own. If no one ever drove their car another block, if farmers never used another ounce of chemical fertilizer, if not so much as one more acre of land was cleared with fire, climate change would continue on its way, wreaking havoc. We passed four hundred ppm this year. I'm not sure where we stand right now; we were supposed to be at around 410 by spring. I'm not advocating giving up. Of course not. We must still - and at this point, will, whether we want to or not - consciously lower our standard of living, and stop enjoying the conveniences for which we ar...

July 30, 2017 - Before I begin, let me mention that Jonnie Hyde is a member of the writing group I belong to, here in Vancouver, Wa. I took a stab at writing a novel about climate change awhile back; it wasn't very good, and subsequently went nowhere. Irrevocable Acts , on the other hand, is deserving of attention. The beginning of Hyde's book is, perhaps, its only weak point: it's a bit confusing. All becomes clear as the book unfolds, and the characters are interesting, so there's no question of remaining involved. The characters hold your focus because they live their lives differently from most, yet the Sanders are a family, with three generations living under one roof: Anna, Kate, and Gracie. That family begins to unravel when the matriarch, Anna, decides she must embark, finally, on the life she was meant to live. Anna, Danny Shepard, and Mac Caffrey have been friends most of their lives. Products of Berkeley at a time when the name Berkeley was believed to m...

June 13, 2017 - Trump's announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Accord on Climate Change has produced a remarkable backlash: hundreds of cities, states, universities and colleges, and businesses in the United States have declared their collective intention to reach the country's 2025 emissions goals, with or without federal leadership. America stepped up to the plate when Trump stated that he was "elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris," to which Pittsburgh's mayor responded "we [Pittsburgh] will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy and future." Bill Peduto, mayor of Pittsburgh, is a member of Mayors for 100% Clean Energy, the creation of Sierra Club, to which Michael Bloomberg is a major contributor. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and a billionaire philanthropist, is also the United Nations Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. In a letter written by Bloomberg ...

April 2, 2017 - The following was sent to me by Credo by email today. Please read and take action: Stunning new documents unsealed by a federal judge suggest that Monsanto worked directly with  federal regulators to hide the health risks of and manipulate the science behind its best-selling herbicide, RoundUp. The documents reveal that Monsanto pressured Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials to not publicly release information on the cancer risks of glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, ghost- wrote research for the EPA and worked with a senior official at the agency to quash a federal review of the chemical. These documents suggest an unprecedented level of collusion between the EPA and Monsanto  to cover up evidence that RoundUp is a likely carcinogen.  The Office of Inspector General of the  EPA, an independent office tasked with investigating fraud and abuse in the agency, must immediately lau...

March 21, 2017 - Statements issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) yesterday are so alarming, they must be shared. What follows is not good news, so if you'd rather not know - and that is a legitimate response, though I hate to admit it - stop reading. No matter what, never forget: never give up, never give up, never give up. The WMO reports unprecedented heat across the globe, exceptionally low ice at both poles, and - perhaps most worrisome - surging sea-level rise. No longer are climate change's effects being felt in various places at various times. It's crazy hot everywhere. This year continues a trend begun in 2016: temperature records are being broken everywhere. Last month was off the charts here in the United States. In Australia, extreme heat has been a fact of life in many states for months. I hope you saw what I wrote about fires in the US yesterday. In fact, scientific research reveals that the last time our planet was this warm occurred about...

March 20, 2017 - Happy Spring, everybody. Today's post will be brief: the ten-year average for number of wildfires during January through mid-March is 8,687 fires that burned 216,894 acres per year in the United States. This year there have been 10,829 fires during that period, burning 2,062,012 acres. You read that right.

March 13, 2017 - Raise your hand if winter weather where you live has been abnormal. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have had record-setting amounts of rain. 2017 has been one of the fastest starting years on record in terms of the tornado count, which currently stands at 301 confirmed tornadoes. There is an historic blizzard taking place in the northeastern US as I write. When you see words like "record setting" and "historic," think climate change. Otherwise, there is no change; events fall within an average range, established over decades or centuries. The events and patterns just described fall outside that range; they are therefore symptomatic of climate change. Every passing year gets warmer - and worse, by which I mean the damage done by storms measured in dollars, and the number of injuries or deaths caused by storms. The warmer temperatures occur at night, by the way. Yes, daytime temperatures may also be hellishly hot, but they aren't at the cutt...

March 5, 2017 - China's coal consumption dropped for the third year in a row in 2016.  This, coupled with the country's shift away from heavy industry, could well portend cleaner air and water. As you know, cleaner air in China means cleaner air everywhere. With a population of 1.35 billion people, China currently produces twice as much carbon dioxide in the form of emissions as the United States. Given that the US has a population less than 1/4 the size of China's, their emissions would quadruple our own, if their standard of living matched ours. Thank goodness it doesn't. Be aware, however, that the government of China is transitioning to an economy based on consumer spending. That could spell trouble. In the meantime, China's National Bureau of Statistics indicates that China's coal consumption fell by 4.7 percent in 2016. Coal's share of total energy consumed fell to 62% in 2016, from 64% in 2015. In the United States, by contrast, the government ple...

February 26, 2017 - Yes, yes, I know - I said my blog was closed.  You know what happened as well as I do: Trump got elected.And that changed everything. For the past fourteen months, I would check every once in a while, to see if anyone was still reading what I'd written. I never had a huge readership, and you won't be surprised to learn it dwindled as time went on. No surprise there. Guess what? I checked the stats today, and over the last month, writeaboutwarming has gotten 463 hits.  Laughable for some, major leagues for me. Again, the result of Trump being elected, I suspect. Readers are scared, readers want information. Here's the problem: the idea of discussing Trump's minions' nefarious activities just leaves me feeling ill. I know for certain I can't do it. I could go back to writing about what's happening to the environment, and I may. There's a problem with that, too. The earth hit 400 ppm carbon dioxide late in 2015, a reading far beyond ...