It was a time of yuppies, flash cars, shoulder pads and big hair, but it appears the 1980s was also a key turning point for the world's climate, research has suggested. Scientists have discovered there was a huge shift in the environment that swept across the globe affecting ecosystems from the depths of the oceans to the upper atmosphere. They said an abrupt spurt of global warming, fuelled by human activity and a volcanic eruption in Mexico, is believed to have triggered these changes between 1984 and 1988. The researchers said the global warming that occurred in the 1980s was the largest shift in the climate to have occurred in around 1,000 years. --Richard Gray,
Daily Mail, 24 November 2015
Britain’s green energy barons are getting huge taxpayer subsidies to install diesel generators — exactly the kind of polluting energy source their wind and solar farms are meant to replace. Wind and solar power firms are being encouraged to install the generators, which pour out CO2, a greenhouse gas, and toxic nitrogen dioxide, on their sites in order to provide standby generating capacity and prevent the lights going out during periods of peak demand. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is offering consumer-funded subsidies to firms that install such “short-term operating reserve” because Britain has invested so little in large new power stations that there is a risk of winter power cuts. --Josh Boswell and Jonathan Leake,
The Sunday Times, 22 November 2015
European Union’s stringent renewable energy requirements are forcing coal-based power plants to use biomass fuel. Swaths of woodlands in Southeastern United States are being cut down to fuel the biomass boom across the Atlantic. A new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council has pointed out that 15 million acres of unprotected forests in the Southeastern United States, home to more than 600 imperiled, threatened or endangered species are at risk due to booming wood exports EU and UK. Debbie Hammel, the director of the Land Markets Initiative at NRDC says that Europe must cut down the subsidies for biomass based power plants to save forests in the United States. --Kesavan Unnikrishnan,
Digital Journal, 24 November 2015
Despite a 63% drop in rigs drilling for oil in the three key shale regions since last November, oil production in those regions has barely budged from peak levels in 2015. In fact, new wells in the Bakken are pumping up to 50% more oil than those drilled at the beginning of 2015. Operators are finding ways to do more with less. If you think this kind of resilience is without precedent, just look at natural gas. There are 199 rigs drilling for natural gas today, down from more than 1,600 in 2008. And yet, U.S. shale gas production today is at record levels even as prices test new lows. --Sam Ori,
The Wall Street Journal, 20 November 2015
It’s routinely claimed that climate-change-induced drought in Syria was a major factor in triggering the Syrian civil war, the Syrian refugee crisis and the rise of ISIS. But are these claims supported by the data? Average annual rainfall during the 2006-2011 period was only 9% lower than average annual rainfall over the preceding 55 years. The driest year during the period (2011) was only the seventh driest on record and 2006-2011 was only the 13th driest six-year period on record. Clearly the crop failures in the farming villages around Aleppo – which undoubtedly occurred – weren’t caused by a drought of Biblical proportions. In fact there doesn’t seem to have been a drought at Aleppo at all. --Roger Andrews,
Energy Matters, 24 November 2015
