Tipping points

Mumbai, Chennai may reach climate tipping point by 2034: Study - The Economic Times

Mumbai, Chennai may reach climate tipping point by 2034: Study - The Economic Times

economictimes.indiatimes.com

Around 20 years from now, Mumbai and Chennai could routinely start witnessing temperatures hotter than the two cities have experienced in 150 years, a new study says.

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  Kishore Budha http://www.theguardian.com/...

  

  Climate change: a survivors' guide

  www.theguardian.com

  As warnings of global climate change grow ever more dire, John Vidal offers 10 tips on how to prepare for an apocalyptic future

  October 13 at 3:22pm · Like
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  Nikhil Desai Yeah, yeah. So what? 
  
  Another round of rich studies using rich theories of rich people.

  October 13 

• Daniel Taghioff Nikhil, you still haven't compared the historical data to current conditions. You remember calculus? How change and rates of change are not the same thing? Climate may be variable, but climate change affects the rate and intensity of the variability, and that makes a difference to vulnerability, as do social conditions, as you rightly point out. Stop thinking you have to choose one side of the argument, this is a systemic problem.
• Nikhil Desai I agree this is a systemic problem. I just don't think our intellectual tools are up to the challenge, and a lot is lost in the polarization of political arguments, fed by simplistic economics.
  

  
  Nick Stern's Global Deal is Unreal Zeal of a crusader or a jihadi. Read the three pieces in current JEL by him, Bob Pindyck, and Marty Weitzman.
  
  Wailing and screaming, and selling snake oil, is not thoughtful scholarship. Since I happen to pursue similar subjects and methods as Stern, I criticise him rather than coal companies (who, I believe, deliver greater value than the hysteria industry of the western whites).
• Daniel C. Summers-Minette I have a question for you Nikhil. Given the inherently dirty nature of even "clean coal", why shouldn't countries that have access to shale gas replace coal with natural gas as the fossil fuel of choice. Why shouldn't they convert cars and trucks to natural gas. For the latter, we'd find costs drop tremendously, as well as cutting CO2 output. I'm not sure what coal contributes except campaign donations. Coal jobs lost are oil patch jobs gained.

  
  

  Nikhil Desai I agree. Gas can also be imported. 

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  I have a bias toward electricity for small vehicles but for no reason other than improving load factors. 
  
  Indian cities switched to gas for buses, autorickshaws years ago, and gas/LPG cars are coming in. 
  
  Switching small industry from coal or wood to gas is a big headache.
  
  Coal in and/or from Australia and South Africa, Colombia and Indonesia will maintain the edge in power generation, just as in the US. For the next 50 years at least.
• Daniel C. Summers-Minette For the US, that's not likely to be true. About 8 years ago, the BTU measured use of natural gas and coal were equal. In 2012, natural gas was used about 50% more. With the advances in drilling and fracking, including a new directional gamma (I hope) that will allow for cheap, accurate geosteering, we should have cheap abundant natural gas for a century in the US. Gas can be exported/imported, but nothing is as cheap as pipelines for gas.
• Nikhil Desai True. What I meant is that the coal plant retirements so far are older units that would have been subject to costlier compliance (with non-CO2 regulations). There will be some more retirements still, but large units of the post-1971 (NSPS) variety will continue operating because their variable costs will be lower than those of new gas-fired units. 
  

  
  I haven't looked at the geography of coal unit retirements recently, but if I remember correctly, there were quite a lot of gas units built in the 2001-3 period of actual or feared power shortages. I vaguely recall as much as 200 GW of capacity was ordered during that time, some for backup generation by large users perhaps, and some on purely merchant basis. That excess will also continue to put pressure on new coal orders. Then there's renewables. Still, existing coal as of 2015 will continue. 
  
  So, I don't know how it would turn out. 
  
  Just checked EIA projections. Proved my hunch. Coal generation will increase, even as new capacity will be mostly gas and renewables. 
  
  http://www.eia.gov/.../archive/aeo11/MT_electric.cfm....
  
  I have a couple of nice memories - how i 1990 my optimism about nuclear power and another colleague's optimism for natural gas altered the long-term fuel forecasts enough to save the acid rain bill. (This was a routine exercise to update assumptions and extend the modeling horizon to 2010 or something. I was mostly away from the office those days and didn't know what was going on in Washington. Nobody challenged a confirmed nuclear cynic on his new assumptions.) Another was looking through all the major climate economics models for the US in 1998 with common assumptions, INCLUDING gas price forecasts, but with varying results for emissions and implications of carbon cap. Nobody could understand or explain. I tore up some technological assumptions, but otherwise the dispatch rules made the difference. So, grid operations and the detailed distribution of demand - down to 1 GW level at different times of the day and year - also makes an impact.
  
  Going back to your earlier question about gas in transport. I think gas pipelines in west, east, and south Africa should be expanded, as also the Central Asia to Eastern and South Asia. Still, bad roads and traffic congestion are the main contributors to inefficient energy use and unnecessarily high emissions from the transport sectors of many of these countries. Combined with heavy reliance on solid fuels for cooking and heating, the burden of air pollution gets increasingly severe (not to speak of toxic chemicals pollution from unregulated industries, and from landfills, stagnant and dirty water bodies). 
  
  From Beijing to Ulan Bataar to Kathmandu to Delhi to Lahore to Tehran, the burden of air pollution has been increasing due to these two factors - solid fuels for cooking and heating, and inefficient transport system. Add to it the drivers and the victims of air pollution - people and economic activity. 
  
  And Africa is in for it as well, even though heating is not a significant demand. 
  
  All across these countries, unreliable power systems (outages leading to generators) are made worse by middle/upper income and commercial use of electricity for cooking, heating and hot water. Gas and renewables could make a drastic difference. But the planning and financing capacities are limited, and the aid industry is into reducing CO2 emissions, not the real health pollutants (CO, ozone, PM, NMHCs) even if they happen to be GHGs. 
  
  Any wonder that I find Nick Stern and Ted Cruz similar? 

  

  U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Sector

  www.eia.gov

  Energy Information Administration - EIA - Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government