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Even
if all 197 countries that agreed to the emissions-limiting treaty do
what they've said they'll do, we're on track for a 2.9 to 3.4 degrees
Celsius average increase in global temperature.
 Dear Wall Street Daily Reader,
It just doesn't matter.
The Paris Agreement — a deal driven by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — "enters into force" today.
But
according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), we're still on track for a 2.9–3.4 degrees Celsius temperature
increase compared with pre-industrial levels.
And
that's even if all 94 current signatories and the 103 countries whose
signatures are still outstanding live up to commitments under the Paris
Agreement.
In
its annual Emissions Gap Report, UNEP concluded that emissions in 2030
will be 12–14 gigatonnes above levels necessary to keep the temperature
increase below the 2°C that over the course of the last 40-odd years has
become the climate-change speed limit.
First
suggested by Yale economist William Nordhaus in 1975, that two degrees
is now recognized as a "pragmatic, simple, and straightforward" level
beyond which it's widely accepted Earth will experience changes in
precipitation patterns, more droughts and heat waves, stronger
hurricanes, rising sea levels, and multiple and varied regional effects.
To
have a chance at limiting the global average temperature rise to 2°C
means holding 2030 emissions to about 42 gigatonnes. And 2°C only gives
us a chance to avoid the worst. Hitting a lower target of 1.5°C "will
only reduce, rather than eliminate, impacts."
That certainly seems dramatic and urgent.
The
good news is that there are dramatic and urgent developments taking
place in laboratories around the world that may yet give us some hope of
surviving climate change.
Take,
for instance, the October 12, 2016, announcement by scientists at the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that they "have developed an
electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to
turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol."
This
technology, ramped up to commercial scale, could provide the basis for
utility-scale batteries that would support broad adoption of solar and
wind for base-load electric power generation.
The
good news is that there are dramatic and urgent developments taking
place in laboratories around the world that may yet give us some hope of
surviving climate change.
It's
also carbon-neutral, because the carbon dioxide created in the process
of burning ethanol is reclaimed in the catalytic process.
"We're
taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we're pushing
that combustion reaction backward with very high selectivity to a
useful fuel," said Adam Rondinone, the lead author of the Oak Ridge
team's study.
"Ethanol was a surprise — it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."
According
to Oak Ridge National Laboratory: "The catalyst's novelty lies in its
nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in
carbon spikes. This nano-texturing approach avoids the use of expensive
or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of
many catalysts."
Here's the thing about the Oak Ridge discovery: It was an accident, "serendipitous."
So
can anything be written — a 1.5°, 2.0°, 2.9°, 3.4°, or any increase in
the global average temperature — when beneficial occurrences and/or
discoveries like this can still happen?
On
another storage note, scientists at Rice University have discovered a
new candidate for the U.S. Department of Energy's benchmarks for
materials that would enable the use of clean-burning hydrogen for
everyday cars and trucks.
Materials
scientists Rouzbeh Shahsavari and Farzaneh Shayeganfar published their
work on October 23, 2016, in the American Chemical Society's journal Langmuir.
Their
laboratory work suggests "newly designed 3-D-pillared boron nitride
(PBN) and pillared graphene boron nitride (PGBN)… enhance the surface
and free volume for storage within the nanomaterial and increase the
gravimetric and volumetric hydrogen uptake capacities."
Here's the thing about the Oak Ridge discovery: It was an accident, "serendipitous."
The
computer models — which would require months for experimentalists to
verify — provide solid evidence of a battery sufficient to power
light-duty vehicles in a post-internal-combustion-engine world.
We're
also making incredible advances in photovoltaic technology that will
help more and more folks get off the grid — and at the same time drive
additional reductions in carbon emissions.
Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, published a study in Nature Energy on October 10, 2016, indicating that, according to IEEE Spectrum,
"a thin film of quantum dots on everyday glass could be the key to
achieving acceptable efficiency in window photovoltaic systems at low
cost."
There
is a way to go for Victor Klimov, a nanotechnology researcher at Los
Alamos, and his team. Their quantum dots right now produce overall
energy efficiency conversion of 1.9%. To be commercially viable, they
need to get to 6%.
We're
also making incredible advances in photovoltaic technology that will
help more and more folks get off the grid — and at the same time drive
additional reductions in carbon emissions.
That may be a matter of increasing quantum dot concentration and getting a better grasp of their absorption properties.
But the process is simple in application on window glass. And theoretically, it's cheap.
Reducing
emissions at the utility level by making solar and wind even more
viable replacements for coal-fired electrical power, at the light-duty
vehicle level by creating powerful and clean storage technology, and at
the residential level by helping more folks get off the grid, combined,
will make a significant difference.
Who knows if it's enough?
But even Bill Murray's Meatballs crew stuck around to compete after his "It Just Doesn't Matter" speech the night before the big competition with Camp Mohawk.
And like his beloved Chicago Cubs, Murray's Camp North Star finally prevailed in the end.
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