Oil and gas are typically produced together. If oil wells are located near gas pipelines, then the gas gets used. But if the wells are far offshore, or it is not economical to get the gas to market, then oil companies get rid of the gas by burning it – a process known as flaring.
Biomass is often touted as a green energy source. Just recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency declared biomass energy to be carbon neutral – a policy already embraced by many European countries. However, burning forests for fuel has hard limitations and ecological consequences.
The Tubbs Fire was the huge wildfire that burned parts of Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties in Northern California in October. Between that fire and several smaller ones going on at the same time, at least 43 people died and over 8,400 homes and buildings were destroyed. The Tubbs Fire alone burned over 36,000 acres. The even larger December wildfires in Southern California scorched hundreds of thousands of acres in multiple counties.
Global consumption of coal dropped by 1.7% last year. This is a major change considering that it had increased by an average of 1.9% per year from 2005 to 2015. China, which accounts for about half of the coal burned in the world, used 1.6% less in 2016, as compared to an increase of 3.7% per year over the previous 11 years.
The end of 2013 marked the first occasional observations of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere of 400 parts per million. There is nothing magical about that value, but we do tend to focus on round numbers.
Most of the blame for climate change has been placed on the growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but methane also plays a major role. Estimates are that about 1/5 of greenhouse effect warming is caused by methane in the atmosphere. There is far less of it than carbon dioxide, but methane is tremendously more effective at trapping heat.
President Obama has set 2030 as the target for reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to comply with the Paris Climate accord. Unfortunately, the Senate’s new Energy Bill would allow states to count wood as a “carbon neutral” fuel when drawing up plans to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
We recently highlighted how safe drinking water is in short supply. According to research published in the journal Science Advances, at least two thirds of the global population – more than four billion people – live with severe water scarcity for at least one month every year. And 500 million people around the world face water scarcity all year.
