Human societies are setting themselves on a collision course with climate-induced catastrophes. Lithium-ion batteries will soon be facing competition. How to deal with x and the conflicts it creates?
Collision course with climate disaster and societal collapse
I am sorry to be starting the new year with depressing news but for anyone wanting a readable, evidence-based, realistic summary of where the world currently stands with climate change, I cannot recommend highly enough Collision Course. 3-degrees of warming & humanity’s future, written by regular P&I contributor David Spratt and published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration.
Spratt provided P&I readers with his own synopsis of the document in December but I’d like to highlight a few points. Briefly, his argument is that:
- The world has effectively already reached 1.5o C of warming (couldn’t agree more) and the pace of warming is increasing. Many of the impacts are occurring earlier than predicted.
- Several vital components of the natural system that has maintained a relatively stable environment on Earth for the last 12,000 years are close to, or may have already passed, tipping points. Runaway system change, beyond the influence of humans, may now occur with disastrous results for our civilisations (for instance, melting of the polar ice sheets, conversion of the Amazon rainforest to a source of atmospheric carbon and decay of ocean circulation patterns).
- Despite 30 years of international climate talks and a remarkable expansion of renewable energy, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. Petrostates and major fossil fuel companies have ensured that national and international actions to reduce emissions have been weak and will likely continue to be so (even more likely with Trump back in the White House).
- As an example of the poor progress to date on reducing emissions, Spratt presents a graph demonstrating that since 2005 Australia’s reduction in emissions from the generation of electricity (orange line) has been matched by an increase in emissions in other sectors of the economy (green line):
Image: Supplied
- The OECD projects that in 2050 the world economy will be double what it is today and will require 80% more energy. Without more policy action, about 85% of global energy will still be provided by fossil fuels. In essence, the expansion of renewable energy is now meeting much of the increasing demand for electricity but not replacing the existing fossil fuel-generated electricity.
- Global warming reaching 3o C is now a possibility, with catastrophic consequences for the climate, weather patterns, food and water security, social stability and global governance. Because the environmental and social risks are existential, non-linear, mutually reinforcing and difficult to predict, preparations should be made for worst-case environmental developments that may seem unlikely but are plausible and will be truly catastrophic should they occur.
- Climate change is not the only environmental crisis. Several other planetary boundaries, straying beyond which threatens our safe living space, have also been exceeded or are getting close to the limit (for instance, levels of biodiversity, land use, and amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous in the environment).
Spratt’s conclusions are chilling:
‘The COP climate policy-making paradigm, the “official future”, is crafted to fit the desires of global capital and the fossil fuel industry. Change paths must be incremental and nondisruptive, and certainly should not strand large amounts of capital. Action is delayed with long-term, non-enforceable goals such as “net zero by 2050”, despite the evidence that such procrastination is facilitating a path towards collapse, not preventing it.
This “official future” is one of confusion, delay, fake solutions and fake news carefully manicured by the fossil fuel industry over many decades. Many governments–in Australia, the UK and the USA, for example–remain captured by fossil fuel interests.
The “official future” which is performed each year at the COPs, and every week of the year in parliaments and markets, is a fig leaf for a state and corporate failure of imagination and the need to think the unthinkable.’
A second report will focus on how mainstream climate policymaking is constructed to fail, the inevitable disruptions that will occur from rising temperatures and what needs to be done.
Which technology will lead the battery charge in 10 years?
Currently, lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion) are pretty much the only show in town for both energy storage and EVs, two crucial elements of the clean energy revolution. The energy density of Li-ion batteries (the power they pack for a given weight) is improving and their price is falling. However, they do have problems: for instance, the risk of fire caused by ‘thermal runaway’ if they are damaged; the environmental damage caused by mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and nickel that is essential for their construction, and the relative scarcity of these elements; and, especially from the USA’s viewpoint, the stranglehold that China currently has on the mining and processing of the required elements and the production of Li-ion batteries.
Step up to the plate sodium-ion batteries. These show considerable promise because sodium is ubiquitous and cheap, the batteries work better than Li-ion batteries in extreme cold and they have a much lower risk of fire. The main current drawback is that their energy density is only about half that of Li-ion, although it is improving. The cost is higher at present but will likely fall to around 20% less than Li-ion. The production of sodium-ion batteries is still in its infancy (less than 1% of Li-ion’s number) but China is rolling out production plants and the USA is developing an industry as their market share increases.
Solid-state batteries are a little bit further down the track. In traditional batteries the substance through which the ions pass to create the charge is a liquid or gel but in solid-state batteries it is, you guessed it, a solid. The energy densities of solid-state batteries are higher than Li-ion.
There will likely be a niche for many different battery technologies in the clean energy future—if we get there in time.
Sea walls endanger social harmony
It’s water pistols at dawn along some of parts of the NSW coastline as property owners, beach users, surfers, local councils and the NSW Planning Department argue over the merits and drawbacks of vertical seawalls for protecting public and private property. Coastal erosion was brought to the wider public’s attention most dramatically in 2016 when massive storm surges caused significant erosion on Sydney’s northern beaches.
Image: Supplied
Coastal erosion is nothing new, of course; it’s one component of the natural processes that change the world’s physical structure. What are somewhat new are the development of very expensive public and private property close to the coast and the increasing ferocity of storms induced by climate change. Sea level rise will also make erosion even more of a problem over the coming decades.
Several complex issues underpin the emerging conflicts, for instance: whether vertical sea walls are the most effective way of preventing coastal erosion; whether coastal erosion should be prevented or simply accepted as a reality; who should bear the cost; the loss of public amenity created by sea walls; the damage caused to the natural environment by massive concrete structures; and whether the owners of private properties protected by sea walls should be allowed to benefit if they gain any land.
Problems associated with coastal erosion are not limited to NSW or even Australia. There was a delightful obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald last month for Professor Orrin H. Pilkey, a coastal geologist who argued, often successfully, against putting seawalls, hotels and other heavy infrastructure on vulnerable coastal landscapes in the USA. He was also a critic of ‘nourishing’ beaches with infusions of pumped-in sand, a practice that was popular on the Gold Coast a decade ago. I don’t know if it still is.
Orrin sounds like a genuine environmental hero whom I’d like to have met. I strongly recommend reading his obituary.
As an aside, I realise it’s an unpopular position but I’m a bit of a fan of brutalist architecture. Like all styles of architecture, there are good and bad examples and the judgement of artistic merit is very much in the eye of the beholder anyway. Shame about all that concrete though.
Designed by William Pereira in the 1960s. (Photo: Giesel Library, San Diego)
Storms are getting stronger and more damaging. Why?
All due to basic physics apparently:
- Hot ocean waters provide more moisture for the air.
- Warmer air holds more moisture, the ‘latent energy for storms’ and ‘the gasoline for hurricanes’.
- Hot ocean water favours ‘rapid intensification’, the very rapid development of tropical depressions into major hurricanes. This makes it harder for meteorologists to predict events and more difficult for authorities and individuals to prepare.
- A warmer climate increases wind speeds. Small increases in wind speed can have a disproportionate effect on damage.
- More high intensity cyclones are making landfall, again increasing the damage.
- There’s an increasing trend for a second storm to come along soon after the first.
‘Climate is not just changing, it HAS changed, yet our thinking has not kept up. We live now in a world where historical assumptions no longer hold—and the changes are going to keep coming.’
74-year-old widow gives birth
Wisdom, on the right, is a Laysan albatross, about 74 years old. Her recently laid egg, her first in four years, is being gazed at adoringly by her new partner on the Midway Atoll Wildlife Refuge, about 2,500 km north-west of Hawai’i.
Image: Supplied