Friday, May 27, 2011

Shale concerns

Some more news on shale gas and fracking! After deciding to ban shale gas exploration, the French government seems to have second thoughts. Perhaps inspired by the UK climate panel report.

Meanwhile, a new study on emissions on natural gas throws up a different picture from that painted by Cornell University last month. The Cornell study had found that GHG footprint of shale gas was more than natural gas, and even coal. But now, National Energy Technology Laboratory in the US has recently released its own study showing a different result.

NETL looked at both a 100-year timeframe and a 20-year time frame, and in both cases found that life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas were substantially lower than coal. According to the findings, natural gas emitted 50% fewer emissions than coal over a 20-year GWP and emitted 55% fewer emissions over a 100-year GWP.

These studies do not, however, factor in the concerns about methane release into water or whether fracturing fluids will cause environmental and health problems. As NETL concludes in the study: “All opportunities need to be evaluated on a sustainable energy basis: Environmental performance, economic performance and social performance.” How pertinent, but how often neglected.

Offshore, CSP see progress

A widening range of low-carbon technologies, including offshore wind and concentrated solar power (CSP) are providing opportunities for global growth despite challenging market conditions, according financial consultants Ernst & Young.

China still leads the way in the company’s latest quarterly Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indices, thanks in part to its development of shallow water offshore wind and a new five-year plan that targets over 11% of primary energy generation from renewable sources by 2015.

Meanwhile, utility-scale solar developments – both photovoltaic and CSP – have kept the US in second position, despite policy and market uncertainty blighting progress with wind power.

“The picture for renewable energy this quarter has undoubtedly been mixed,” says Ben Warren of Ernst & Young. “Global events have had a significant impact on attitudes to renewable energy, with increased impetus in favour of renewables in Japan, the Middle East and a number of developing economies.”

Most countries have retained their position in the ranking, but Brazil has moved up four places to 12th thanks to strong growth in the country’s wind market.

The UK has suffered in the Ernst & Young ranking because of its ‘fast-track’ review of feed-in tariffs for solar power developments.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Clean revolution and India

India is patting itself on the back courtesy a report by international NGO The Climate Group that lauds its progress in energy efficiency where it says India will fast be surpassing the US with the market expected to treble to INR 351,000 crore (USD 77 billion) in the next ten years. It praises India which it says has prioritised low carbon development now, and creating a better, more secure, and more prosperous future for its more than one billion people.

The report, India’s Clean Revolution highlights other success stories in India’s low carbon economy. High fuel prices set by the Indian government for industry have driven dramatic energy efficiency improvements, such that India is now one of the world’s lowest-cost producers of both aluminium and steel.

The report describes how a low carbon development path is the only one that will guarantee future prosperity for India. Bold low carbon policies will increase India’s energy independence and help provide access to energy to those who still lack it, it says.

India’s share of the USD 2.2 trillion market for low carbon goods and services in 2020 could be as much as USD 135 billion, creating 10.5 million green jobs, and is likely to grow faster than any other country. Low cost labor and a highly skilled manufacturing base will make India a major hub for clean technologies.

And finally, it cautions India to avoid the developed world model of high cost, high carbon development and instead chart a new low carbon pathway based on energy efficiency and energy security. This is something we have stressed - given the massive investments in infrastructure, both ongoing and to come, and a large section still largely not relying on commercial energy, this is time for a change in track on the energy front.

UK Panel sees no danger in fracking

Talk of techno-fix and here is more on shale gas and fracking!

A UK parliamentary committee has ruled that shale gas drilling poses no risks to the country’s water supplies and should be given the go ahead for development. According to the Energy and Climate Change Committee, which published its report a day ago, a moratorium on shale gas drilling in the UK is neither justified nor necessary.

“There appears to be nothing inherently dangerous about the process of ‘fracking’ itself and as long as the integrity of the well is maintained shale gas extraction should be safe,” says committee chair Tim Yeo MP. “There has been a lot of hot air recently about the dangers of shale gas drilling, but our inquiry found no evidence to support the main concern – that UK water supplies would be put at risk.”

The UK has considerable shale gas reserves, according the British Geological Survey data cited by the report. While onshore shale gas resources could total 150 billion cubic metres – equivalent to around 18 months of UK gas consumption, offshore resources could “dwarf” these.

As well as concerns about contamination of aquifers, environmentalists have also raised concerns about emissions from shale gas, which is primarily methane – a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. But the Committee’s report argues that UK regulations are much tougher than those in the US and will be more effective in minimising leaks from wells or pipelines.

Time to slow down

Fo regular readers of The Guardian, a recent long-drawn spar has been one taken up by columnist George Monbiot that began with being cautious about nuclear to openly batting for nuclear power. To his opponents, Monbiot has had many points to quote on why he considers nuclear to be a clean option, wastes and security issues notwithstanding.

But a much recent off-shoot of the discussion has been his rhetoric to environmentalists advocating renewables and how they expected to live with lesser energy which this would mean, at least initially. An interesting retort by a fellow columnist brings up a valid point - 'the most obvious way of cutting production is to make things to higher standards. If everything were made to last twice as long then we would only need to make half as much of it. This requires us to slow down the rate of technological progress so that goods (and humans) do not become functionally obsolescent so quickly'.

To Monbiot's query on how to find the energy required to make bricks, glass, metal tools and utensils, textiles … ceramics and soap, Simon replies: 'Take bricks: for several years I lived in a cob house – built in 1911 from rammed unbaked earth – which was warm and delightful. I have also made unfired bricks with a device called a block ram, and 30 years later they are weathering fine.'

He goes on to say very pertinently that reducing consumption of goods is not a recipe for abject poverty. Half the world still lives without superabundance, but where there is misery 'it is because of lack of food, water, simple medicines and adequate shelter – not because of a shortage of cheap T-shirts, factory-fired bricks, or 17 varieties of cleaning product.'!! How true.

A large populace the world over is led to believe taht techno-fixes that will allow us to go on extracting the world's resources at an ever accelerating rate. What a fallacy.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Big time solar

The US administration provided a loan guarantee of $737 million to SolarReserve on Thursday to construct the first large-scale solar power plant that stores energy and provides electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The plant utilizes what is called thermal energy storage to store heat collected from the sun, which is then utilized by the power plant to boil water and produce steam. The steam then turns a steam turbine which generates electricity. Various versions of solar thermal plants exist.

Some collect heat and stores it in molten salt which is then circulated to the boiler. The boiler turns water into steam which then rushes through a steam turbine.
This type collects heat and stores it in molten salt which is then circulated to the boiler where water is converted to steam to drive a turbine!

17,500 heliostats focus or concentrate sunlight onto the collector at the top of a 640-foot tall tower until it reaches a temperature of 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit.
The power plant’s electricity generation capacity is 110-MW, which makes it one of the larger-scale solar power plants.

For those who oppose solar on the grounds of storage and intermittency, here then is the answer. Still, it does require land! But wastelands and deserts would be ideal, right?

Sunday, May 22, 2011

A witches brew

Natural gas from shale formations is the new kid on the block. But it is not without its share of dangers, as media attention in the US shows.

The gas, which is trapped in tiny bubble-like pockets in the rock, is procured by forcefully injecting chemicals diluted with millions of gallons of water into the rock. This fracking ruptures the earth, creating fissures through which the gas passes -- along with a brew of carcinogens, acutely poisonous heavy metals, and radioactive elements.

Uranium, radium, and radon make the shale so radioactive that companies sometimes drop Geiger counters into wells to determine whether they have reached the gas-rich deposits. But those compounds are almost benign compared to the fracking fluids that drillers inject into the wells. Some of these are very dangerous to human health.

Among other pollutants which fracking produces is ozone in large quantities and the damage to crops from ozone is well known.

Before more nations join the US and others in the rush to exploit this source, it may be wise to look into these aspects and put in place safety measures before drilling. Short-term benefits have to be balanced with long-term damage.

Will we make the change?

We reported on this blog recently the latest IPCC report ‘Special Report Renewable Energy Sources (SRREN)’( http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de )which has projected that the renewable energy could account for almost 80% of the world's energy supply within four decades. Now let us look at what we can do given the existing policies.

The report did stress that the projection would hold only if government pursued favourable policies. The report has said that if the full range of renewable technologies were deployed, the world could keep greenhouse gas concentrations to less than 450 parts per million, the level scientists have predicted will be the limit of safety beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible. And all that at a mere 1 percent of GDP cost.

The report gives overwhelming scientific evidence that renewable energy can also meet the growing demand of developing countries, where over 2 billion people lack access to basic energy services and can do so at a more cost-competitive and faster rate than conventional energy sources.

Now consider in this context the present Indian government's intention to increase the nuclear power capacity from 4,800 MW to 275,000 MW by 2050; the projection by Integrated Energy Policy that coal power capacity should increase from 80,000 MW to 400,000 MW and the hydel capacity to grow from 37,000 Mw to 150,000 MW by 2031-32. (China has just accepted that its huge hydel project The Three Gorges Dam has led to a slew of problems which must be addressed fast.)

We do not seem inclined to make the big change.

But this is the time for the country to seize the opportunity to go clean. With a 40 percent still lacking access to electricity, and even a section of the rest not yet relying heavily on commercial energy sources, there are fewer chances of upheaval than a developed nation heavily reliant on the same.

Decentralised energy shows the way. Take for example, solar. An expert estimate assumes about 30 crore house holds in the country by 2031-32 (@ 4 persons per house), and assuming that about 7.5 crore houses (25% of the total) in the country will be suitable and economically able to install roof-top solar photovoltaic systems of 2 kW each, about 150,000 MW installed capacity of solar power in distributed mode is feasible at low additional cost to the society.

The Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network (WREN) in the UK plans to generate 30% of the town's electricity from solar by 2015. WREN is starting installations with 100 homes, half of which will be buying the systems themselves, and half of which will be funded through a partnership between solar provider Solarcentury and Triodos Bank.

Finally, one simply cannot forget the role energy conservation has to play. A recent Oak Ridge University study says that over a half of electricity generated in the US is wasted, and that without including heat losses!

Will the powers that be take the step towards making the IPCC prediction come true?

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

UK revs up on the low carbon route

The government of the United Kingdom took what is seen in some quarters as a significant step to shift to a low-carbon economy, providing clear signals to investors that the U.K. wants to host large-scale clean energy projects moving forward.

The agreement announced today takes the form of a legally binding target to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2025, as part of the country's fourth carbon budget. This goal is far deeper than the European Union’s goal of cutting emissions 20 percent by 2020, and it would mean that Britain would make faster emissions cuts than other similar size countries, including Germany.

The Committee on Climate Change had called for a 80 percent reduction in emissions.

The target will be viewed further in 2014 in the face of what has been achieved by then.

The goal could require households to spend on new energy-saving devices for the home. It could also revive stalled government support for large projects, like those that capture power from tides and that bury carbon dioxide emissions.

But how well will policy back up the target remains to be seen given the signals. For instance, the extraordinary U-turn on feed-in tariffs, for instance, left the solar industry reeling in shock. The government's decision to indicate it will slash financial support to solar over 50 kW has effectively pulled the rug out from under the industry, as The Guardian notes.

Also falling short of expectations was the energy bill, presented to parliament for its second reading last week by the energy and climate change secretary. The proposals lacked detail, joined-up thinking and realistic strategies to deliver on the scale really needed to address fuel poverty and reduce climate emissions, says the Guardian.

Unambitious and incoherent policies will not help achieve aggressive targets as the latest one. That goes for any nation.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Powered by solar

The number of homes and shops equipped with solar power systems in rural Bangladesh doubled in the last year to more than 870,000 with the help of funding from the World Bank and other organizations, according to a World Bank report. In 2009, the World Bank provided $130 million to support government initiatives to reach remote parts of Bangladesh that would otherwise not be connected to the national grid.

Fewer than half the people in Bangladesh have access to electricity. For Bangladesh, which already faces 2,000 megawatts of electricity shortages, finding new sources of power will become increasingly critical as population growth, industrialization, and a rise in the use of electrical appliances adds another 500 megawatts of demand annually.

In another new report, the U.S.-based advisory firm KPMG LLP predicts that India, Asia’s third-largest energy consumer, may be able to produce electricity from solar power as cheaply as from coal by 2017.

India may install three times as much solar capacity as the government intends by 2022 if sun-powered electricity is able to match the cost of conventional power, a point referred to as grid parity.

Today, solar power costs more than twice as much as the 5.42 rupees per kilowatt-hour that it costs to deliver electricity to consumers. The cost of fossil-fuel electricity may rise as much as 5.5 percent annually as India has to buy more expensive imported coal and replace aging plants, the report said. The country’s coal deficit may triple over the next five to seven years, a unit of Moody’s Investors Service had earlier predicted.

If solar power becomes competitive with other sources, India could add 39,070 megawatts of grid-connected solar projects from 2017 and 2022,says the KPMG report. That's good news given the bad news that the majority of Himalayan glaciers are indeed melting due to climate change. New data from the Indian Space Research Organization shows that 75% of the region's glaciers are retreating, on average 3.75km (2.33 miles) between 1989-2004.

If solar power is to play a big role, subsidies will be required to stay. The inevitable questions around solar will be asked over and over again, regarding costs and land requirement. But this is one source which promises not to peak in the near future! Isn't that reason enough to shift?

Thursday, May 12, 2011

1.3 t food wasted annually

One-third of the world's food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year, according to a study released on Wednesday by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Roughly 1.3bn tonnes of food is either lost or wasted globally due to inefficiencies throughout the food supply chain, says the report, based on research by the Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology (Sik).

According to the report, industrialised and developing countries waste or lose roughly the same amount of food each year – 670m and 630m tonnes respectively. But while rich countries waste food primarily at the level of the consumer, the main issue for developing countries is food lost due to weak infrastructure.

Significantly, the average European or North American consumer wastes 95kg-115kg of food a year, above all fruits and vegetables. In contrast, the average consumer in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia or south-east Asia wastes only 6kg-11kg.

Goes without saying that reducing this colossal waste should be a priority facing a burgeoning population.

The Green fleet

More than 50 percent of the 64,000 new transit buses expected to arrive on roadways worldwide by 2015 will be fueled by alternative sources of energy, compared with 28 percent of new bus deliveries in 2010, according to a report by U.S.-based Pike Research.

The most significant growth will occur in North America and Asia, where more than 60 percent of all new buses will be powered with alternative fuels within five years. This is especially significant since the two regions together will represent nearly 70% of all new bus deliveries during that timeframe.

According to the report, hybrid electric buses will have the smallest impact on infrastructure since they usually use diesel fuel; while natural gas buses are less expensive, they require fueling stations. While the number of hydrogen fuel cell buses will continue to increase, their growth will be small compared with other alternative fuels because they require hydrogen refueling points.

Good news but then this is about the new vehicles added. Not all vehicles. Still, 32,000 is a sizeable number when you consider that transport sector comes second to power plants in emissions.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

When water acidifies...

The acidification of the world's oceans could have major consequences for the marine environment. New research shows that coccoliths, which are an important part of the marine environment, dissolve when seawater acidifies.

Acidification of the oceans is a serious problem. The acidification has enormous consequences not only for coccoliths, but also for many other marine organisms as well as the global carbon cycle.

Coccoliths are very small shells of calcium carbonate that encapsulate a number of species of alga. Algae plays an important role in the global carbon-oxygen cycle and thus in our ecosystem.

The study by the Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen, showed how acidification affects the coccoliths. They are protected from dissolution by a very thin layer of organic material that the algae formed, even though the seawater is extremely unsaturated relative to calcite.

The protection of the organic material is lost when the pH is lowered slightly. In fact, it turns out that the shell falls completely apart when we do experiments in water with a pH value that many researchers believe will be the found in the world oceans in the year 2100 due to the CO2 levels.

Everything is connected to something in the world wide web of life. A rip in the web can cascade into chaos down the line. But do we care? Wouldn't seem so, with the attention now turning to natural gas and shale deposits that pose their own dangers.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Possible, but expensive

A new study by the American Physical Society shows that it's technologically feasible to take CO2 out of the atmosphere but to do so will cost at least $600/ton, 7.5 times more expensive than capturing emissions from power plant smokestacks.

Meanwhile, a team of leading researchers from some of Australia's top universities and research institutes will join forces to develop new ways to capture and transform carbon dioxide. The team will explore how smart materials, called metal-organic frameworks (or MOFs) can be used to capture and concentrate CO2 with minimum energy requirements.

These materials are capable of absorbing large amounts of CO2 into nanometre-sized holes within their structures, leading potentially to the efficient separation of this gas from power station flue gases.

The team will also look at how MOFs can be used to convert CO2 into useful substances, including feedstocks for agriculture, hydrocarbon fuels and precursors to complex metal oxides for use in solar cells.

Never say die! What perhaps we are forgetting is that fossil fuels will not last forever. Already peak coal is on the near horizon. Does it make sense to invest so much money on something short-lived?

Monday, May 9, 2011

UK can do it

Following IPCC report, here is some good news. Renewable energy should be able to make a major contribution to the decarbonisation of the UK economy over coming years, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has said.

The influential Committee’s Renewable Energy Review, which was commissioned by the Coalition Government last year, concludes that renewables could generate around 30% of the UK’s energy – or up to 45% if costs fall – by 2030.

The review highlights wind and marine energy as among the most promising renewable technologies, as well as air and ground source heat pumps and the use of bioenergy for heat generation. But committee chair Lord Turner adds that the UK Government should be committing support to less mature technologies now and putting in place incentives to drive increased investment in renewable heat and power generation over the next decade.

Well, we better start hurrying up! Rising global temperatures have reduced yields of wheat and corn in some countries, a decline that probably has contributed to the rise in agricultural commodity prices in recent years, according to a study in the journal Science. Researchers from Stanford and Columbia universities said that from 1980 to 2008, temperature increases of several degrees Fahrenheit in key growing regions — including Russia, India, China, and France — had cut into yields of corn and wheat compared to expected yields had growing season temperatures not risen.

Policy is the key

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued the summary of its first report on the potential role of renewable forms of energy, from dams to wind turbines and solar panels, in cutting emissions of greenhouse gases in coming decades. Does it say anything new? No. It only reiterates that without sustained and focused climate and energy policies by governments around the world, the potential of renewable energy technologies to compete with fossil fuels remains deeply limited.

As some experts say, the report fails to spell out how exactly the world will chart its clean energy route amidst clashing personal, corporate and national interests.

Anyway, some of the key points in the report are:
- Of the around 300 Gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generating capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, 140 GW came from renewable energy.
- Despite global financial challenges, renewable energy capacity grew in 2009—wind by over 30 percent; hydropower by three percent; grid-connected photovoltaics by over 50 percent; geothermal by 4 percent; solar water/heating by over 20 percent and ethanol and biodiesel production rose by 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.
- Developing countries host more than 50 percent of current global renewable energy capacity.
- The technical potential of renewable energy technologies exceeds the current global energy demand by a considerable amount—globally and in respect of most regions of the world.
- Under the scenarios analyzed in-depth, less than 2.5 percent of the globally available technical potential for renewables is used—in other words over 97 percent is untapped underlining that availability of renewable source will not be a limiting factor.
- A combination of targeted public policies allied to research and development investments could reduce fuel and financing costs leading to lower additional costs for renewable energy technologies.

Challenges are huge but not unsurmountable as Germany shows. Against what is clearly anti-growth (in the usual sense!) and against popular opinion, chancellor Merkel has taken firm steps. Early in march, she announced an accelerated phasing out of all 17 German nuclear reactors as an immediate reaction to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The chancellor now says she wants to slash the use of coal, speed up approvals for renewable energy investments, and reduce CO2 emissions drastically.

Germany wants to double the share of renewable energy to 35 percent of consumption in 2020, 50 percent in 2030, 65 percent in 2040, and more than 80 percent in 2050. At the same time, the chancellor vows to cut CO2 emissions (compared to 1990 levels) by 40 percent in 2020, by 55 percent in 2030, and by more than 80 percent in 2050.

The new course is a huge challenge in terms of cost and feasibility. Of the current 82 gigawatts of peak demand, about half comes from coal, 23 percent from nuclear, 10 percent from natural gas, and 17 percent from renewables. That means three quarters of Germany’s electricity sources will have to be replaced by green technology within just a few decades, if the nuclear phase-out and the CO2 goals are to be accomplished.

Since the 1990s, the Renewable Energy Sources Act has paved the way for billions of Euros flowing to consumers and investors for green power projects. Besides solar energy, the recent announcement of Baltic 1, an offshore project involving 21 offshore wind turbines, is seen as big steps in the right direction.

Experts agree that the transition will be costly and carry economic risks. Already, consumers in Germany pay about 5 U.S. cents per kilowatt hour as surcharge to finance the feed-in tariffs. Plus there is the usual opposition to the mushrooming wind turbines all over the landscape, and new fears of toxins from cadmium used in photovaltaics.

But that is not the issue here. It is simply that where there is political will, much can be done.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Solar thermal power

MIT researchers and their collaborators have come up with an unusual, high performance and possibly less expensive way of turning the sun's heat into electricity.

Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device — one that produces electricity from solar heat.

It does so by generating and harnessing a temperature difference of about 200 degrees Celsius between the interior of the device and the ambient air. While solar thermal electricity systems aren’t a new idea, they typically involve vast arrays of movable mirrors that track the sun and focus its rays on a small area. The new approach uses flat, stationary panels similar to traditional solar panels, eliminating the need for tracking systems.

Like the silicon photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when struck by sunlight, the new system is a solid-state device with no moving parts. A thermoelectric generator, placed inside a vacuum chamber made of glass, is covered with a black plate of copper that absorbs sunlight but does not re-radiate it as heat. The other side of the generator is in contact with ambient temperatures. Placed in the sun, the entire unit heats up quickly, even without facing the sun directly.

The device requires much less material than conventional photovoltaic panels, and could therefore be much less expensive to produce. It can also be integrated into solar hot water systems, allowing the expenses of the structure and installation to serve two functions at once. Because it can be piggybacked onto the existing solar hot-water industry, the thermoelectric device could be a relatively inexpensive addition, with no subsidies required, says the team.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Multiplying at a brisk pace

What's more scary than the dangers of terrorism spreading its tentacles around the globe? Population! Don't agree?

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, the United Nations projected in a report released Tuesday.

What's worse, most of this will be in under-developed Africa. Growth there remains so high that the population there could more than triple in this century, rising from today’s one billion to 3.6 billion, the report said.

The projections were made by the United Nations population division, which has a track record of fairly accurate forecasts. In the new report, the division raised its forecast for the year 2050, estimating that the world would most likely have 9.3 billion people then, an increase of 156 million over the previous estimate for that year, published in 2008.

As the UN population division director said, should the funding nations focus on programs that encourage family planning? Conservatives have attacked such programs as government meddling in private decisions, and in some countries, Catholic groups fought widespread availability of birth control.

But unless we do somehting fast, feeding 10 billion will be an impossible task!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

The bad ones get bigger

Before the 'late' bin Laden took over the headlines, there was a week of real bad tornadoes that lashed parts of the US in what was the worst season since early 70s. Does this say anything at all? Is this to do with climate change or is it simply part of a natural swing in the climate?

For decades, scientists have predicted that if we kept pouring increasing amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we would change the climate. As far back as 1995, analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center showed that over the course of the 20th century, the United States had suffered a statistically significant increase in a variety of extreme weather events, the very ones you would expect from global warming, such as more — and more intense — precipitation. That analysis concluded the chances were only “5 to 10 percent” this increase was due to factors other than global warming, such as “natural climate variability.”

Since then, many scientific studies have found that indeed the weather has become more extreme, as expected, and that it is extremely likely that humans are a contributing cause. They suggest systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms.

The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong.

Whether you believe climate change is the villain or not, there is no slaying of this big baddie possible in the near future, not the way we continue to live. Uncontrolled population and near-beserk consumption have written the recipe and cooked the dish already.