Climate Change with Scott Amyx

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. I’m a native Californian but I love the East Coast. Even during hot summer days, there’s almost always patches of clouds to block the burning sun. The next idea for reducing global warming involves blocking the sun so that Earth is less warm. It’s called geoengineering. It involves spraying particles into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight in order to reduce global temperatures. The hope is that it’s enough to slow down the more severe consequences of climate change. Harvard scientists plan to launch a high-altitude balloon into the stratosphere and release a small cloud of calcium carbonate. Then air flow would disperse the particles by 1 kilometer long and 100 meters in diameter. However geoengineering isn’t without concerns. Some studies suggest that spraying large amounts of particles into the atmosphere could cause unintended consequences to crops and weather patterns. A UC Berkeley research indicates that the net benefit of geoengineering might not be worth it. Covering the sun would mean less crop yield; less food production. Their recommendation for combating climate change is to address the source: burn less fossil fuels. It means we need to produce enough clean energy to wean off oil & gas and coal. Stay tuned next time to find out what technology might be able to slow down hurricanes. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. One of my favorite activities is to walk in a forest. Something about being in nature among trees is so rejuvenating. The air is clean and all your worries simply disappear. So when it comes to climate change, don’t you wish having cleaner air was as simple as planting more trees? Unfortunately, we are spewing CO2 faster than our planet can absorb. So what technologies can combat climate change? One idea is called Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage. Essentially, it involves growing certain crops that can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then burning them at power stations to create energy, while capturing the CO2 when they are burned and then safely storing them underground. This process is considered carbon negative in theory. But there are issues. To make a dent in global emissions, we would need land that’s bigger than India to grow these crops. That’s land that would not be available for growing food or trees for absorbing CO2. Then there's the question of how much water is needed, and how much carbon is released by converting land for growing these crops. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage along with tree planting sound great but hard to implement in scale. We need a better solution. Stay tuned next time to find out how scattering dust in the atmosphere might reduce global warming. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change flash briefing. My wife has always liked SUVs. It’s able to carry more people. She feels safer because it’s larger, heavier and and she’s seated up higher. It’s good for winter driving. It turns out that she’s not the only one enamored with SUVs. There is an unstoppable appetite for SUVs worldwide. The rugged, off-road, gas-guzzler that America invented and the world now wants to drive are increasing global carbon emissions. Thanks to rising income level and lower gas prices, drivers in China, Australia and other countries are ditching their smaller sedans for bigger cars. For the first time, SUVs and crossovers made up more than one in three cars sold globally last year, almost tripling their share from just a decade ago. But there’s a big downside to driving SUVs. Transportation accounts for an estimated 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with cars and trucks making up the biggest share. The global SUV boom is a roadblock towards cleaner cars. Why? SUVs are also less likely to go electric soon, with only a handful of full electric SUVs in the market. There are technical hurdles to powering a larger car with batteries, and the perception among many automakers is that drivers of SUVs value power and performance, and they don’t want to be limited by the range of batteries. In the meantime auto makers are discontinuing smaller cars and sedans and ramping up their SUV lineup. Fortunately for us, I was able to convince my wife to get a hybrid electric vehicle and we’re loving it for all the right reasons. Stay tuned next time to find out about technologies that can combat climate change. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

Welcome to “Fridays with Scott” segment of the Climate Change program. The main focus of this program is about taking action. Making history together. To solve the climate change crisis in our lifetime. It’s about flexing the power of the crowd across the globe. When we as a crowd engage, there isn’t anything that we can’t accomplish. A story worth sharing The kid with his foot wedged in an escalator Lighting struck our house Don't water the grass Someone will save us, right? ALS Ice Bucket Challenge It's time to act Stay tuned next Friday as I discuss how clean energy can lead to a cleaner planet. And to learn more, visit .

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. At the recent Climate Change Summit in Poland, the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait -- all major oil producing countries -- blocked the full endorsement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As oil producing nations, they are doubling down on oil & gas, even if it means at the expense of our environment, the lives of hundreds of millions of people and the very survival of our future generations. Stay tuned next time to find out how we as consumers are contributing to global emissions. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. Oil & gas players cannot see beyond their short-term profits. And their economic self-interest forbids diversification away from oil and gas into renewable energy. For oil & gas special interest groups, they perceive renewable energy and climate change policy as a threat to their very existence. For OPEC member countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Venezuela, they live and die by oil and gas. Since 2008, commodity price of oil dropped precipitously into the $30s and did not recover until the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Then during the 2014 - 2017 oil glut, the OPEC Reference Basket plummeted to $22.48/bbl in January 2016. Venezuela never recovered. According to U.N. figures, some 2.3 million Venezuelans — almost 7 percent of the population — have left their homeland over the past two years amid economic devastation and political havoc. Other estimates place the number at closer to 4 million. Stay tuned next time to find out which countries blocked the adoption of the UN climate change report at the recent Climate Change Summit. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. When you think of the largest oil producers, you naturally think of Russia, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations. Yet, as of 2018, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the U.S. became the biggest producer of crude oil in the world, thanks to the U.S. shale oil boom in the Permian Basin of West Texas. The U.S. is on target to reach nearly 12 million barrels per day according to EIA data. Fracking unlocked vast sums of oil and natural gas that had been trapped underground and drilling costs declined dramatically, making the U.S. resilient and competitive relative to OPEC nations. According to Reuters, estimates put the break-even point for fracking at around $50 per barrel, but other estimates put it as low as $30 per barrel, making it more profitable and commodity market resilient than traditional oil drilling from wells. With such strong economic interests, it’s becoming difficult to steer the ship away from fossil fuels to clean energy. Stay tuned next time to find out how economic self-interest is making diversification away from oil and gas to clean energy difficult. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. Why was the recent Climate Change Summit held in Katowice (Kata-vi-ssa), Poland? Because the region is heavily dependent on coal. The region’s 5 million people in over 70 cities rely on the lifeblood of its coal industry. COP24’s president Michał Kurtyka, a state secretary in Poland’s Ministry of Energy, remarked that bringing the climate summit to Katowice was a strategic decision to exhibit a city and region in need of transition away from coal. In Poland coal still accounts for almost 80 percent of electricity generation. The current White House administration is in alliance with old industries such as coal, oil and gas, and steel and promoting these special interest groups as a way to bring back mining and manufacturing jobs. Stay tuned next time to find out how the U.S. became the world’s largest global producer of oil. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. The problem of cutting emissions is that it leads to difficult economic choices. A growing global economy inevitably stokes more energy demand. The continuing growth in global emissions is happening even though renewable energy sources are growing. It’s just that they’re still far too small. According to Global Carbon Project research authors, “Solar and wind are doing quite well but in China and India, the solar and wind are just filling new demand. Solar and wind are nowhere near big enough yet to replace fossil fuels.” The issue is that of supply-side capacity. Stay tuned next time to find out why the world is so dependent on oil, gas and coal. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. A UN-backed scientific panel found that nations have barely a decade to take unprecedented actions to cut emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. In the next 12 years, it’s estimated that global warming could increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees in Fahrenheit. By year 2100, the U.N. estimates as much as 3 - 5 degree Celsius rise or 5.4 - 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, co-written by hundreds of scientists, finds that climate change is already increasing damage to the U.S. That was followed by another report detailing the growing gap between commitments made at earlier UN conferences and what is needed to steer the planet off its calamitous course. Even China’s top planning agency admitted that three regions -- Liaoning in the northeast Rust Belt and the big coal-producing regions of Ningxia and Xinjiang in the northwest have failed to meet their targets to curb energy consumption growth and improve efficiency last year. Stay tuned next time to find out why cutting emissions is so hard. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.