Earth Matters is a Daily Kos compendium of wonderful, disturbing, and hideous news briefs about the environment.
• Schools around the country adopt solar: In a report commissioned by Generation180, the amount of solar installed at K-12 schools has risen 139%. The report says that 7,332 schools nationwide now deploy solar power. That’s 5.5% of all K-12 public and private schools. The top five states for solar in schools are California, New Jersey, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Indiana. About 5.3 million students are enrolled in solar-powered schools. Energy efficiency company Entegrity conducted an audit of one school district of six schools with 3,200 students in Batesville, Ark. It showed that it was paying big bucks to the local utility each year. But it also showed the district could save at least $2.4 million a year over 20 years if it installed 1,400 solar panels, new lights, windows, and heating and cooling systems. Michael Hester, the Batesville superintendent, told Avery Ellfeldt at ClimateWire that the savings went to a good purpose. "Let's use that money to start pumping up teachers' salaries. It's the way we're going to attract and retain staff. And it's the way we're going to attract and retain students in this day and age of school choice." The completed project reduced the district’s annual energy usage by 1.6 million kilowatt-hours and in three years turned its $250,000 budget deficit into a $1.8 million surplus. Out of that teachers got an average raise of between $2,000 and $3,000 year, with some as high as $9,000. One of Generation 180’s findings: If all U.S. public schools converted to solar power, it would reduce greenhouse emissions equal to closing 18 coal-fired power plants.
• NOAA reports Earth just had its warmest September ever: And it appears 2020 will be one of the three warmest years on record. For September, the average global temperature was 1.75 degrees Fahrenheit (0.97 Celsius) above the 20th-century average, surpassing previous records for the month that were set in 2015 and 2016. The seven warmest Septembers have occurred in the past seven years.
• Tardigrades, those hardy bear-like denizens of the microcosmos, glow blue for protection: The creatures can survive for days in the vacuum of space, at -270 degrees Celsius and 150 degrees C, and emerge unharmed from titanic ionizing radiation 600 times the level that would kill a human being. They also have strong defenses against ultraviolet light. One species of the minuscule creature turns blue to protect themselves with fluorescent molecules of glowing blue pigments. In the October 14 Biology Letters, researchers reported on the phenomenon in the species Paramacrobiotus. Placed under the light of a germicidal UV lamp for 15 minutes—enough time to kill most other microbes and give a skin lesion to a person—all Paramacrobiotus specimens survived, seemingly unfazed by the ordeal. It was only later that the researchers discovered the way they do it is by fluorescing. The more they fluoresce, the longer they live after an exposure.
• Large methane leaks up 32% rise in first eight months of 2020: According to Kayrros, a data analytics company, satellite data showed hotspots—leaks of more than 5 metric tons an hour—linked to oil and gas operations. Over 20 years, methane is 84-86 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon dioxide. Pledges to cut methane emissions are obviously not working. In 2019, the largest emitters were the United States, Russia, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq, Kayrros President Antoine Rostand said. This year so far, leaks in Algeria, Russia and Turkmenistan were higher than the global average. "Such increases in methane emissions are concerning and in stark contradiction to the direction set in the Paris Agreement of 2015 [to keep global warming below 1.5 degree Celsius]," Rostand said. "Despite much talk of climate action by energy industry stakeholders, global methane emissions continue to increase steeply. In 2019 alone, our technology tracked a combined volume of visible large methane leaks of 10 million [metric] tons, equivalent to over 800 million tons of CO over a 20-year period."
• Want some eco-friendly tips? A new study says, no, you don’t. Titled “Don’t Tell Me What to Do” —Georgia State University researchers surveyed nearly 2,000 people online to gauge their response to different messages about climate change. Some saw messages about personal sacrifices, like using less hot water. Others saw statements about policy actions, like laws to reduce emissions or increase fuel efficiency standards for cars.
Then the respondents were asked about their thoughts on climate change. The people who read advice about individual action were less likely to report that they believed in human-caused climate change, supported climate-friendly political candidates, or would act to reduce their own emissions.
On the other hand, “when the message was linked with policy issues, it didn’t have this kind of negative effect,” she said. Palm’s study reinforces previous research that people prefer wide-scale changes that don’t require them to change their own behavior. They simply don’t feel like anything they could do would make much of a difference.
While advice about changing personal behavior was received negatively across the political spectrum, Republicans responded more negatively than Democrats.
• Chinese wind power manufacturers propose aggressive expansion: The plan would boost wind capacity from today’s 210 gigawatts (the most in the world) to 800 GW by 2030 and 3,000 gigawatts by 2060. The United States currently has 110 installed gigawatts of wind power. Installed electricity-generating capacity of all power sources in the United States is 1,100 gigawatts. Up through 2025, the Chinese plan to add 50 new gigawatts on wind power annually, on- and offshore. Last year, its best ever, China installed 26 additional gigawatts of wind power.
• Millions exposed wildfire smoke affected by high pollution levels sometimes last more than a week: With fires torching the West Coast, more than 8 million were exposed to unsafe levels of smoke, a serious problem for most people, but with the potential to kill thousands among the elderly and less abled. Oregon was hit hard in September, with the state’s largest cities reporting their highest pollution levels ever recorded. Many people wound up in hospital emergency rooms. While most will recover, some will wind up with permanent lung damage. Using prior studies of pollution-related deaths and the number of people exposed to recent fires, Stanford University scientists estimated that as many as 3,000 people over 65 in California alone died prematurely because of smoke during a six-week period beginning Aug. 1. University of Washington researchers say hundreds more deaths may have occurred in Washington over weeks of bad air caused by the fires. No such study has been published for Oregon.