{"id":100932,"date":"2017-01-18T10:58:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T15:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=100932"},"modified":"2017-01-18T07:00:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T12:00:09","slug":"are-we-headed-for-another-ice-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2017\/01\/are-we-headed-for-another-ice-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Headed for Another Ice Age?"},"content":{"rendered":"
January 18, 2017<\/div>
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By WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> \"Are<\/p>\n

A huge crack threatens to leave a chunk of ice the size of Delaware floating off from Antarctica. It\u2019s a fascinating development. But it\u2019s not necessarily a \u201cclimate change\u201d phenomenon.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe whole damn shelf is breaking off!\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the signature lines from Roland Emmerich\u2019s outlandish 2004 climate change disaster epic The Day After Tomorrow<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration watches as a massive fissure splits the Larsen Ice Shelf, creating a chunk \u201cthe size of Rhode Island,\u201d about 1,200 square miles.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first in a catastrophic series of events that leaves the Northern Hemisphere in another ice age.<\/p>

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Well, life appears to be imitating art in Antarctica \u2014 times two.<\/p>\n

A 90-mile crack estimated to be a third of a mile deep and as wide as a 25-lane highway has opened up on Larsen C. It could break off a 2,400-square-mile chunk \u2014 about the size of Delaware.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s already shut down work at the British Antarctic Survey\u2019s Halley VI research station.<\/p>\n

Good news, though: Buoys in the North Atlantic aren\u2019t showing simultaneous and rapid declines in ocean temperatures, and there are no tornadoes ravaging Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not, as silver-screen paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) warns, on the verge of a \u201cmajor climate shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, life appears to be imitating art in Antarctica \u2014 times two.<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

Indeed, as NPR\u2019s Rae Ellen Bichell, reports: Larsen C\u2019s crack is only tangentially related to global warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more complicated,\u201d Bichell writes:<\/p>\n

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\u201cA lot of things are going on deep inside the ice,\u201d says Adrian Luckman, a glaciologist at Swansea University in the U.K. He\u2019s also leading a project to track changes in the ice shelf.<\/p>\n

Luckman says climate change is certainly influencing this region. Larsen C used to have two neighbors to the north, Larsen A and Larsen B. As the air and water warmed, those ice shelves started melting and then splintered into shards in 1995 and 2002.<\/p>\n

But the crack in Larsen C seems to have happened on its own, for different reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably not directly attributable to any warming in the region, although, of course, the warming won\u2019t have helped,\u201d says Luckman. \u201cIt\u2019s probably just simply a natural event that\u2019s just been waiting around to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCalving\u201d is actually a natural phenomenon that creates icebergs. There\u2019s no immediate reason to be alarmed by the crack in Larsen C.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, the longer-term picture isn\u2019t so clear. That\u2019s according to Ala Khazendar, a geophysicist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who outlines for Bichell \u201ctwo possible scenarios\u201d:<\/p>\n

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One, the iceberg will break off, he says, \u201cand nothing spectacular will happen for many, many years.\u201d The glaciers will bulk it up with ice until it\u2019s back to its former look. Or two, this iceberg is just the first of many irreversible losses for Larsen C, which, in combination with enough warm summers, will be weakened and shatter like the previous Larsens.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So it only appears<\/em> as if we\u2019re seeing Emmerich\u2019s vision play out in real life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2018Calving\u2019 is actually a natural phenomenon that creates icebergs. There\u2019s no immediate reason to be alarmed by the crack in Larsen C.\u201d<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say, however, that the threat isn\u2019t real. A recent paper to address the topic of scientific consensus and anthropogenic climate change concludes:<\/p>\n

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The number of papers rejecting AGW [asnthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming]\u00a0is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But the opportunity is equally real. As we noted in the August 17, 2016, issue of Wall Street Daily<\/em><\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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According to a report prepared by Morgan Stanley, The Investor\u2019s Guide to Climate Change<\/em>, a recent global investor survey found that 81% of asset owners and 68% of asset managers viewed climate change as \u201ca material risk or opportunity across their entire investment portfolio.\u201d<\/p>\n

And The Economist<\/em> Intelligence Unit has estimated \u201cthat private investors are at risk of losing $4.2 trillion between now and the turn of the next century because of a warming planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg Business, investors with nearly $800 billion in assets have shifted money into more climate-friendly investments such as wind and solar energy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That shift to cleaner-burning fuels, including natural gas as well as renewables, is accelerating. And market forces are playing a big role in the change.<\/p>\n

In its January 10, 2017, Today in Energy report, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast that 24 gigawatts (24,000 megawatts) of new generating capacity was added to the electric power grid in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the third consecutive year,\u201d the EIA reports, \u201cmore than half of these additions are renewable technologies, especially wind and solar.\u201d<\/p>\n

New utility-scale renewable generation capacity has risen steadily over the past three years, from 40% of new installations in 2013 to 66% in 2015.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, total U.S. coal production was down 18% in 2016, the lowest output since 1978. As the EIA notes, \u201cThe decline in coal production in 2016 would be the largest annual decline in terms of both tons and percentage based on data going back to 1949.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe need for more compact, more flexible, larger-scale, less costly electricity storage is self-evident,\u201d Smil notes. \u201cBut the miracle has been slow in coming.\u201d<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

Coal burned to produce electricity (which accounts for 90% of all coal consumption) declined by 8% last year, due to the combination of cheaper natural gas and mild temperatures in the first half of the year.<\/p>\n

Natural gas-fired power generation (34%) surpassed coal-fired generation (30%) for the first time in 2016. The EIA forecast that utilities will have burned 681 million short tons in 2016, the lowest level since 1985.<\/p>\n

The EIA expects coal consumption to rise by 6% in 2017 but resume its decline in 2018, to the tune of 1%.<\/p>\n

While renewable capacity continues to increase as a share of overall electric-power capacity, renewable generation growth remains slower because wind and solar are \u201cnondispatchable,\u201d meaning they can\u2019t be switched on or off according to fluctuating customer needs.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still working on battery technology that will support storage to cover \u201cgaps in the flow of that energy,\u201d as Vaclav Smil writes for IEEE Spectrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need for more compact, more flexible, larger-scale, less costly electricity storage is self-evident,\u201d Smil notes. \u201cBut the miracle has been slow in coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

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NBNBC<\/h2>\n

Eugene Cernan was the last man to set foot on the moon<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smart Investing,<\/p>\n

David Dittman
\nEditorial Director, Wall Street Daily<\/i><\/p>\n

The post Are We Headed for Another Ice Age?<\/a> appeared first on Wall Street Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By WallStreetDaily.com A huge crack threatens to leave a chunk of ice the size of Delaware floating off from Antarctica. It\u2019s a fascinating development. But it\u2019s not necessarily a \u201cclimate change\u201d phenomenon. \u201cThe whole damn shelf is breaking off!\u201d That\u2019s one of the signature lines from Roland Emmerich\u2019s outlandish 2004 climate change disaster epic The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100943,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100932\/revisions\/100943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}