Global warming

[Eric the Green]

facebook video: click on the video to watch

[Ragnarök_62]

Eric The Green Wrote:facebook video: click on the video to watch

?Hehheheheheh.  Facefuck's got nothing there, silly.

[David Horn]

(08-22-2016, 02:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.

Quote:http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/mag...8Z,FM6S9,1
Decline of US nuclear industry is accelerating
… "Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” …Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.”…

We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.

Ask the Germans about that.  No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious.  You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants.  Is that better?

[pbrower2a]

Exxon-Mobil has touted its experimental creation of algae-based bio-fuel. Obviously the processed algae would have to be purified of phosphorus and sulfur (which could be recycled as fertilizer).

As a source of solar power, even Saudi Arabia could get into the act.

[David Horn]

(08-26-2016, 02:22 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-25-2016, 04:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2016, 02:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.

Quote:http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/mag...8Z,FM6S9,1
Decline of US nuclear industry is accelerating
… "Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” …Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.”…

We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.

Ask the Germans about that.  No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious.  You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants.  Is that better?

Assuming one is dedicated to limiting or eliminating CO2 as a byproduct,  coal fired plant stack gases can feed algae in the cooling ponds. The algae can be used for products or biofuels.

The real problem is "... the perfect being the enemy of the good".  Germans don't' want nuclear, even though it has a perfect safety record and produces no greenhouse gases.  Somehow, they convinced themselves that they didn't need nuclear, yet the goal was then and is still today the total elimination of fossil fueled electric generation -- then the baseload problem reared its ugly head.  Doing both is currently impossible.  They decided on more CO2 rather than rely on nuclear ... clearly an emotional response based on nothing else.

At least the French seem to understand the issue.

[Bob Butler 54]

Russian Bears Besiege Climate Scientists!

Science vs Nature.  The scientists are toughing it out.  Within a month it is hoped the folks manning the remote weather station will get flares that will scare the bears away.

[pbrower2a]

In other news, August 2016 was the warmest August on record. I thought so, but I yawn again.

[Eric the Green]

My heroes. Powerful video!

[Eric the Green]

(08-25-2016, 04:15 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2016, 02:49 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-06-2016, 01:28 PM)radind Wrote: There will be a price to pay for the closing of nuclear plants.

Quote:http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/mag...8Z,FM6S9,1
Decline of US nuclear industry is accelerating
… "Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” …Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.”…

We need to replace nuclear with solar. Delay is not a reasonable option.

Ask the Germans about that.  No one is more attuned to renewables and more averse to nuclear, so they were the first to come to grips with the obvious.  You can't run a modern society on intermittent power, so they are biting the bullet and reopening some coal fired plants.  Is that better?

In a system that uses the pooled resources from many solar and wind plants at once, there is no intermittence. That has been proven. When one is down, the others are working.

If nuclear can be made safe, it's an option. There must be no chance of a meltdown, and all nuc waste must be recycled. I reported on the old thread that there's some movement toward this, especially in Russia. Personally, I don't like the risk of entire regions becoming off limits due to another Fukushima. We may be truly fu'ked if we rely on nuk. A few hundred square miles of solar can power the world. All we need is transmission lines. The transition is not immediate, but we must go as fast as we can.

Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_...in_Germany

[Eric the Green]

(08-22-2016, 06:05 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Eric The Green Wrote:facebook video: click on the video to watch

?Hehheheheheh.  Facefuck's got nothing there, silly.

Yes there is. I just watched it again.

If we elect Trump and Pence, the solar panels will be taken down again.

[Eric the Green]

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Al Gore Jr. tell the truth about climate change:





https://thinkprogress.org/clinton-gore-f....wi1ggot1i

[Eric the Green]

Scientists just accidentally discovered a process that turns CO2 directly into ethanol

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-j...to-ethanol

Converting pollution into fuel.
BEC CREW 19 OCT 2016

If scientists can figure out how to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel - and do it at an industrial scale - it would, quite literally, change the world. Last month, we hit the highest levels of atmospheric CO2 in 4 million years, and it’s now permanent, meaning we’ll never be able to drop to 'safe' levels again.

But if we can turn CO2 into a fuel source, we can at least slow things down a bit, and now researchers have developed a process that can achieve this with a single catalyst.


"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," said one of the team, Adam Rondinone, from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."

Rondinone and his colleagues had put together a catalyst using carbon, copper, and nitrogen, by embedding copper nanoparticles into nitrogen-laced carbon spikes measuring just 50-80 nanometres tall. (1 nanometre = one-millionth of a millimetre.)

When they applied an electric current of just 1.2 volts, the catalyst converted a solution of CO2 dissolved in water into ethanol, with a yield of 63 percent.

This result was surprising for a couple of reasons: firstly, because it’s effectively reversing the combustion process using a very modest amount of electricity, and secondly, it was able to do this while achieving a relatively high yield of ethanol - they were expecting to end up with the significantly less desirable chemical, methanol.

As Colin Jeffrey explains for New Atlas, this type of electrochemical reaction usually results in a mix of several different products in small amounts, such as methane, ethylene, and carbon monoxide - none of which are in particularly high demand.

Instead, the team got usable amounts of ethanol, which the US needs billions of gallons of each year to add to gasoline.

"We’re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we’re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said in a press statement.

"Ethanol was a surprise - it’s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."

This certainly isn’t the first attempt to convert CO2 pollution into something we can actually use - researchers around the world have been figuring out ways to turn it into things like methanol, formate, and hydrocarbon fuel.

This one team working in Iceland wants to turn it all into solid rock so we can just bury it and forget about it.

But all of these methods, while promising, are dishing up an end product that the world doesn’t really need right now. Sure, we could adjust our cars and energy plants to run on hydrocarbon fuel if it was cheap and efficient enough to produce from CO2, but we’re certainly not there yet.

Ethanol, on the other hand - well, the US is already blending most of its gasoline with 10 to 15 percent ethanol content.

The researchers explain that they were able to achieve such high yields because the nanostructure of the catalyst was easy to manipulate and adjust to get the desired results.

"By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want," said Rondinone. "They are like 50-nanometre lightning rods that concentrate electrochemical reactivity at the tip of the spike."

The team says that since the catalyst is made from inexpensive materials, and can operate at room temperature with modest electrical requirements, it could be scaled up for industrial level use.

But with so many CO2 conversion projects in the works right now that are aiming to do the same thing, we'll have to remain cautiously optimistic until they can show real results in the field.

Let's hope someone ultimately figures it out, because with a drastically expanding population, we're only going to be needing more energy, and we're only going to be pumping more pollution into the atmosphere. A 'two birds with one stone' solution would change everything - particularly if we can integrate it with solar and wind farms.

"A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol," Rondinone said. "This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources."

The results have been published in ChemistrySelect.

[pbrower2a]

Carbon dioxide cannot be transformed into a fuel. It has three main reactions:

1. reaction with bases as an acid
2. as a reducing agent for fluorine (isn't just about everything?)
3. oxidizing highly0electropositive metals, with the other element being oxidized with the release of carbon.

Carbon dioxide is one of the most stable substances known; it is even more stable than water and silica.

Photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction, taking hydrogen atoms from water in the presence of sunlight and transforming the hydrogen and carbon dioxide into sugars with the release of some oxygen. If we could ever find a way to simulate photosynthesis we might have an excellent way to create useful fuels. Until then we need to save the trees.

[radind]

Renewable energy capacity overtakes coal

Quote:http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37767250

"The International Energy Agency says that the world's capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources has now overtaken coal. 
The IEA says in a new report that last year, renewables accounted for more than half of the increase in power capacity. 
The report says half a million solar panels were installed every day last year around the world.
In China, it says, there were two wind turbines set up every hour. 
Renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and hydro are seen as a key element in international efforts to combat climate change.”…

[Mikebert]

(10-21-2016, 12:47 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Carbon dioxide cannot be transformed into a fuel. It has three main reactions:

1. reaction with bases as an acid
2. as a reducing agent for fluorine (isn't just about everything?)
3. oxidizing highly0electropositive metals, with the other element being oxidized with the release of carbon.

Carbon dioxide is one of the most stable substances known; it is even more stable than water and silica.

Photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction, taking hydrogen atoms from water in the presence of sunlight and transforming the hydrogen and carbon dioxide into sugars with the release of some oxygen. If we could ever find a way to simulate photosynthesis we might have an excellent way to create useful fuels. Until then we need to save the trees.

Very good.  Artificial photosynthesis is an active area of research. I was quite interested in this in college and wrote a paper on photo-electrolytic production of hydrogen from water.  There were serious issues with the technology and it never went anywhere.

[Mikebert]

(10-20-2016, 04:21 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Scientists just accidentally discovered a process that turns CO2 directly into ethanol

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-j...to-ethanol

Converting pollution into fuel.
BEC CREW 19 OCT 2016

If scientists can figure out how to convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel - and do it at an industrial scale - it would, quite literally, change the world. Last month, we hit the highest levels of atmospheric CO2 in 4 million years, and it’s now permanent, meaning we’ll never be able to drop to 'safe' levels again.

But if we can turn CO2 into a fuel source, we can at least slow things down a bit, and now researchers have developed a process that can achieve this with a single catalyst.


"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," said one of the team, Adam Rondinone, from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

"We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realised that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."

Rondinone and his colleagues had put together a catalyst using carbon, copper, and nitrogen, by embedding copper nanoparticles into nitrogen-laced carbon spikes measuring just 50-80 nanometres tall. (1 nanometre = one-millionth of a millimetre.)

When they applied an electric current of just 1.2 volts, the catalyst converted a solution of CO2 dissolved in water into ethanol, with a yield of 63 percent.

This result was surprising for a couple of reasons: firstly, because it’s effectively reversing the combustion process using a very modest amount of electricity, and secondly, it was able to do this while achieving a relatively high yield of ethanol - they were expecting to end up with the significantly less desirable chemical, methanol.

As Colin Jeffrey explains for New Atlas, this type of electrochemical reaction usually results in a mix of several different products in small amounts, such as methane, ethylene, and carbon monoxide - none of which are in particularly high demand.

Instead, the team got usable amounts of ethanol, which the US needs billions of gallons of each year to add to gasoline.

"We’re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we’re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said in a press statement.

"Ethanol was a surprise - it’s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."

This certainly isn’t the first attempt to convert CO2 pollution into something we can actually use - researchers around the world have been figuring out ways to turn it into things like methanol, formate, and hydrocarbon fuel.

This one team working in Iceland wants to turn it all into solid rock so we can just bury it and forget about it.

But all of these methods, while promising, are dishing up an end product that the world doesn’t really need right now. Sure, we could adjust our cars and energy plants to run on hydrocarbon fuel if it was cheap and efficient enough to produce from CO2, but we’re certainly not there yet.

Ethanol, on the other hand - well, the US is already blending most of its gasoline with 10 to 15 percent ethanol content.

The researchers explain that they were able to achieve such high yields because the nanostructure of the catalyst was easy to manipulate and adjust to get the desired results.

"By using common materials, but arranging them with nanotechnology, we figured out how to limit the side reactions and end up with the one thing that we want," said Rondinone. "They are like 50-nanometre lightning rods that concentrate electrochemical reactivity at the tip of the spike."

The team says that since the catalyst is made from inexpensive materials, and can operate at room temperature with modest electrical requirements, it could be scaled up for industrial level use.

But with so many CO2 conversion projects in the works right now that are aiming to do the same thing, we'll have to remain cautiously optimistic until they can show real results in the field.

Let's hope someone ultimately figures it out, because with a drastically expanding population, we're only going to be needing more energy, and we're only going to be pumping more pollution into the atmosphere. A 'two birds with one stone' solution would change everything - particularly if we can integrate it with solar and wind farms.

"A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol," Rondinone said. "This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources."

The results have been published in ChemistrySelect.

What this technology describes is an energy storage device.  You use electricity to "unburn" CO2.  It is not an alternate energy source, but it could serve as a "battery".  For example suppose you build a solar array whose average power output meets a certain demand.  Problem is there is no sunlight at night and so not power.  So you build the solar plant so that it produces excess energy during the day, part of which is used to convert CO2 (in storage) into fuel. When the sun goes down the fuel is used in a gas turbine to produce electricity so as the meet demand round the clock.

What makes the article interesting is the 1.2 volts.  This says suggests to me that there is little over potential.  In an electrochemical reaction over potential is a measure of inefficiency. At zero amps there is a voltage needed to make the reaction thermodynamically possible. To get the reaction to actually proceed at a finite rate you need to add more voltage (which shows up a waste heat). This is overpotential. The more catalytic your electrode surface is, the less overpotential you need to make it go at a given rate.

[Eric the Green]

Eric Trump has given us this future. No sign that the deniers have lost any power, or will lose any.

[Eric the Green]

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55552

2016 slated to be hottest year ever, with record-breaking emissions and melting Arctic ice


In Sindh province, Pakistan, a mother tries to shield her four-year-old daughter from scorching heat. Photo: UNDP/Hira Hashmey

14 November 2016 – According to the United Nations weather agency, 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record with global temperatures of approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in part because of the powerful El Niño weather pattern that began late last year.

The continued trend means that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record will have been during this century (1998 is the outlier). Temperatures are not the only record-breaking indicators of climate change. Concentrations of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase to new limits and Arctic sea ice remains at very low levels – particularly at the beginning of this year and in October as the re-freezing period begins. This year also saw significant and unusually early melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

In a press release, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas warned that despite the extra heat due to El Niño no longer having an impact, global warming would continue.

According to Mr. Taalas, temperatures in parts of Arctic Russia were as much as 6° to 7°C above long-term averages; other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions throughout Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada were at least 3° above average.

“We are used to measuring temperature records in fractions of a degree,” he said.

WMO’s findings show that temperature increases are most pronounced in the northern hemisphere; more than 90 per cent of land areas in the northern part of the globe had temperatures of more than 1°C above average, although much of southern Africa and several other regions throughout the southern hemisphere saw the same trend.

Ocean temperatures were also above normal, which has contributed to significant coral bleaching and disruption of ecosystems, including in the Great Barrier Reef, which has seen up to 50 per cent of its coral die in certain parts. Temperatures were below-normal in the southern oceans, particularly around the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.

Sea levels rose about 15 millimetres between November 2014 and February 2016 – five times that of the post-1993 trend of three to 3.5 mm per year.

Mr. Taalas spoke of the WMO’s support for implementing the Paris Agreement, which “came into force in record time and with record global commitment” and is critical for responding to alarming trends across the globe. The accord was adopted last December and entered into force on 4 November of this year.

In early October, the accord cleared the final threshold of 55 countries representing 55 per cent of global emissions required for it to come into effect within one month. Its entry into force was extremely swift, particularly for an agreement that required a large number of ratifications and the two specific thresholds.

“Because of climate change,” he said, “the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. ‘Once-in-a-generation’ heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones.”

Indeed, 2016 has witnessed major impacts from extreme weather events, with Hurricane Matthew this October responsible for the most casualties. There have also been typhoons and cyclones, flooding throughout Asia and Africa, major heatwaves, the most damaging wildfire in Canada’s history, and major droughts.

WMO is working to improve its monitoring of greenhouse emissions and to help countries take effective measures to reduce them.

“Better climate predictions over timescales of weeks to decades will help key sectors like agriculture, water management, health and energy plan for and adapt to the future,” explained Mr. Taalas.

“More impact-based weather forecasts and early warning systems will save lives both now and in the years ahead. There is a great need to strengthen the disaster early warning and climate service capabilities especially of developing countries. This is a powerful way to adapt to climate change,” he declared.

As part of the 22nd Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, currently under way in Marrakech, Morocco, and known by the shorthand ‘COP 22’, WMO published a provisional statement that, for the first time, includes an assessment of the humanitarian impact of climate change, thanks in part to input from UN partners. The final statement is to be released early next year.

WMO has linked weather-related events to conclusions by the International Organisation for Migration (IMO) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which reported 19.2 million new displacements due to weather, water, climate and geophysical hazards in 113 countries in 2015 (data for 2016 is not yet available). That number is more than twice the number of people displaced due to human-related conflict and violence.

[Eric the Green]

(08-22-2016, 06:05 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

Eric The Green Wrote:facebook video: click on the video to watch

?Hehheheheheh.  Facefuck's got nothing there, silly.

It works for me. Maybe insulting facebook breaks it for you

[Eric the Green]

Donald Trump will be the worst president, and must be resisted tooth and nail, BECAUSE he is the worst president on the environment. QED, case closed.

Donald Trump Could Put Climate Change on Course for ‘Danger Zone’
By CORAL DAVENPORT
NOV. 10, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/us/pol....html?_r=0

WASHINGTON — For a look at how sharply policy in Washington will change under the administration of Donald J. Trump, look no further than the environment.

Mr. Trump has called human-caused climate change a “hoax.” He has vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency “in almost every form.”

And in an early salvo against one of President Obama’s signature issues, Mr. Trump has named Myron Ebell of the business-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute to head his E.P.A. transition team. Mr. Ebell has asserted that whatever warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution is modest and could be beneficial. A 2007 Vanity Fair profile of Mr. Ebell called him an “oil industry mouthpiece.”

Global warming may indeed be the sharpest example of how policy in Washington will change under a Trump administration. President Obama has said his efforts to establish the United States as the global leader in climate policy are his proudest legacy.


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But if Mr. Trump makes good on his campaign promises, experts in climate change policy warn, that legacy would unravel quickly. The world, then, may have no way to avoid the most devastating consequences of global warming, including rising sea levels, extreme droughts and food shortages, and more powerful floods and storms.

Mr. Trump has already vowed to “cancel” last year’s Paris climate agreement, which commits more than 190 countries to reduce their emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution, and to dismantle the Clean Power Plan, Mr. Obama’s domestic climate change regulations.

“If Trump steps back from that, it makes it much less likely that the world will ever meet that target, and essentially ensures we will head into the danger zone,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which produces global reports on the state of climate science.

Mr. Trump cannot legally block other countries from fulfilling their Paris agreement commitments, nor can he quickly or unilaterally erase Mr. Obama’s climate rules.

But he can, as president, choose not to carry out the Paris plan in the United States. And he could so substantially slow or weaken the enforcement of Mr. Obama’s rules that they would have little impact on reducing emissions in the United States, at least during Mr. Trump’s term.

That could doom the Paris agreement’s goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions enough to stave off an atmospheric warming of at least 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which, many scientists say, the planet will be locked into an irreversible future of extreme and dangerous warming.

Without the full participation of the United States, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter, after China, that goal is probably unattainable, even if every other country follows through on its pledges.

Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet.

And, the experts say, without the participation of the United States, other governments are less likely to carry out their pledged emissions cuts.

“That target is already extremely difficult to achieve, but it could be done with very hard, very diligent work by every single country,” Mr. Oppenheimer said.

The election of Mr. Trump is likely to cast a pall over Marrakesh, Morocco, where global negotiators have gathered for a 12-day conference to hash out the next steps for the Paris accord: how to verify commitments are being met, and how to pay for enforcement by poor countries that cannot afford the technology or energy disruptions.

Traveling in New Zealand, Secretary of State John Kerry was asked if he still planned to attend the conference, given the results of the election.

“I’m absolutely going to Marrakesh, perhaps even more important,” he said. “And I look forward to being there very, very much.”

Pessimism appears to be warranted. Mr. Oppenheimer and other climate policy experts said all major emitters needed to take action in the near term to stave off the 3.6-degree increase.

Scientific reports released over the last two years have concluded that the measurable warming of the planet because of human activities has already begun. This year is on track to be the hottest on record, blasting past the previous records set in 2015 and 2014.

An analysis by Climate Interactive, a scientific think tank that provides data used by many governments, concluded that the policies by the United States would account for about 20 percent of the expected greenhouse gas reductions under the Paris plan from 2016 to 2030. But absent the expected policy actions in the United States under the Trump administration, scientists at Climate Interactive said, the math of emissions reductions will be much more difficult to maintain.

“Pessimists will find abundant support for despair this morning,” John Sterman, a professor of system dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a Climate Interactive analysis on Wednesday morning.

“With Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and Republican majorities in both houses,” Mr. Sterman wrote, “there is little hope that the Clean Power Plan will survive in the Supreme Court or for federal action to meet the U.S. commitment under the Paris accord. Worse, other key emitter nations — especially India — now have little reason to follow through on their Paris pledges: If the U.S. won’t, why should developing nations cut their emissions?”

The Clean Power Plan is the ambitious centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s climate change legacy and the key to his commitment under the Paris accord. At its heart is a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to curb planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants. If enacted, the rules could transform the American electricity sector, close hundreds of coal-fired plants and usher in the construction of vast new wind and solar farms. The plan is projected to cut United States power plant emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

But the program is currently under litigation by 28 states and more than 100 companies, and it is expected to go before the Supreme Court as early as next year.

Mr. Trump and other Republicans have attacked the Clean Power Plan as a “war on coal.” As president, Mr. Trump would not have the legal authority to unilaterally undo the regulations, which were put forth by the E.P.A. under a provision of the 1970 Clean Air Act.

However, Mr. Trump could target the rules by appointing an industry-friendly justice to the Supreme Court and then refusing to defend the plan when it goes before the court.

He could also direct the E.P.A. to reissue the plan to be extremely friendly to industry. Such a move would also be subject to lawsuits by environmental advocates, which would further drag out the process. And in concert with congressional Republicans, he could decimate the E.P.A.’s budget, crippling its rule-making capacity.

“They may still have to have a regulation, but they don’t have to do it the way the Obama administration did it,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former E.P.A. official in the George W. Bush administration. “And in the meantime, those suits often go on for years and years.”

Even if Mr. Trump ultimately fails to gut Mr. Obama’s climate change rules, he could ensure that their enforcement is delayed through his term, as lawsuits wind their way through the courts.

Mr. Trump would face difficulties in his plans to eliminate the E.P.A., although it is likely he could substantively reduce its size. He would need approval from Congress to completely erase the agency, said Jody Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University and a former counselor to Mr. Obama.

Ms. Freeman noted that several major environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, specifically call for rules to be enacted and overseen by the E.P.A. Changing those decades-old rules would also require action from Congress, and Senate Democrats would certainly block such efforts — unless Senate Republican leaders opt to scuttle what is left of filibuster rules already weakened by Democrats.

In China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, climate change officials said they intended to continue with plans to cut carbon emissions regardless of Mr. Trump’s plans. The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has vowed under the Paris agreement that Chinese emissions will drop after 2030, and that China will put in place a national system next year to force companies to pay a fee for their carbon pollution.

“China’s attitude toward low-carbon development, as President Xi Jinping has said when he met with Secretary of State Kerry earlier, is that tackling climate change is not something anybody asks us to do,” Chai Qimin, a Chinese negotiator, said in an emailed response from the Marrakesh talks. “It’s what we want to do.”

But in India, the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas polluter, the election of Mr. Trump has raised doubts about a willingness to move forward. Under the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, pledged that rich countries would mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries make the transition to cleaner forms of energy. Indian officials have made clear that their steps to cut emissions will depend on financial aid from rich countries, but Mr. Trump has also vowed to cut all “global warming payments.”

“I think most certainly it will affect the momentum in negotiations because it throws up a lot of questions,” said Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi policy group.

“The chances of public funds coming from climate finance are much more dismal now,” he said. “Right now I don’t feel very optimistic.”