Because of decarbonization, Mr. Ausubel believes that the growth of carbon dioxide emissions will be limited. “The computer models of the climate system aren’t good enough and never will be. I tend not to be frightened because I think the natural evolution of the energy system is away from carbon,” he said.
That would be science writer Nicholas Wade in his extended profile of Jesse H. Ausubel, “vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.” Ausubel has “A Passion for Nature,” according to Ward and may have done more than almost anyone else to catalog marine life.
Sadly, though, the data don’t support Ausubel’s rosy scenario. The world is “carbonizing” (blue line). Even the energy system has stopped decarbonizing (see red line and figure below). Ironically, Ausubel’s ill-informed complacency means his beloved marine life — and indeed terrestrial life in general — will almost certainly fall victim to one of the greatest mass extinctions in planetary history (see Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century” and links below).
Ausubel may “think the natural evolution of the energy system is away from carbon” — but the figure above, derived from Energy Information Administration data that anybody can access (here), makes clear that Ausubel is simply dead wrong. Actually he is dead wrong on multiple counts.
Not only isn’t humanity decarbonizing — as evidenced by soaring carbon emissions — but the energy system itself stopped decarbonizing a decade ago. And even if the energy system hadn’t stopped decarbonizing, its rate of decarbonization prior to 2000 wasn’t fast enough to stop emissions growth that would destroy life on this planet as we know it (see Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred). You don’t need any computer models to figure that out.
Indeed, what Ausubel asserts is the “natural evolution of the energy system” puts us on a path toward 800 to 1000 ppm. But, as seen that “natural” evolution got derailed.
Ausubel has been writing and talking about decarbonization for a long time. Here is “Decarbonization: The Next 100 Years,” a big lecture he gave 8 years ago, when it still wasn’t obvious that China’s massive use of coal would reverse the trend in carbon intensity. It contains this chart:
Figure 1. Decarbonization or the changing carbon intensity of primary energy for the world. Carbon intensity is calculated as the ratio of the sum of the carbon content of all fuels to the sum of the energy content of all primary energy sources
Impressive. Not enough to save humanity from catastrophic global warming, but impressive.
Sadly, that upturn around 2000 became a U-turn. Sean Pool of ScienceProgress has extended that plot (using CO2 rather than C) with EIA data again:
Note: Intensity here is CO2 per unit energy, rather than CO2 per unit of GDP.
But why let facts that could easily be checked online in about one minute get in the way of Wade’s reporting on Ausubel’s mis-information:
In a recent interview in his office at Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Mr. Ausubel explained his view that the environment will be protected, not harmed, by technology. Over the long run, he notes, the economy requires more efficient forms of energy, and these are inherently sparing of the environment. Cities used to use wood for heat and hay for transport fuel. But the required volumes of wood and horse feed soon led to more compact fuels like coal and .
Coal in turn is giving way to natural gas in a process that Mr. Ausubel calls decarbonization, the replacement of carbon-rich fuels with hydrogen-rich ones. The ultimate fuel source, in his view, is nuclear power, with reactors set to produce electricity by day and hydrogen, the fuel for battery-powered cars, by night. He sees little that might thwart the mighty process of decarbonization, even given setbacks like Japan’s nuclear crisis. “The energy system absorbs shocks even as big as Fukushima,” he says.
That is a lot of un-information, even for the New York Times. Okay, first, as noted, thanks to China — and the lack of a global climate deal that is primarily due to both the United States and China — coal isn’t giving way to anything. Low-carbon technology isn’t going to be adopted at a fast enough rate by magic or some sort of “natural” evolution
Second, it is simply implausible that nuclear power could be the “ultimate” fuel given how wildly expensive it is today — with no prospect of significantly lower cost anytime soon (see Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve?). And that’s without looking at issues concerning supply of fuel, proliferation, and the like that would become unimaginable problems if you wanted nuclear power to be the “ultimate” (i.e. primary) fuel source. Even one wedge of nuclear power would require adding, globally an average of 17 plants each year, while building an average of 9 plants a year to replace those that will be retired, for a total of one nuclear plant every two weeks for four decades “” plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste. And we need some 12-14 wedges in four decades to keep CO2 concentrations to under 450 ppm (see “The full global warming solution: How the world can stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm“). So, no, nuclear power in the best case scenario is going to be one small piece of the answer — the ultimate fuel sources are efficiency and renewables.
Third, “reactors set to produce electricity by day and hydrogen, the fuel for battery-powered cars, by night.” Not! Wade/Ausubel apparently mean fuel-cell cars — pure “battery-powered cars” don’t need the hydrogen. The most valuable commodity in climate-constrained world will be carbon free electricity. It is ludicrous to think people are going to buy expensive electrolyzers to take that valuable commodity — along with huge quantities of equally scarce and valuable water — convert it into hydrogen and then run that hydrogen through an expensive fuel cell to convert it back to electricity (with a round-trip efficiency of well under 50%) just to power an electric motor. They would just have electric cars (with no fuel cell) and run them directly on the electricity, rather than spending staggering amounts of money and throwing away most of the carbon-free electricity and using up huge amounts of water to power fuel cell cars.
The reason Ausubel pushes hydrogen is because it fits his theory of the “replacement of carbon-rich fuels with hydrogen-rich ones.” But reality says a hydrogen-based economy makes little sense because of the inefficiency and cost of the conversion process — and the massive infrastructure costs (see Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a dead end from a technological, practical, and climate perspective and Obama, Chu try to slash the multi-miracle hydrogen program once again).
Fourth, “He sees little that might thwart the mighty process of decarbonization.” Again, one minute online reveals that the mighty process of decarbonization of the energy system was thwarted a decade ago.
You can tell where Ausubel is coming from in this jaw-dropping paragraph:
As a program officer with the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Ausubel worked with senior scientists who had broad experience in running international environmental programs. He was involved in planning the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting but has viewed the panel’s subsequent reports with reserve. went from being a small to a major issue. “And then the expected happened,” he said. “Opportunists flowed in. By 1992 I stopped wanting to go to climate meetings.”
Yes, those damn opportunists. Once they saw that the best science suggested that unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threatened humanity’s future, they flowed right in to try to understand it and prevent the worst from happening. Don’t you just hate opportunists like that? Seriously, who exactly is Ausubel smearing here?
It’s too bad he apparently dialed back his efforts to understand climate science, because then he would’ve understood that even if is decarbonization theory actually were correct it wouldn’t have stopped dangerous warming.
And what’s doubly bizarre is that Ausubel “has so far started four major international programs to survey the planet and catalog its biological diversity.” If we were to buy into Ausubel’s complacency, then the loss of biological diversity we are seeing today — Royal Society: “There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record.” — is expected to become catastrophic.
In 2007, the IPCC warned that “as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.” That is a temperature rise over pre-industrial levels of a bit more than 4.0°C. So the 5°C rise we are facing on our current emissions path would likely put extinctions beyond the high end of that range
No worries, though. Wade and Ausubel are here to tell us that we can go back to sleep:
Mr. Ausubel does not belong to the Jeremiah school of environmentalists who prophesy imminent doom unless their words are heeded. “The credibility of the environmental movement as a whole is less than its members wish it to be, and a lot of that has come from overdoing it on various issues,” he says.
Forests are now growing back in many temperate countries and the worst phase of habitat destruction may be over as efficiency demands shape better technologies and less polluting forms of energy. But the oceans lag a century behind and their remoteness has denied them the protection they need from pollution, overfishing and noise. “We can leave most life in the oceans alone,” is Mr. Ausubel’s hope.
Huh?
Notice how Wade slipped in “temperate” when talking about what is happening to forests worldwide. The tropic forest story isn’t so rosy. And there is no evidence that the worst phase of habitat destruction is over — indeed, a considerable amount of habitat destruction continues in our insatiable quest for polluting forms of energy, including food-based biofuels.
“We can leave most life in the oceans alone,” is Mr. Ausubel’s hope.
It’s my hope too. But it ain’t happening because of “hope.” Quite the reverse. If we fall victim to the complacency promoted in this article, much if not most of ocean life will be wiped out:
- Veron: The end is in sight for the world’s coral reefs
- Nature Geoscience study concludes ocean dead zones “devoid of fish and seafood” are poised to expand and “remain for thousands of years”
- Geological Society: Acidifying oceans spell marine biological meltdown “by end of century”
- Nature Geoscience study: Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster today than 55 million years ago when a mass extinction of marine species occurred
The only hope for avoiding devastating extinction of biodiversity on land and at sea is the kind of aggressive mitigation that this article dismisses.
This article appears to be is more evidence supporting the remarkable assertion last year by John Horgan, a former Scientific American staff writer who directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology: “Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.”
But hey, an anti-peer-reviewed report just out says the NYT’s coverage of climate is just fine, so I guess we can all go back to watching TV.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Jesse H. Ausubel, “vice president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.”
Alfred Sloan, of course, was president and chairman of General Motors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan
The important thing to remember is that coal is plentiful and cheap to extract, so in the absence of organized efforts to displace coal fired generation with non-fossil sources we will burn as much of it as we can dig out of the ground. And if just a fraction of coal resources in place are burned, we’ll be heading towards a 6 Degrees C temperature increase by 2100. So decarbonization won’t happen unless we properly account for the total societal costs of coal (including a carbon tax or cap + trade) and start seriously deploying alternatives.
Two statements by Ausabel:
“The computer models of the climate system aren’t good enough and never will be.”
He has no basis for this prediction, especially since (AFAIK) he doesn’t specify what he thinks they’re not good enough for. Furthermore, it he doesn’t trust computer modelling, on what does he base his climate forecast?
“Over the long run, he notes, the economy requires more efficient forms of energy, and these are inherently sparing of the environment.”
This is wrong. What the economy (i.e. consumers) requires is more intense forms of energy. Graph the quantity of energy available per person versus time. It goes up exponentially: First wood, straw, and cow patties; next, coal; then oil and other liquid fuels, and natural gas; then electricity generated by various means; then, nuclear, which today is our most intense source of energy. Right along with this increase in intensity came an increase of potential harm.
It seems Jesse Ausabel has a chasm in his understanding.
Canada cut CO2-intensity of its economy 22% since 1990…but still managed to increase total CO2 by 16%. Oops. The Alberta oil sands cut their CO2-intensity by over 30% since 1990…but still managed to more than double their total CO2. Oops again.
And as Joe points out, scientists have been warning for years now about the threat of the re-carbonization of the global energy system. The data in recent years shows indeed this is happening.
Sure Sweden has an economy that now produces $8,000 per tonne of CO2. But China has one that produces only $450 per tonne of CO2. As we all know China has become the factory floor for the wealthy West and that factory floor has been getting dirtier and dirtier as the years go by and the manufacturing flees to low-wage, high-carbon China.
And where is a lot of the coal coming from that China is burning: USA, Canada, Australia.
One of the most fascinating aspects of climate change is the endless parade of smart people who are so clueless on the basics of climate and energy and yet are so sure they are right that they make big public pronouncements on almost no data. These folks would never do this in their own line of expertise…and they would fail their own students who tried to perform at this level in their classes.
“The computer models of the climate system aren’t good enough and never will be.”
OK, that is exactly what James Hansen says too. However as he points out we don’t need computer models because we have a real world model that takes everything into account in all the details: the earth itself. The use of paleoclimate data along with contemporary measurements of climate allows us to know what the earth will do.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this basic concept has no place pontificating on climate science like Ausabel is doing.
Grade: Fail.
Note in margin: Next time read the text book.
It’s been a while since Joe has beat the “hydrogen is evil” drum, but here he goes again. In an otherwise spot-on post, he refuses to accept that those of us (and many, like me, are in the advanced powertrain industry) who believe that there will be vehicular applications where fuel cells are advantageous might just be on to something.
None of us would argue that the round-trip efficiency of batteries isn’t higher or that the hydrogen infrastructure costs won’t be quite large. In fact, all fuel cell vehicles will have some sort of electricity storage unit (batteries and/or ultracapacitor) because short trips will be done with batteries, for regenerative braking, and for transient buffering. So batteries and fuel cells are complementary, not competing technologies.
But batteries don’t get you everything. The range issues affecting EVs today need a revolutionary advance in battery technology in order to get the range of conventional vehicles. Joe seems to think that this is inevitable, even though he rightly castigates the breakthrough crowd for doing the same thing. Hydrogen allows you to store a lot more energy on board the vehicle, and that is the crucial advantage that might make its adoption a necessity. Indeed, I challenge Joe to name another technology where later versions did less than the previous ones. Battery technology will improve (and have reductions in cost), but it needs two orders of magnitude improvement in specific energy (Wh/kg) and energy density (Wh/l) to catch up to gasoline, while hydrogen needs less than one order of magnitude. Hydrogen can also work well for vehicles with a set re-fueling depot like transit buses.
Joe knows he stuff when it comes to clean energy, but he has a mental block on hydrogen. He may not even allow this comment to be posted (he has prevented them in the past), but I hope that he will so that a reasoned and reasonable argument on the issue can be had. Because what is this comment system if not a forum for a discussion on clean energy?
[JR: Batteries aren't perfect, but hydrogen is a dead end beyond a few niche applications for the foreseeable future (which is to say the future that matters to those trying to avoid catastrophic warming). That said, efficiency trumps both of them and we aren't even close to the level of efficiency that is possible. The next-generation hybrids are going to be killer vehicles, I'm told.]
Sounds like a flashback to the 1980s. Oceans are OK, but we should leave them alone. The Hydrogen Society is coming (does anyone else remember that big blue NASA book on the hydrogen future–1988 or so–they had all the math for transcontinental jets with big H2 tanks). Forests are doing OK. Most importantly, good technology will get better, plenty of time, no hurry.
Seriously, can some one send this guy a list of everything he just got wrong?
It’s unbelievable how much bullshit is out there, Joe, and thanks for keeping on top of it. It won’t stop him- guys like Ausabel don’t even appear to do very basic fact checking- but it will help in the long run. If we have a long run, that is. Thanks for Sean’s chart, too- I knew that energy consumption and emissions were going up, but not per unit as well.
“Forests are now growing back in many temperate countries and the worst phase of habitat destruction may be over.. ”
I’m not nearly so complacent about temperate zone forests. The US Forest Service created a Climate Change Atlas for trees and birds East of the Mississippi. http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas/
It shows a huge amount of range shift, proven in recent past, and modeled in the future. Range shift does not guarantee that the trees can actually move to new range, along with symbiont pollinators and soil biota.
The climate does not care how many dollars are produced per unit of carbon.
Jeff at 6. -
“Battery technology will improve (and have reductions in cost), but it needs two orders of magnitude improvement in specific energy (Wh/kg) and energy density (Wh/l) to catch up to gasoline, while hydrogen needs less than one order of magnitude.”
Having studied the hydrogen option myself some years ago, and having watched the fossil fuel industry and IC vehicle industry hyping hydrogen transport shamelessly, I’m of the opinion that it never has been more than a diversion of criticism via the “Jam-tommorrow” route – that we might have a minute fraction of the global vehicle fleet running on fossil-sourced hydrogen by 2025, if govt.s will pay for the research, and for the massive infrastructure costs.
Personally, having researched the scale of carbon recovery that will have to be achieved,
and the pyrolysis of sustainable forest harvest for biochar that this will require,
and noted that up to 30% of the feedstock’s potential energy will be delivered as impure co-product syngas,
I’m more interested in the potential of the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell as a transport power supply, because syngas, being CO + H2, is of course the feedstock for the liquid fuel methanol, [CH3OH], which is one hell of a lot more easily tanked, piped, pumped and kept safe than is liquid hydrogen.
And I suspect that a large tankful of methanol plus a DMFC may be substantially lighter per unit of energy supply potential than would the latest EV battery, let alone the hydrogen + containment alternative.
Regards,
Lewis
Jeff Wishart #6
The range issues affecting EVs today need a revolutionary advance in battery technology in order to get the range of conventional vehicles.
If you think EV’s need the same range as gasoline vehicles, that is because you’re stuck in ‘drive-till-empty-then-fill-up’ thinking. That is for gasoline and hydrogen vehicles, not for battery vehicles. EV’s will have a different mode of use that you can call ‘charge-wherever-you-park’. You plug it in at least daily to top off your battery. Pulling in a ‘gas’ station for a fast recharge will for most people only be necessary every now and then when they make longer trips. And there are the recent advances on inductive charging, that can make the charge-wherever-you-park completely ubiqutous. Do not overfocus on the range issue, it may well turn out to be no issue at all once people get used to the new mode of use.
but it needs two orders of magnitude improvement in specific energy (Wh/kg) and energy density (Wh/l) to catch up to gasoline
That is the result of simplistic back-of-the-envelope calculations that throw all forms energy (thermal and electric) on one heap. It does not take into account the much higher efficiency of electric motors. Let me show you what your statement means. The Tesla battery has 0,12 kWh/kg energy density. Two orders of magnitude gives you 12 kWh/kg. 70 kg of battery (estimated weight of a full tank of gas, including the weight of the tank) would provide 840 kWh of energy storage, of which, say, 700 kWh is usable. At ~5 km per kWh such an EV would have a range of 3500 km! You see, you didn’t factor in the high efficiency of the electric motor. And you ignore the weight savings in the drive train (electric motor + electronics is much lighter than ICE + transmission). A battery can be heavier than a tank of gas, since you must look at total weight of the complete system, not just focus on parts that are convenient to arrive at the desired conclusion.
Tesla is about to produce the Model S with a range of 300 miles. Tell me how they manage to do that without the two-orders-of-magintude-breakthrough you claim to be necessary.
Joe knows he stuff when it comes to clean energy, but he has a mental block on hydrogen. He may not even allow this comment to be posted (he has prevented them in the past), but I hope that he will so that a reasoned and reasonable argument on the issue can be had. Because what is this comment system if not a forum for a discussion on clean energy?
I would say you should first learn your stuff better, then try to lecture Joe Romm.
Beautiful job of unpacking all the idiocies in that article. I felt depressed after reading it and thinking how so many people in powerful roles are unashamedly stupid in the face of unprecedented threats.
Ausubel’s uninformed and irresponsible “what me worry?” approach stands in sharp contrast to the deep concern emanating from the Pentagon. In our Onion world, the NYT editorial group play up Ausubel’s nonsense while ignoring the fact that the Joint Chiefs just this month okayed a “Mr Y” piece arguing for sustainable energy, real education, sustainable agriculture and hold the weapons-systems. As John Norris points out in Foreign Policy, “the report places considerable emphasis on the importance of achieving a more sustainable approach to security, energy, agriculture, and the environment.”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/13/the_y_article
This is shock and awe on the intellectual front.
When a USD 1 trillion military has to megaphone politics and the media, begging them to get real, and yet can’t get itself heard, you know we’re in trouble.
“The range issues affecting EVs today need a revolutionary advance in battery technology in order to get the range of conventional vehicles.”
Really? My last conventional car got 300 miles per tank. The Tesla Model S goes 300 miles per tank.
The problem with the batteries is the high cost, but battery costs are coming down while oil and gasoline are going up. It is easy to see that the cost advantage is going to tilt to batteries in a few years.
I encountered Jessie Ausubel several times over the course of my career, including being on a couple of panels with him over the years. Each time I was struck by the fact that he was successfully passing himself off as a Green guy.
He is adept at the Greg Easterbook/Bjorn Lomborg tactic of saying “I agree with you — I am one of you … BUT …” Whereupon he would launch into an iconoclastic bit of sophistry that fooled no one but the credulous media and a few fine arts majors.
Which of course is the problem. The media laps this stuff up like a kitten slurps cream.
On a similar note the NY Times reports that US greenhouse gas emissions won’t be back to 2005 levels by 2027.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions-projected-to-grow-slowly/?partner=rss&emc=rss
But doesn’t mention that growth in outsourced emissions more than makes up for the difference.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/19/1006388108
#16: Mark — thanks for that post and the links — outsourced emissions (or embedded carbon in imports) is one of the most important issue there is in climate change policy.
On both a corporate level and a national level, it is the source of a great deal of deception and greenwashing.
This is the Lomborg school of denialism, the dissembling facade that they acknowledge the problem, but then they blame, not Big Business or Big Oil, but environmentalists, for the sin of trying to do something and not just leaving it all to the ‘powers-that-be’. The abuse of environmentalists as ‘opportunists’ is such a flagrant act of projection, one is left gob-smacked at the audacity of it.Technological smoke-dreams abound, various hobby-horses are flogged mercilessly, computer models rejected etc etc. A broken record, one of many in the denialist industry arsenal, and one that the Rightwing MSM, loyal as absolutely required to the financial interests of their capitalist owners, will push and push, no matter how often the propagandists are exposed as cranks and eejits, until Doomsday. And, of course, as a couple of hundred poor souls discovered in the US yesterday, Doomsday is today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow..
And on the subject of media, ancient history of, Realclimate quotes Stephen Schneider’s 1971 letter to the New York Times (his first, apparently.) Robert Jastrow, his boss at GISS at the time, fired him over the phone. But Schneider was quickly reinstated by NASA, which then favored public outreach by its scientists.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/steve-schneiders-first-letter-to-the-editor/
Also worth reading is comment #15, which lays bare the angry words of one Ron Arnold.
JR,
Does this work?
Wow, now that we have come to common ground that ‘efficiency trumps both of them (batteries and hydrogen)’ we can start making real climate progress.
And yes, much more can be done with efficiency. The Miastrada website (click name above) gives some updated clues on how this could be done. It also notes how distributed cogeneration could come about using high efficiency hybrid vehicles.
We have more to come, including high efficiency 18 wheeler replacements and near zero drag hybrid wheels.
By the way, Jim represents Miastrada Company