Opine away.
By Joel Pett, the Cartoonist Group
Climate Progress
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Get ThinkProgress email alerts
About Climate Progress
Edited by Joe Romm, we cover climate science, solutions and politics. Columnist Tom Friedman calls us "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named us one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." Newcomers, start here.
Joe Romm's New Book
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.
Joe Romm has pulled together the secrets of the greatest communicators in history to show how you can apply these tools to your writing, speaking, blogging — even your Tweeting.
Subscribe to Climate Progress by Email
Powered by NewsWhip
Got a Hot Tip?
Have a hot news tip? We'd love to hear from you. Use the form below to send us the latest.
Climate Progress Archives
About ThinkProgress | Contact Us | Donate
Befitting the cartoon – (Must) Should-see video:
Photographer James Balog talks to Bill Moyers about his book and film documenting receding glaciers, and how he became convinced of the reality of global warming after being a skeptic at first.
Apart from the beautiful (if terrifying) time-lapse photographs and film clips, I think this is also worth seeing for his straightforward and effective explanation of climate change.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/james-balog-on-capturing-our-disappearing-glaciers/
(http://billmoyers.com/content/web-extra-james-balog-on-obama-the-epa-and-climate-change/)
Here’s a little (useless) thought exercise. What would be the effect if we had a constitutional amendment along the lines of the following:
“The rights of future generations to live in an environment that is conducive to human health and activity shall not be infringed by the current generation.”
If you think it’s useless, consider that Bolivia now has the law of the rights of mother earth. That would have been ‘unthinkable’ a decade ago.
Spanish language only:
http://bolivia.infoleyes.com/shownorm.php?id=2689
My prediction: this company will be quietly bought out, we won’t hear about it again, and/or the inventor will have a mysterious “accident”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-pioneering-scientists-turn-fresh-air-into-petrol-in-massive-boost-in-fight-against-energy-crisis-8217382.html
They’ve got a technique to change dry ice into gasoline. But it requires more input energy than the gasoline it produces. That energy comes from the grid or maybe from solar energy in the future. If all the petroleum the world currently uses were produced this way, and if the world continued to use this petroleum at the current rate, there would be no net reduction in atmospheric CO2.
So what?
Use that solar power to fuel electric vehicles instead.
I have a different technique to change air to motor fuel. It’s called photosynthesis. The whole trick is driving the price down until petroleum can hardly compete.
Can’t wait to see that trick. It would be quite a treat. But it might be better, or at least complimentary, to start pricing into fossil fuels the cost of dumping excess CO2 into the environment.
Mental Agility…
SPIEGEL’s Axel Bojanowski focuses on the recent Munich Re study and cites some quotes from the controversial Roger Pielke Jr.
He actually is suggesting that Insurer only have financial interests when releasing numbers and trends related to weather extremes. And ofc he is ignoring all the other studies which come to similar conclusion. See my post (in german) abput it here:
TOPIC: Die verharmlosende Berichterstattung zum Klimawandel bei SPIEGEL http://climatestate.com/forum/klima-wissenschaften/6-die-verharmlosende-berichterstattung-zum-klimawandel-bei-spiegel.html
And today the SPIEGEL run a short story about the warmest october day on record, which is long gone from the frontpage and is not mentioning climate change at all. “Hottest day 26.7C in germany from october weather observation (since 1879)”
Spiegel is hard Right, and a centre of climate destabilisation denial. I wouldn’t cross the road to micturate on them if they spontaneously combusted.
As they say in Beecroft…
It’s more likely that they will combust from the overheating of the climate.
A huge piece of an Antarctic glacier is on its way to breaking apart and becoming an iceberg wider than Manhattan. http://www.facebook.com/ClimateState/posts/356557857771405
I can recommend this post and especially watch or even re-watch the excellent video on carbon dioxide concentrations and biogeochemical feedbacks during last major climate changes
The Great Warming Extinction was Even More Deadly Than Believed http://climatecrocks.com/2012/10/19/the-great-warming-extinction-was-even-more-deadly-than-believed/#comments
Direct link to the video
Climate Denial Crock of the Week: “The Earth is Carbon Starved.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uE6at2IEUOU
Richard Alley explains it all..
Grab what you can — tiny eggs, microspecies — and drop them in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Otherwise they are gone forever, for the entire world. Nudge Bill Gates or somebody.
They all go, sometime. What’s wonderful is that the planet, after a few million years, will be as wondrously diverse as before the anthropogenic mass extinction commenced.
I think the point is that we’re accelerating the process. Not sure that’s going to be wonderful for generations of human beings, including my grandkids. But them I was raised in a holocene world that I see as already pretty interesting. I can take some solace in thinking ecosystems will likely spring back, eventually. But not too much, because if we could get over this hump we might actually co-exist with nature and be here in a state to appreciate how wonderful it is.
It’s too late to think of our immediate descendents, if any, living in anything but a radically ravaged world. That’s the dreadful truth. They and the next twenty or thirty generations, will have their hands full repairing the planet. That’s the real legacy of human civilization up to now. I wish them luck, and offer my heartfelt apology for my contribution to this debacle. Of course any effort today to preserve some of the current biodiversity is praiseworthy and essential. I just hope that it will not be in vain.
The Ghost Forests of Whitebark Pine
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/cwilcox/the_ghost_forests_of_whitebark.html
Or air pollution (ozone) weakened the trees so they couldn’t survive the beetles and droughts.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/antarctic-climate-facing-rapid-changes-chief-scientist-20121016-27ohg.html#ixzz29qppKbzx
The story does not say which hard Right, denialist, Liberal Senator accused them of ‘alarmism’. There is a whole menagerie of them, climate denialism being an article of absolute religious conviction on the Right. And ‘The Australian’(Denial Central hereabouts) ran a piece last week by a Professor of Geophysics ( God help us!) claiming that the ‘spread of Antarctic ice cover’ was being hushed up by the ‘alarmists’ and somehow balanced the loss of Arctic summer sea ice.
Thanks mate. While the Arctic is the big news, I remain firmly of the view that it is the Antarctica that is going to deliver the ultimatum, ME
Absolutely! However I can just see the destructocrats salivating at the prospect of all that ‘prime real estate’ being liberated from the ice, and becoming open for development. Greed poisons the soul, and the mind.
I’m sure a silly little treaty wouldn’t stop them but Antarctica and the ‘screaming fifties’ will certainly enjoy a few laughs at their expense, ME
What I get from the cartoon is not the melting glaciers, but rather the identification of Growth as the real culprit. We have created an economy the requires growth to pay tomorrow for what we are doing today. Maybe that idea is too ingrained in humanity to be easily pushed aside. After all, we all grow up, or failing that are told to “grow up.” Growth is a given as a political goal, even in village elections where we need growth to pay for last years bonds.
But growth can also be cancerous with frequently fatal consequences.
Growth can be sustainable too. And this we require to learn as a species.
How in the world is growth sustainable? I suspect you have a definition of growth different from mine.
Of course..
Sustainable development (SD) is a pattern of economic development in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come (sometimes taught as ELF: Environment, Local people, Future[citation needed]). The term ‘sustainable development’ was used by the Brundtland Commission which coined what has become the most often-quoted definition of sustainable development as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Alternatively, sustainability educator Michael Thomas Needham referred to ‘Sustainable Development’ “as the ability to meet the needs of the present while contributing to the future generations’ needs.” There is an additional focus on the present generations’ responsibility to improve the future generations’ life by restoring the previous ecosystem damage and resisting to contribute to further ecosystem damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_development
The question is also how do we plan to generate agriculture products and develop the clean economy when the constraints for development shrink from shifting climate zones and climate modes? And we need significant growth to transition to a clean economy. And there are many other motivations for growth, our entire civilization is based on this and most successful life forms.
“Sustainable growth” is an oxymoron. It sounds good to have an economy that can support 7 billion people without harming the ability of the environment to support 7 billion people 500 years from now. But wait…. in that example POPULATION growth came a screeching halt.
Do you agree there is no such thing as “sustainable” (i.e. never-ending) population growth that will not EVENTUALLY degrade the environment’s ability to support that many people?
Or take economic growth. When our GDP was 1 Billion and we had 100% cumulative growth to turn it into 2 Billion GDP, that economic growth took a relatively small bit of resources and generated a small bit of waste….. far less than it takes today to add 0.0001% of economic growth.
So the more the economy grows THIS year, the bigger bite of resources it will take to grow that same percentage NEXT year.
No, the notion of “sustainable development” is a benevolent oxymoron beloved by some humanitarians, and a colonial euphemism beloved by resource-hungry capitalists seeking to exploit the developing world – with their permission.
Global warming, I am convinced, is merely a symptom of the REAL problem, and that problem is our addiction to non-stop economic growth. Since this addiction is an inescapable part of capitalism (there is no such thing as steady-state capitalism) it is quite obvious and quite frightening that the only way to prevent disaster is to evolve an economy that does not depend on “sustainable growth” but rather no growth at all. Zero growth. A steady state economy.
Re Mark E says: October 20, 2012 at 5:57 pm
I acknowledge that this is a hot topic used by “both” parties to gain advantages in their favor. However, we require substantial growth rates if we want to combat climate change.
Now let’s assume we have transitioned our entire global energy, infrastructure, grid’s, devices, vehicles with technologies, which in summary contribute to a negative emission scenario. Even at that point we require growth, because it is a fundamental axiom’ish requirement for survival, because we do not live in a static world.
There are many examples of negative carbon living or local organic growing your own food and such. Thus a certain degree of growth is needed. Also there are many new forms of growth which only exist in digital form. Thus judging about business models in general is prone to error and this thinking will bring us nowhere forward.
Further is climate change creating a situation where growth in general becomes inhibited. The environmental setup is less and less favorable for growth, because of more extremes. In this world only certain lifeforms can thrive (Think of Jellyfish invasions). We need growth to create safer places to grow food, create a decentralized energy network which can exist symbiotic with the growing fleet of electric vehicles.
If we do not learn to adapt these lines we will witness collapse much earlier and chances to minimizes atmospheric Co2 will dwindle and become a unsolvable burden, which will break every neck.
Wednesday 21 September 2011 Companies must push harder for sustainable growth
Companies are far too comfortable with their existing business models to leverage the crucial systemic change that is needed for sustainable progression
Yet businesses, along with every part of society from the financial markets to politicians and individual citizens are failing to act in any meaningful sense.
Rather worryingly, a new report from Forum for the Future and ENDS concludes that UK plc’s sustainability performance in the past year has worsened in many areas including industrial carbon emissions, energy efficiency, decarbonising electricity generation, pay inequality and companies’ social performance on human rights and labour, and supply chain standards.
Beyond that, many corporates are actively sabotaging attempts at change. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said last week that the only corporate group that is showing any real co-ordination and initiative in the area of climate change is the global energy sector and that is seeking to push us in the wrong direction. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/businesses-social-environmental-impact-sustainable-growth
Prokaryotes,
I am sure I’d agree with about 100% of your policy ideas. However, what we Earthlings have to do is burn less carbon every year going forward. Let’s say 5% decline every year (probably too little). Now if we can maintain our nice, comfortable lives in that scenario, super. But some studies making assumption upon assumption saying we can doesn’t make it so. So, if push comes to shove and we all have to live differently, then we all have to live differently and put the phrase “sustainable growth” in the waste basket.
Agreed Ken. Anyone talking about growth without defining growth of WHAT needs to either write with better clarity or think with deeper critical thinking. The vague notion of growth does not help.
Pretend everyone happily survived on 1 acre of DIY organic AG. But population keeps growing. Oops now we have to get by on just 1/2 acre of DIY organic AG each. Soon it will be 1/8. Eventually 1/256th acre each.
Ya gotta define GROWTH to talk about it clearly else it is just handwaving
If cutting CO2 emissions and repairing ecosystems resulted in more economic growth, say in electric car makers, energy conservation, carbon sequestration and renewables who amongst us would complain? At present I suspect very few. What we clearly need to do is make sure that any growth that does occur is socially and ecologically useful. But ultimately a steady state economy will be needed because some resources are simply present in fixed quantities which will otherwise deplete.
Steven Amstrup says it’s not too late to save polar bears – and ourselves
‘We know the answer to what it takes to save’ polar bears, says environmental prize winner Steven Amstrup, who has gone to the Arctic to study the bears for 30 years.
Steven Amstrup, a senior scientist at Polar Bears International, has led a team of researchers that discovered that, contrary to expectations, even if all the sea ice in the Arctic disappeared, once the planet cooled back down, it would return.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2012/1019/Steven-Amstrup-says-it-s-not-too-late-to-save-polar-bears-and-ourselves
Polar bears are gone. The survivors will evolve back into some type of brown bear, white fur being an impediment in a world without snow and ice.
There are already reported matings and progeny of polars and grislies in the wild, previously unheard of, ME
Link between Arctic sea ice reduction and cold winters in Europe http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL053338.shtml
Failure to Plan for Innovation Leads to Planetary Failure
Yet another election and very, very, very little talk of electoral reform (finance, lobbying, voting rules, district borders, introducing multiple parties, etc.).
Open questions to all interested: How central is this to policy? Can we get the climate policy we want if this goes unchanged? Given that this is a popular issue to voters across the political spectrum, how can we better advance this in collaboration with others?
Should have written electoral and democratic reform.
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2012/10/antiscience-beliefs-jeopardize-us.html
Shawn Lawrence Otto: Antiscience beliefs jeopardize U.S. democracy
In a longer form, you might read Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum.
http://www.unscientificamerica.com/
I’ve read it, along with Chris Mooney’s other books. I haven’t posted a review of Unscientific America, though. It sits on my hard rive, unfinished.
Some positive speak (and short shrift given to climate concerns) in PRI’s “Living On Earth” segment on oil exports and tar sands:
http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=12-P13-00042
Sort of leaves the impression that things are already being done as responsibly as possible, and that we have plenty of time to get our acts together on carbon/that focusing on supply expansion is fine given existing (mediocre) policy aimed at demand reduction.
New Gas Industry Astroturf: Landowner Advocates of NY Buses Activists to Albany Pro-Fracking Rally http://truth-out.org/news/item/12184-new-gas-industry-astroturf-landowner-advocates-of-ny-buses-activists-to-albany-pro-fracking-rally
See why I rarely comment anymore?
Interesting concepts of Christianity-
Christ reportedly advocated leaving the old growth forests to grow and spoke against clear cutting the old growth forests. He seemed to have seen bad effects of the forests turning to desert after clear cutting. It would seem as a carpenter he was in favor of a much more sustainable form of having wood to use for cabinetry. It seems that he knew that much time was required for the trees of that area to grow. That Christ would return with different beliefs is questionable. That he would return with the power of nature is a given. Not sure that he would and don’t believe that he would want to change the laws of nature (physics), so that leaves a large amount of time before nature would calm down enough for your wants.
Just looking at time line constraints of SAD BUT TRUE.
There are nice links to feedback mechanisms to warm the environment that used to only warm a little so that the spring season would start in a way so that when the leaves of plants started coming forth the weather would be sustainable for that growth. Some of the feedbacks may become more intense causing a drying of the environment etc. Also being more intense the feedback mechanisms last longer through the seasons. It is much different for the feedbacks to last through the years rather than to just start spring in a timely manner.
Just thinking. Bye
Spanish study matches forest fires to the last two years high temperatures
A study led by some University of Barcelona researchers analyses the impact of interannual and seasonal climate variability on the fires occurred in Catalonia last summer. The study concludes that summer fires, related to summer climate conditions, are correlated with antecedent climate conditions, especially winter and spring ones with a lag time of two years. The results suggest that precipitation and temperature conditions regulate fuel flammability and fuel structure. According to the correlations observed, the study provides a model to produce long-term predictions.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-spanish-forest-years-high-temperatures.html
Climate change: journalism’s never-ending fight for facts
An Australian DJ must undergo ‘accuracy’ training after saying falsehoods about climate change. But will this improve journalism?
This week has witnessed two text-book examples of this phenomenon in action. First, we had an article in the Mail of Sunday with the arresting headline that “Global warming stopped 16 years ago”. Predictably, it was picked up and repeated across the world by news outlets keen to push that line. A day or so later the rebuttals and clarifications from scientists started to land, but the meme had already gained purchase with those seeking such confirmation.
And then we heard the extraordinary news that Alan Jones, the Australian climate sceptic shock jock, had been ordered by the country’s media regulator (full ruling here) to undertake “factual accuracy” training, and to employ fact-checkers, following one of his infamous near-daily rants about the climate “hoax”.
Each tale hints at a different outcome: the one that got away, versus the one that got caught. People can debate that, but I think taken together these two stories ask a deeper, more pertinent question about how – particularly in light of the fact that the Leveson inquiry is soon to publish its findings – the media can be persuaded, cajoled, forced – you chose the word – into taking a much more responsible position when it comes to relaying facts about climate change to its audience. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/oct/19/climate-change-facts-journalism
Permafrost Projections http://climatesight.org/2012/10/02/permafrost-projections/
As a result, permafrost added an extra 44, 104, 185, and 279 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere for DEP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 respectively. However, the extra warming by 2100 was about the same for each DEP, with central estimates around 0.25 °C. Interestingly, the logarithmic effect of CO2 on climate (adding 10 ppm to the atmosphere causes more warming when the background concentration is 300 ppm than when it is 400 ppm) managed to cancel out the increasing amounts of permafrost thaw. By 2300, the central estimates of extra warming were more variable, and ranged from 0.13 to 1.69 °C when full uncertainty ranges were taken into account. Altering climate sensitivity (by means of an artificial feedback), in particular, had a large effect.
As a result of the thawing permafrost, the land switched from a carbon sink (net CO2 absorber) to a carbon source (net CO2 emitter) decades earlier than it would have otherwise – before 2100 for every DEP. The ocean kept absorbing carbon, but in some scenarios the carbon source of the land outweighed the carbon sink of the ocean. That is, even without human emissions, the land was emitting more CO2 than the ocean could soak up. Concentrations kept climbing indefinitely, even if human emissions suddenly dropped to zero. This is the part of the paper that made me want to hide under my desk.
This scenario wasn’t too hard to reach, either – if climate sensitivity was greater than 3°C warming per doubling of CO2 (about a 50% chance, as 3°C is the median estimate by scientists today), and people followed DEP 8.5 to at least 2013 before stopping all emissions (a very intense scenario, but I wouldn’t underestimate our ability to dig up fossil fuels and burn them really fast), permafrost thaw ensured that CO2 concentrations kept rising on their own in a self-sustaining loop. The scenarios didn’t run past 2300, but I’m sure that if you left it long enough the ocean would eventually win and CO2 would start to fall. The ocean always wins in the end, but things can be pretty nasty until then.
As if that weren’t enough, the paper goes on to list a whole bunch of reasons why their values are likely underestimates. For example, they assumed that all emissions from permafrost were CO2, rather than the much stronger CH4 which is easily produced in oxygen-depleted soil; the UVic model is also known to underestimate Arctic amplification of climate change (how much faster the Arctic warms than the rest of the planet). Most of the uncertainties – and there are many – are in the direction we don’t want, suggesting that the problem will be worse than what we see in the model.
This paper went in my mental “oh shit” folder, because it made me realize that we are starting to lose control over the climate system. No matter what path we follow – even if we manage slightly negative emissions, i.e. artificially removing CO2 from the atmosphere – this model suggests we’ve got an extra 0.25°C in the pipeline due to permafrost. It doesn’t sound like much, but add that to the 0.8°C we’ve already seen, and take technological inertia into account (it’s simply not feasible to stop all emissions overnight), and we’re coming perilously close to the big nonlinearity (i.e. tipping point) that many argue is between 1.5 and 2°C. Take political inertia into account (most governments are nowhere near even creating a plan to reduce emissions), and we’ve long passed it.
Just because we’re probably going to miss the the first tipping point, though, doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and give up. 2°C is bad, but 5°C is awful, and 10°C is unthinkable. The situation can always get worse if we let it, and how irresponsible would it be if we did?
Here is the Climate Progress post http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/06/970721/carbon-feedback-from-thawing-permafrost-will-add-04f-15f-to-total-global-warming-by-2100/
And this on the same topic…
Estimating the permafrost-carbon feedback on
3 global warming http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~anders/publications/schneider_meinshausen11.pdf
I find this very interesting (from the Potsdam study cited above)
“A key uncertainty is the fraction of carbon that might be decomposed under anaerobic conditions – resulting potentially in methane emissions to the atmosphere. Given the high warming potential of methane, the overall magnitude of the permafrost-carbon feedback will depend strongly on this fraction.”
To better put things into perspective
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Flooded Soils
Flooded soils are dynamic ecosystems that play an important role in biogeochemical cycling and in the production of greenhouse gases. Methane (CH4+) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are produced as byproducts of anaerobic metabolism in the low-redox zones characteristic of flooded soils, where oxygen is lacking. Carbon dioxide (CO2), which receives widespread attention as a greenhouse gas and potential source of global warming, may also be produced at the interface of anaerobic-aerobic zones through the consumption of methane gas. However, it should be noted that from a global standpoint methane and nitrous oxide on a per molecule basis have the potential to contribute 25x and 300x more to global warming over the next century than carbon dioxide, respectively (Schlesinger, 1997). Thus the conversion of methane gas to carbon dioxide essentially reduces the greenhouse gas effect by 25x per molecule per 100 years. According to Matthews and Fung (1987), an estimated 3.6% of terrestrial land is classified as wetlands, and although this number continues to decline (Schlesinger, 1997) the effect of flooded soils to the global climate is clear. http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Flooded_soils
And
“When suboxic waters (oxygen essentially absent) occur at depths of less than 300 feet, the combination of high respiration rates, and the peculiarities of a process called denitrification can cause N2O production rates to be 10,000 times higher than the average for the open ocean.” Feedbacks: Climate Change Reducing Ocean’s Carbon Dioxide Uptake and accelerates Hypoxia States http://climateforce.net/2011/07/12/feedbacks-climate-change-reducing-ocean%E2%80%99s-carbon-dioxide-uptake-and-accelerates-hypoxia-states/
Despite rapid rates of hydrologic transport during snow melt runoff, rates of uptake and removal of inorganic N tended to exceed water residence time during snow melt, indicating potential for retention of N in valley bottom soils when flowpaths are shallow. Decreased reaction rates relative to water residence time in subsequent seasons suggest greater export of inorganic N as the soil–stream flowpath deepens due to thawing soils. Using seasonal thaw as a proxy for longer term deepening of the thaw layer caused by climate warming and permafrost degradation, these results suggest increasing potential for export of inorganic N from permafrost-influenced soils to streams. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02731.x/abstract
Well i guess i have to write a blog on the teleconnections later …
In many places in the world, artificial fertilizers applied to crop-lands to increase yields result in run-off delivery of soluble nitrogen to oceans at river mouths. This process can result in eutrophication of the water, as nitrogen-driven bacterial growth depletes water oxygen to the point that all higher organisms die. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen
More signs of the fossil fuel interests’ capture of the UK Treasury as:
Chancellor George Osborne has started referring to Parliamentary climate change campaigners as the “environmental Taliban”, it emerged today, as the Treasury fights to water down renewable commitments in the Government’s flagship Energy Bill.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-environmental-taliban-george-osborne-slams-parliamentary-climate-change-campaigners-as-treasury-fights-to-water-down-energy-bill-commitments-8215495.html
US Navy Develops a Technique to Produce Jet Fuel from Sea Water
”
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Navy-Develops-a Technique-to-Produce-Jet-Fuel-from-Sea-Water.html
”
Despite that it seems the Navy is using excess energy from on-board nuclear reactors and the process is very inefficient, does this have potential as a major game changer when taken to the logical extreme?
For instance: Natural systems such as marine-based wind and solar can be used to produce clean high density energy storage while extracting CO2 from the world’s oceans; wherein multi-use increases the effective efficiency and ultimately removing CO2 from the world’s oceans will ultimately have considerable value.
PBS is airing a new episode of Frontline called “Climate of Doubt”, which will air this Tuesday:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/
I saw an ad for this last week on my local PBS and wanted to know if Joe or anyone else is aware of it?
I would be interested in someone reviewing Deiter Helm’s new book “Carbon Crunch: How we’re fixing climate change wrong — and How to fix it”.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Carbon-Crunch-Getting-Wrong/dp/0300186592
This is coming from someone who in a continent (Europe) with countries sympathetic and eager to address climate change, but running into problems in meeting targets.
Some of the major points I got from it are
– Top down policies like Kyoto, don’t work
– Need for a price on carbon, also possibly a framework for border tariffs (bottom up approach). Cannot ignore economics.
– Don’t pick winners and losers (e.g. current renewables, wind, solar, …)
– The good and bad news is there is no Peak Oil (or peak fossil fuel). Environmentalist underestimate advances in fossil fuel technology to go after “unconventional” resources. Renewables will not fall down in cost enough in price to compete against fossil fuels since fossil fuels are moving targets themselves. We will run out of atmosphere before fossil fuels.
– Shale gas is cheap. Also, it has the possibly to be fungible, to convert to liquid fossil fuel, to generate electricity for electric cars, or used for transport directly such as trucks …
– Short term, switching from coal to shale gas is the big winner in carbon reductions. Works better than climate treaties. More feasible to get China and India to do this than a broad climate agreement. Coal is the big enemy. Shale gas is the interim/bridge solution.
– Need for research in renewables, storage, application of information technology, for long term low or no carbon solution. But deploying today’s renewable technology wastes resources and does not substantially address the carbon reduction problem.
(I’m well aware of the skepticism of shale gas in these posts. But I’m interested in someone addressing Dieter’s points specifically.)
Dieter Helm’s belief that natural gas is the solution to climate change is said to be behind the UK Treasury’s desire to build a huge number of new gas stations. So he is picking winners himself. The UK Climate Change Committee has pointed out that gas without CCS will imperil CO2 targets after 2030 however.
The crucial point being missed is the scientific one shown by papers by Wigley, and by Caldeira et all, featured in articles on here, that gas is a bridge to nowhere in climate effects. And my concern about shale gas is that its methane leakage may be considerably more than conventional gas.
As Joe previously blogged “So the only scenario I can see in which more gas makes sense is the one I laid out 3 years ago. We have a rising price for carbon. We have a short-term transition — lasting to about 2020 — to fill the existing underutilized gas-fired capacity and replace coal cheaply.
In this scenario, very few new natural gas plants are built. And, of course, during this time we still push hard on efficiency and all forms of renewables to keep bringing them rapidly down the cost curve. Post-2020 it needs to be pretty much all carbon-free power.
What this new study adds is that even this approach doesn’t make much sense without an additional effort to cut methane leaks sharply.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/09/460384/natural-gas-is-a-bridge-to-nowhere-absent-a-carbon-price-and-strong-standards-to-reduce-methane-leakage/
Line in the Sands · 17 like this
25 minutes ago ·
We have an unprecedented event arranged for Monday the 22nd Oct. at the BC Legislator in Victoria.
Many of us recognize that the benefits of oil sands are just not a reality for BC when weighed up against the risks.
The pipeline and the super tankers off our coast do no compute and will not compute.
That is just the specific local risks. On top of this there is the pressing concern of global warming driven climate change, sea level rise and ocean acidification.
Both of these have a huge impact on BC even now with warm temperatures affecting our fisheries and acidification affecting our oyster and shell fish industries; warm winters are also allowing the pine beetle to devastate our forests and logging communities. The climate is going rogue and affecting our food supplies.
It is essential that we tackle these issues now before they become too prevalent, pervasive and overwhelming. We can not afford this risk.
We can not afford to invest in infrastructure and industry which will reenforce and lock us into a pathway to such a future.
The Northern Gateway, Kinder Morgan pipelines and the oil sands development are infrastructure we have to move away from.
If you agree that we can not have super oil tank plying our coast then on Wednesday approach you MP and let them know so.
https://www.facebook.com/LineInTheSands #defendourcoast #nokxl #solidarity #notarsands
https://www.facebook.com/DefendOurCoast
I was really glad to see you refute David Brooks. I thought his editorial was wrong and annoying. I have often wondered why so many hate Al Gore. I think it’s because they can’t face the fact that they backed the worst president ever and to my thinking the worst person for the future of humanity.
Why Climate and Psychology? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxECGKas6lU&feature=BFa&list=PLE8B1470B8A846BB1&index=6
Donald Trump has been featured on UK television for his new golf course in Scotland, aimed at the international golfing market (and therefore aviation dependent) as well as being built on a site of special scientific interest against environmental advice.
‘ “We’ve had tremendous support from environmental groups,” says Trump. Of course you have – for a project that involves messing with an ancient ecosystem to build a leisure complex that will mainly be used by people who will get there by flying across the Atlantic. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, World Wildlife Fund, the RSPB aren’t among those groups; they all vigorously opposed it.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/oct/21/youve-been-trumped-tv-review?newsfeed=true