Alchemic for the people

The Storm

On my Christmas journey, on the train from Brussels, Belgium, to the Dutch border, besides the wind turbines, I counted the number of solar electric rooftop installations I could see. My estimate was that roughly 300 kilowatts of solar could be seen from the track. There has been an explosion of deployment. The renewable energy policies that are behind this tide of photovoltaics in Flanders seem to be working, or have been until recently.

On my journey back from Holland to England, I pondered about the polders and the low-lying landscape around me. I don’t know what river it was we crossed, but the river was only held in place by narrow banks or dikes, as it was higher than the farmland around it – waterlogged fields in some places – where parcels of land were divided by stillwater ditches instead of hedges or fences. “Oh no, we don’t have “Mary Poppins” on Dutch TV any more at Christmas every year like we used to. We’re going to see the film “The Storm”…” said my host. Curiouser and curiouser. “De Storm” is a film that harks back to an actual historical event, the major North Sea flooding in 1953. “I remember what it was like afterwards,” says an older English relative, “I visited Belgium and Holland with my aunt and uncle just after the flooding – he wanted to visit the family war graves. We stayed in Middelburg. You could see how high the water reached. There were tide marks this high on the side of the houses, and whelks left stuck on the walls.” The film attempts to nail down the coffin casket lid of bad weather history. By telling the narrative of major, fearful floods of the past, people are distracted from the possibility that it may happen again. History is history, and the story tells the ending, and that’s a finish to it. However, for some people, those people who know something of the progress of the science of global warming, this film is like a beacon – a flare on a rocky landing strip – lighting the way to the future crash of the climate and the rising of sea levels, which will bring havoc to The Netherlands, Dutch engineers or no Dutch engineers. We have to be prepared for change, major change. If you or anyone you know has Dutch relatives and friends, think about whether you can invite them to live with you in future if things get really bad. One or two really bad storms combined with excessive tides and a few centimetres of sea level rise could be all it takes to wreck the country’s ability to organise water and destroy a significant amount of agricultural land. “I’ve been studying Climate Change science”, I told another host. “You believe in Climate Change ?”, he asked, somewhat incredulously. “It’s 200 years of science”, I replied, smiling, “but we probably shouldn’t discuss it. I don’t think it would be very productive.”

Shale Gas : Travelling Circus

Image Credit : Jacques del Conte

Flushing gas from sandy mud-rock, deep underground. Hmmm. Bet that’s energy- and resource-efficient. Not.

So…the whole caravan comes to town, builds the rig, pipes in water, pumps in chemicals, filters off the gas, pipes out the poisoned water somewhere unquantified, and then packs everything up after a few months because there’s no more gas coming up, leaving the area looking like a moon crater :-

So how carbon-intensive is this kind of operation ? It’s a bit like chopping down Indonesian and Malaysian tropical rainforest to grow oil palm and then burning dirty bunker fuel to ship it all the way to Europe to make “cleaner burning” biodiesel. In fact, it could be worse than that – it could be dirtier than coal :-

And what’s all this business about chemical adulteration of groundwater ? That could be to do with the “hydraulic fracturing” process from horizontal drilling :-

It’s true that the business needn’t resemble a travelling circus when there’s a large “play” of shale and horizontal drilling is used, but what about the possible side effects of chemical leakage into bodies of water and seismic activity, which doesn’t seem to get mentioned very often ? :-

There is some concern that shale gas is being promoted as a new “cure-all” for the energy industry, as gas is believed to be a cleaner source of fuel than coal, and gas shale is much, much cheaper than the proposed carbon capture projects and new nuclear power stations, which will only be developed with substantial tax breaks or subsidies or grants. (I mean, can you see a carbon price being set high enough to pay to make it worthwhile to fit Carbon Capture to every coal plant in the world ?) :-

http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/17317_r_0910stevens.pdf

“The recent ‘shale gas revolution’ in the United States has created huge uncertainties for international gas markets that are likely to inhibit investment in gas – both conventional and unconventional – and in many renewables. If the revolution continues in the US and extends to the rest of the world, energy consumers can anticipate a future dominated by cheap gas. However, if it falters and the current hype about shale gas proves an illusion, the world will face serious gas shortages in the medium term”

A Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) fan wrote to me, linking to the CCS industry :-

http://www.captureready.com/EN/Channels/News/showDetail.asp?objID=1972&isNew

“A British study indicates that cheap low-emission shale gas, with double the global reserves of conventional sources, will discourage investment in nuclear reactors and carbon storage. “In a world where there is the serious possibility of cheap, relatively clean gas, who will commit large sums of money to expensive pieces of equipment to lower carbon emissions?” Paul Stevens, senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based institute for the study of international affairs, wrote in the report published today.”

This is what the CCS fan had to add :-

“What this important article from the ‘CaptureReady’ international CCS news website fails to pick up (although other authors have) is that these prices will have an equal dampening effect on all renewables projects as well, [...] never mind offshore wind power costs, while easily meeting all conceivable carbon dioxide reduction targets out to beyond 2050 and delivering reliable, dispatchable power, with none of the unreliability/unpredictability ‘down-sides’ of variable wind output. ‘I know which I’d pick’ as a power company today, especially given the low investment cost per kW [...]. Looks like it may be ‘gas forever’ for at least the next couple of decades, so we need to lobby very hard for CCS from the start on every new gas powerplant and large industrial plant, followed by a big programme of properly-subsidised CCS retrofits, if that’s where the real industrial world is going…the quoted US conventional gas number is just plain wrong (far too high!), and the Shale gas price is very geology/location and project-scale-dependent (that is, variable), so that price in Texas does not mean similarly low shale gas prices everywhere – meaning the total resource quoted is certainly not available at that sort of low price. As with all resources, there’s actually a ‘staircase’ of amount versus price. Shale gas exploitation is ‘inherently costly’ (capital-intensive) due to the relatively larger number of wells needed, the poor permeability and the considerable cost of the ‘fracking’ operation itself. The poor inherent permeability inevitably means that the production rate will decline more steeply and quickly than conventional gas wells, meaning that costly multiple repeat fracking may be necessary, adding to costs.”

And as a summary of the shale gas downsides :-

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Main conclusions [on shale gas] :

1. Huge levels of uncertainly on total reserves and future production rates, even in the USA.

2. Not at all certain that the large-scale US shale gas experience can be replicated in Europe/Rest of the World at all – environmental issues/local NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] may stop it in its tracks.

3. Said huge uncertainties, on top of the recent recession, is significantly increasing commercial risk factors and inhibiting new production investment in all types of energy supply. Possibility of resulting very steep multi-year price rises, if shale gas ‘fails to deliver’, as demand rises and exceeds current supply, due to investment cycle time lag.

4. Particular over-supply problems in the LNG [Liquid Natural Gas - mostly from the Middle East] sector which should keep the cost of UK imported LNG low for a considerable time.

5.The EU has shown itself unable/unwilling to invest state funds in new gas production/transport projects of all types.”

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Forget about price just for a moment…remind me again…where does all that fracking water, with all those toxic chemicals in it, end up ?

This is how it is #4

Very long-lived trees tell the story of the last 5,000 years or so.

The gradual cooling of the Holocene interglacial is overtaken by a truly anomalous warming over the last few hundred years.

How unusual have conditions been in the last few hundred years ? The carbon 13 isotope can give us one point of view [ Boehm et al. (2002) ] :-

And the oxygen 18 isotope can add detail about climatic changes not readily apparent from the carbon isotope record [ Berkelhammer and Stott (2008) ] :-

The balance of oxygen isotopes in plants in this study provide some perspective on rainfall and storm patterns, which appear to have started changing before significant temperature changes came into view.

Depletion of oxygen from the atmosphere provides evidence that the accumulation of carbon dioxide is from the oxidation (burning) of fossil fuels :-

Shaffer et al. (2009)

But we’re going to have a carbon crisis in the oceans from a combination of acidification and thermal stress, long before we have an oceanic oxygen crisis :-

NOAA Weekly Coral Watch Forecast

Dearth of the Oceans

An incomplete recording of the BBC Horizon programme “The Death of the Oceans ?” narrated by David Attenborough is below.

It’s about Global Warming, of course (and overfishing, and sonar making whales deaf – which is the bit that’s missing at the end). But it’s also about Global Warming’s evil twin – Ocean Acidification.

Believe what you will about the Anthropogenic component of Global Warming, and I know some of you resist the Science as if it were a hairy, sweaty, alcoholic dentist threatening to pull your teeth without Novocaine, but there’s no way you can deny that the increasing concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, most of it a direct result of humankind’s burning of Fossil Fuels, is turning the Oceans into a giant bucket of fizzy soda, and is threatening marine life, which is a huge risk to the whole of Life on Earth.

The only solution is to stop burning so much Coal, Oil and Gas. Really, that’s the only way.

Oh, you can fight this inevitability with every brain circuit you have, trying to force others to believe that everything’s still OK, that the Earth is not dangerously heating up, that Life on Land and in the Oceans is not on the cusp of mass extinction, and that Progress is just fine, and Economic Recovery, or Shiny New Technology, or Geoengineering will save us, but one day you will understand. You will accept. The global systems of production, transport and agriculture have to change. The Carbon-based Industrial Age will be gone in only a few decades, only a couple of hundred years after it started.

You can relax. Everything will be fine – eventually. When we have Wind Farms on every ridge top, Solar Power plants in every desert, Geothermal stations in our Town Halls, Combined Heat and Power running on Biomass in every street, Marine Power-gathering machines, Organic food, small electric cars, useful 24 hours-in-a-day networks of electricity-powered public transportation. The time is coming for the new human world to be born – and it will be green, clean and less energy-hungry than before.

It’s going to be a bit of a traumatic birth and the Climate Medics are working hard in the delivery suite, but soon, very soon, Green Investment will see the light of day – those who are wealthy will, as one, put their finances towards Renewable Energy and Energy-efficient machines and Energy Demand Management, real assets, with real returns on investment, and the future will be secured.

Part 1/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4rloPBrA6w

See at top for video.

Part 2/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdn1RpqKziE

Part 3/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKPNcQyljds

Part 4/4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKOKG3L3zo

Michaelmas Gracie

Welcome to little Gracie, born at Michaelmas.

By the time this child is five years old, the world should have agreed to control Carbon Dioxide emissions.

Net greenhouse gas emissions to air should have peaked, and be on the decline by the time this child starts school.

It’s up to us to care for our children.

If we don’t take steps to stop the ocean becoming increasingly acidic, we will have destroyed part of the food chain, and people will go hungry in greater numbers than they do now :-

http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=F50CF08B-237D-9F22-E86BA2E071920760

“August 2010 : Scientific American Magazine : Threatening Ocean Life from the Inside Out; August 2010; Scientific American Magazine; by Marah J. Hardt and Carl Safina : …As researchers, we were concerned about the underappreciated effects of changing ocean chemistry on the cells, tissues and organs of marine species. In laboratory experiments at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Havenhand had demonstrated that such changes could seriously impede the most fundamental strategy of survival: sex. Ocean acidification—a result of too much carbon dioxide reacting with seawater to form carbonic acid—has been dubbed “the other CO2 problem.” As the water becomes more acidic, corals and animals such as clams and mussels have trouble building their skeletons and shells. But even more sinister, the acidity can interfere with basic bodily functions for all marine animals, shelled or not. By disrupting processes as fundamental as growth and reproduction, ocean acidification threatens the animals’ health and even the survival of species. Time is running out to limit acidification before it irreparably harms the food chain on which the world’s oceans—and people—depend.”

And global warming will only make the problem worse :-

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n2/full/ngeo420.html

Letter : Nature Geoscience 2, 105 – 109 (2009)
Published online: 25 January 2009 : doi:10.1038/ngeo420

“Long-term ocean oxygen depletion in response to carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels”

Gary Shaffer, Steffen Malskær Olsen & Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen

“Abstract : Ongoing global warming could persist far into the future, because natural processes require decades to hundreds of thousands of years to remove carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning from the atmosphere. Future warming may have large global impacts including ocean oxygen depletion and associated adverse effects on marine life, such as more frequent mortality events, but long, comprehensive simulations of these impacts are currently not available. Here we project global change over the next 100,000 years using a low-resolution Earth system model, and find severe, long-term ocean oxygen depletion, as well as a great expansion of ocean oxygen-minimum zones for scenarios with high emissions or high climate sensitivity. We find that climate feedbacks within the Earth system amplify the strength and duration of global warming, ocean heating and oxygen depletion. Decreased oxygen solubility from surface-layer warming accounts for most of the enhanced oxygen depletion in the upper 500 m of the ocean. Possible weakening of ocean overturning and convection lead to further oxygen depletion, also in the deep ocean. We conclude that substantial reductions in fossil-fuel use over the next few generations are needed if extensive ocean oxygen depletion for thousands of years is to be avoided.”

Liberate Tate : Pouring Oil on Troubled Relationships

http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/09/crude-2010-oil-painting-protest-over-bp-sponsorship-in-tate-modern-turbine-hall-liberate-tate-calls-for-footprint-of-art-museum-to-be-free-from-big-oil/

http://twitter.com/liberatetate

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B2JesScn-l6lM2E2OTU2MGEtZmEzYy00NDZmLWE0YWMtYzY4Zjg5YmUxZTVi&sort=name&layout=list&num=50&pli=1

Intellectual Frustration

Found at : The Way Things Break

One can only imagine the frustration that Rob Dunbar feels as, calmly as he can, he explains why the Earth is in trouble from rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentrations, the product of the last few hundred years of the industrial use of Fossil Fuel energy.

Just ignore the wrap-around advertisement and get to grips with the presentation of the data.

The part about Ocean Acidification may alarm or scare you – but you, and you alone, are in charge of your personal emotional state. If you feel it is more appropriate to act out of concern rather than live in the despair of fear, join the Climate Activists, wherever you find them.

Watch out, though. Some give the appearance of being Climate Concerned but are actually Climate Zombies :-

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/9/5/899029/-Stupid-Goes-Viral:-The-Climate-Zombies-of-the-New-GOP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/sep/14/republicans-senate-election-climate-sceptics

Unpicking Kyoto (5)

Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

PART 5

CONTINUED FROM : Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Linking Climate Change to other Environmental Problems

The Greenhouse Gas Carbon Dioxide (CO2) from humankind’s activities is accumulating very rapidly in the Atmosphere, and this is why the international Climate Change negotiations and Climate Change Science focus on it so heavily.

The warming response of the Earth’s surface correlates strongly with the rise in Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere, so Global Warming can be treated almost entirely as the Earth system’s reaction to rising levels of this one gas.

Other Greenhouse Gases, such as Methane (CH4) and high level water vapour (H2O), are increasing in line with the rise in Carbon Dioxide.

Logic and experiment dictates that they are doing this in response to the rise in Carbon Dioxide, so their rise is a feedback effect in the Earth system – a reaction to rising temperatures – caused by the warming due to increasing airborne Carbon Dioxide.

However, Carbon Dioxide is not the only Greenhouse Gas that humankind is pumping into the Atmosphere in excess of natural levels – a rather famous example being that growing numbers of livestock are belching Methane that is adding to the up-tick on concentrations of Methane in the Atmosphere.

There are still high levels of various gaseous industrial pollution, some of which is in the form of Greenhouse Gases.

In addition, Global Warming is not the only environmental problem, although it is exacerbating other environmental problems.

Climate Change is an added stressor on natural habitats that are being degraded by pollution, bad land management and deforestation.

It seems obvious to take a step back to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 and mesh together once more the environmental threads of the United Nations conventions : on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Desertification.

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Keep Stating The Obvious

The straight-talking continues :-

http://www.jamespowell.org/Globalwarming/page0.html

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/30/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-climate-science-in-under-10-minutes/#more-30726

We shouldn’t have to keep restating the very obvious, but it appears that public understanding is very poor in some cases.

We could simply say, “Ah well. The general public doesn’t need to be convinced of the truth of the matter. We can just present the data to the decision-making authorities and they will do the right thing, so it won’t matter what the people in general think.”

Trouble is, there appears to be continuing interference in the patterns of thought of the decision-makers, from a range of sources, notably the mainstream media.

Tune in to the facts. Banish the pacifying voices. We are at war with ourselves, and if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, there will be an end to vast swathes of life on Earth.

Little Green Critter News

It seems that anthropogenic interference with the atmosphere has undermined two important things :-

(a) The ability of phytoplankton to reproduce because of the heat and the acidity of the oceans – thereby compromising the base of the entire global food chain and, more seriously,

(b) By reducing the conditions for phytoplankton success, cutting off one of the “Carbon sinks” on the planet that we really need to soak up a proportion of the excess Carbon Dioxide that we are pumping into the air.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/nature09268.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/edsumm/e100729-03.html

http://www.physorg.com/news199471106.html

http://scienceblips.dailyradar.com/story/global-phytoplankton-decline-over-the-past-century/

Currently, the world’s biomass processes somewhere between 40% and 50% of all humankind’s excess Carbon Dioxide emissions, the CO2 we have made by taking Fossil Fuels out of the ground and burning them.

If this Carbon sink becomes less effective, Global Warming will become much stronger, as there will be a faster build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.

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The Major Hitters Forum

Much as, in principle, progress could be made in having an 80% majority push through commitments on Global Warming, as part of the United Nations Climate Change negotiations process, some commentators feel highly uneasy that important voices from the international community, based around the emerging Science, could be drowned out by these “big hitters” :-

http://cleanenergyministerial.org/

“July 19-20 2010 : The first-ever Clean Energy Ministerial will bring together ministers and stakeholders from more than 20 countries to collaborate on policies and programs that accelerate the world’s transition to clean energy technologies.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/22/un-bid-international-deal-climate-change

“UN in fresh bid to salvage international deal on climate change : Campaigners welcome plans to amend the way Kyoto protocol resolutions are passed : The Guardian, Thursday 22 July 2010…If the UN’s [United Nations] suggestions are adopted, decisions will be forced through if four-fifths of the protocol vote in favour, after all efforts to reach agreement by consensus have been exhausted. The amendments would come into force after six months…”It is surprising and a big, big deal that the UN is suggesting such considerable reforms as a change in the consensus rules,” said [Mark] Lynas…In a further attempt to galvanise the climate change body into motion, the UN also suggested that countries could be forced to opt out of any amendments, as opposed to the current arrangement whereby they must explicitly agree to any decisions tabled…The amendment, which will be presented in Bonn in August, reads: “An amendment would enter into force after a certain period has elapsed following its adoption, except for those parties that have notified the depositary that they cannot accept the amendment.”…But Lynas warned that any changes to the current consensus situation would cause “fury, angst and consternation”. It could, he said, exacerbate the deep mistrust between rich and poor countries that has already bedevilled the global climate talks.”… Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t Believe The Heat ?

Don’t believe that the globe is warming up ? Not even after scanning the available sources ? Well, that’s probably down to the failure of your public and private Media, who are, for the most part, seemingly institutionally incapable of telling the full unexpurgated facts :-

http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=5505

“19 June 2010 : Contrary to the impression you might have gained from the media, the global climate is NOT cooling. In fact, the last twelve months, June 2009 – May 2010, has been the hottest June-May period on record, in both the 31-year satellite record of lower atmosphere global temperature and the 131-year surface global temperature record. In both data series the last 12 months have been more than 0.4C hotter than the average temperature of the last two decades of the 20th century…”

And why just stop at the evidence from the temperatures ? Don’t believe the oceans are deteriorating ? Why not look at the full range of research ?

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Superfreakonomics Flunks Climate Science

Now even friends break ranks with Levitt and Dubner over their new tome Superfreakonomics – a clear throw-back to the 1980s.

Is it time to ask for a reprint with all the errors corrected ?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aVKXZg_Z.vMY

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) — Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are so good at tweaking conventional wisdom that their first book, “Freakonomics,” sold 4 million copies. So when Dubner, an old friend, told me their new book would take on climate change, I was rooting for a breakthrough idea.

No such luck. In “SuperFreakonomics,” their brave new climate thinking turns out to be the same pile of misinformation the skeptic crowd has been peddling for years.

“Obviously, provocation is not last on the list of things we’re trying to do,” Dubner told me the other day. This time, the urge to provoke has driven him and Levitt off the rails and into a contrarian ditch.

…Having downplayed the problem, they try to solve it with a set of silver-bullet technologies known as geoengineering. One would shoot millions of tons of sulfur dioxide 18 miles into the air to artificially cool the planet. This could work; it also could have dire unintended consequences.

Caldeira, who is researching the idea, argues that it can succeed only if we first reduce emissions. Otherwise, he says, geoengineering can’t begin to cope with the collateral damage, such as acidic oceans killing off shellfish.

Levitt and Dubner ignore his view and champion his work as a permanent substitute for emissions cuts. When I told Dubner that Caldeira doesn’t believe geoengineering can work without cutting emissions, he was baffled. “I don’t understand how that could be,” he said. In other words, the Freakonomics guys just flunked climate science.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/superfreakonimics-climate-change-controversy.php

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/SuperFreakonomics-on-Global-Warming-220

“It all started with climate activist Joe Romm accusing the authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner of global warming denial and misrepresenting the research of a key climate scientist. They pushed back, and fellow New York Times blogger and celebrated columnist Paul Krugman jumped in the fray…”

Richard Black Hijacks Debate

Environmentalism has trudged a long, winding, often silent road, with many cul-de-sacs of defeat, desperation and despair.

In the last few years there has been a raising of the collective consciousness about how many problems are interrelated with an obscure corner of gas chemistry, which offers grave prospects for the whole of Life on Earth.

Ecologists and treehuggers of all varieties have started to gather round the camp fire of Climate Change, finding that people will pay attention to the destruction of Nature if they pay attention to their own fate first.

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Water Wars : Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia is running out of fresh drinking water. I heard about it at second hand from one of my relatives who lives there.

Lake Lanier is suffering from drought. Of course there are a number of factors, not just Climate Change. But the combination of cyclical drought, US Army Corps of Engineers activities, increasing urban population and agricultural take doesn’t seem to be able to explain everything.

Of particular concern is the condition known as anoxia, lack of oxygen in the water. This will be partly caused by chemical run-off from surrounding farming land and any industrial activity, and also changes in composition of the tributary rivers which feed it, which will all be exacerbated by changes in rainfall caused by Climate Change.

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Cloud Ships. Yes, But…

Geoengineering. Sounds great. Treat the Earth like one big motoring machine, get under the hood (bonnet) and tinker with it.

But what if actually this is the equivalent of putting the Planet on a life support system ventilator, and the plug could be pulled at any time ?

How sustainable are some of the Geoengineering proposals ? Are they guaranteed to work ? Won’t they have knock-on side-effects ? Are they reversible if they prove unhelpful ? And how much will they cost ?

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