Image Credit : Oil Change International

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101028/sc_afp/franceenvironmentclimatewarming

“Global warming ‘unquestionably’ due to humans: France : Global warming exists and is unquestionably due to human activity, France’s Academy of Science said in a report published Thursday and written by 120 scientists from France and abroad. “Several independent indicators show an increase in global warming from 1975 to 2003. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide,” the academy said in conclusion to the report. “The increase in carbon dioxide, and to a lesser degree other greenhouse gases, is unquestionably due to human activity,” said the report, adopted unanimously by academy members. The report contradicts France’s former education minister Claude Allegre, a geochemist, who published a book called “The Climatic Deception” which claimed that carbon dioxide was not linked to climate change. The report was commissioned in April by Minister for Research Valerie Pecresse in response to hundreds of environmental scientists who complained that Allegre in particular was disparaging their work. Allegre is a member of the Academy of Sciences and also signed off on the report. “He has the right to evolve,” the academy’s president Jean Salencon said. Pecresse said: “The debate is over.”…”

To my Climate Change sceptical readers, you, too have the “right to evolve”.

Come on over from the dark side to the side of light, life and understanding.

Stop the blame game, the game of suspicion, nitpicking, paranoia and irrationality, and reflect on the path of right dealing, factual research, and true and cooperative human endeavour.

Human beings are genetically encoded for pragmatic policies and practical decisionmaking; yet sometimes the fastest route to a solution is the least successful in the longer term.

Digging high calorie substances out of the ground and burning them in very large quantities is having a negative effect on the ability of the Earth to sustain Life. Ponder that for a while.

Eventually virtually all mining activities will be curtailed. As an elderly relative commented to me when discussing recycling – if we recycled all materials then people wouldn’t have to risk their lives going deep underground for new resources – like those poor miners in Chile and China.

The mines are getting deeper and more dangerous – something the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem encountered to its irrecoverable loss earlier this year.

We can live without mining. We can garner energy without mining. We can live having all our wants and needs provided for by the power of sunlight and the winds and waves it drives, and by the gravitational pull of the Moon turning the tides restlessly.

That kind of productivity will keep us in industrial development for as long as we survive as a species, whilst preventing destruction of our habitat, which would finish us off as a species altogether, along with millions of others.

That’s the kind of evolution we need.

Image Credit : Cape Cod Living

James Delingpole follows in a long line of commentators with zero engineering experience in pouring scorn on a technology that could quite possibly save our skins :-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100056158/wind-farms-yet-another-brewing-disaster/

I don’t know what he harbours in his heart against wonderful wind turbines, but he seems to be part of a movement who delight in their failure. Just ask the Internet to show you “exploding wind turbines”.

For example :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKkTUY2slYQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nSB1SdVHqQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkGXoE3RFZ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOfHxINzGeo

Clearly, you need to be in full protective fatigues when battling this kind of bad press…in fact “fatigue” is exactly the right word to come back at Mr Delingpole’s cracked warning (of cracks in wind turbine bases).

Any engineer worth their sprocket set will be able to tell you that materials “fatigue”, that over time, in working machines, things wear out, metal bends and cracks as the internal structure is pulled out of shape by external stress, things that get hot and cold regularly contort, anything that turns needs lubricating or it will wear down.

Over time, cement and concrete crumble, stone erodes in the elements, wood splits or rots in inclement conditions, brakes wear down, pathway stones smooth with the treads of thousands of feet, sheds collapse in the wind…and so we get back to wind.

Wind Turbine masts bend in the wind, and so it’s easy to imagine that the concrete base of a wind turbine might be under stress from repeated bending of the mast. Plus, there’s the forces generated by the turning of the wind turbine blades, that add a pull, moving the mast slightly in one direction or other.

It’s all entirely predictable, and can be calculated. And mast turbine bases can be built to withstand these kinds of stress – if they’re built well. There are heaps of guidelines, for example :-

http://www.risoe.dk/vea/recoff/Documents/Sec_5/RECOFFdoc050.pdf
http://ecocem.ie/downloads/Offshore_Wind_Farms.pdf
http://www.ecocem.ie/index.php?p=technical&q=wind_farms

And naturally, once machines are in the field, lessons can be learned from real-life running :-

http://www.middelgrunden.dk

Nick Balmer of the Claverton Energy Research Group wrote recently,

“…Middelgrunden…This pioneering offshore windfarm used concrete gravity foundations and grouted sockets. In a well recorded incident the concrete sockets were found to have developed micro-cracking. It was a major media event and lots of people used it to hit back at wind turbines. In the event it was fixed very quickly…”

All engineering carries a risk of mechanical failure, but what would you personally prefer in terms of risk : a wind turbine falling over in a remote area, or into the sea, from time to time; or a nuclear reactor cracking and sending radioactive gas over the whole of North Wales and the Irish Sea ? Just asking. These technologies both rely on concrete, after all.

Wind Farm projects built for the big energy companies are under the usual contracts. As one contact has pointed out, “The proof of the pudding will be in the Technology and Construction court – if bases are cracking, then owners will start to seek redress.”

Engineering is not a perfect art. There are known unknowns. Time will tell if one design works better than another, or one location or type of location works better than another.

Some mechanical failures are to be expected in developing any technology, but over-protective construction seems to be a theme, as Nick Balmer points out :-

“…As somebody who has priced installing wind turbine bases, I am aware that most are built to some extremely conservative designs used for many years in Germany…[criticisms] of the turbine manufacturers designs have been that generally they are over designed for the purpose. They would say that for the savings in a few cubic metres of concrete at say £70/m3 and say 50kg of steel it is just not worth skimping on materials and design. If the worst came to the worst it is not a big job to repair the turbine bases…”

And what about safety in general ? They might have to re-write the old proverb to read “as safe as wind turbines” :-

http://www.whywind.org/pb/wp_a1b4e1bf/wp_a1b4e1bf.html

“…Odds of Death Due to Injury, United States, 2003 : The odds of anyone being killed in a wind turbine related accident in the U.S. over his/her lifetime was 1 in 3,777,272. This compares to a 1 in 84 risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident, a 1 in 1,134 risk of drowning, and a 1 in 56,789 risk of dying from a hornet, wasp or bee sting…”

“…A Summary of Fatal Accidents in Wind Energy by Paul Gipe details the worldwide accidents in wind energy : Over the course of past 35 years their have been 20 fatal accidents in wind energy worldwide. Falling from the tower is the single most apparent occupational hazard of working with wind energy. Most accidents are due to the same common sense fatal mistake, where people did not use any form of fall protection…”

So, wind turbines are less dangerous than cars, and even bees.

And as for that other common accusation – that wind turbines are inefficient, let’s look at some data shall we ? Actually, let’s look at some data from an anti-wind farm organisation.

The group CLOWD, the Campaign to Limit Onshore Wind Development, according to data collected from Ofgem on 18th June 2010, relating to the period April 2009 to March 2010, Scottish wind power as a whole was running at 54.45% capacity – in other words, producing over half its rated power. The rated power is the figure given for the amount the turbine would produce it the wind was blowing at the right speed all the time. And for England, the same figure was 34.95% of capacity. Since Scotland has twice the wind profile on average to England, that seems like a reasonable result.

Non-expert commentators use this kind of information to talk about the “efficiency” of wind turbines, and berate the low figures. But, when thinking about efficiency and wind turbines, it is necessary to compare wind power to other forms of electricity production.

For example, in the use of Fossil Fuels to deliver electricity to our homes and offices in the UK, a large proportion of the energy from the Natural Gas and Coal used is wasted :-

When gas and coal are wasted, that’s real expense.

By contrast, when a wind turbine fails to capture some wind, that’s no cost at all.

If you’re going to argue against Wind Power, you need some arguments that have solid, uncracked foundations.

And you don’t have any, do you James ? Tilting at windmills is a complete waste of your time.

Video Credit : Lighting Africa

Unpicking Kyoto
Jo Abbess
20 June 2010

PART 4

CONTINUED FROM PART 1, PART 2 AND PART 3

Linking Climate Change to Poverty

There will be no global treaty on Climate Change without a solution for the poor.

The poor in every country are generally low emitters, and models of Low Carbon lives; yet because they are poor, it’s easy for their economic concerns to be swept aside in the global efforts to revive the big Energy systems.

One thing is clear, imposing a “dollar economy”, and thrusting international markets traded in American Dollars on the world’s poor is not the same as creating an environment for true social and sustainable development.

As John Gowdy makes clear in Section 5.4 of his article published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization “Behavioral economics and climate change policy”, the poor don’t need high consumption lifestyles :-

http://www.sciencedirect.com

“Policy Sub-Clue 1b: development in poorer countries need not focus exclusively on increasing per capita consumption : “Development” in the third world need not follow the path of the industrialized nations during the twentieth century. Sen (1999) has called for an approach to development emphasizing the ability to live an informed and full life rather than concentrating solely on income creation. Nussbaum (2000, chapter 4 and website of Human Development and Capabilities Association) has gone further in calling for “distributive justice”, that is, creating the conditions for the realization of a set of central human capabilities. Such policies would not only be more effective than simple income growth in making lives better for the world’s poorest, but they would also help to alleviate the pressure on the environment from more economic production. With a focus on individual happiness and self actualization, the developing world could improve its position relative to the North without emulating the consumption frenzy that drove past economic growth.”

The Kyoto Protocol’s “flexible mechanism” known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is not working to provide adaptation funds to Africa :-

http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/a0413e/a0413E05.htm

“The Kyoto Protocol and the CDM in Africa: a good idea but …”

http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/content/does-geography-matter-clean-development-mechanism-tyndall-working-paper-131

“Does Geography Matter for the Clean Development Mechanism?”

The poor don’t need to be dragged into a Carbon Trading market, even if their governments are.

What the poor need is access to land, water and energy.

Around the world there are millions of people being made landless to satisfy the demands of large mining and agricultural interests. This is a retrograde trend, which certainly needs to be reversed.

In Latin America, the landless movements are making some headway, but consider the irony – Brazil prides itself on having cheap, clean BioEthanol for transportation, yet the sugarcane for this enterprise is harvested under appalling conditions by impoverished landless peasants :-

http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=about
http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=kenfieldonethanolquestion2007

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-13-raising-cane-the-trouble-with-brazils-much-celebrated-ethanol-mi/

http://english.unica.com.br/opiniao/show.asp?msgCode={CB4605EE-B672-4D2C-9480-6A6EC339AFD2}

So keeping people landless works in favour of BioEnergy companies, so there is going to be an uphill struggle to make sure poor people have access to land.

Access to water caused a flashpoint in Colombia, when a program of “liberalisation” led to increased prices of privatised sources :-

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/1786-colombia-fighting-development-banks-for-the-human-right-to-water

But poor people need to be granted water, to grow the crops they need to survive, on the land they need to own.

I think it is fair to say that one of the biggest scourges of the poorest is night time. People need access to energy for light, at the very least. And it’s “small beer”, small change, to give people light, just as it is cheap to give poor people what they need to adapt their agriculture to Climate Change.

The International Energy Agency says that it would take $35 billion extra investment in energy annually until 2030 to provide electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world that still don’t have it :-

http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/feature/1596241/the-shining-example-solar-etfs

“… International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighted in a recent report (November 2009)…It also noted 1.3 billion people will still lack access to electricity in 2030, compared with 1.5 billion today, adding that universal electricity access could be achieved with additional power-sector investment of $35bn annually until then – the assumption being a modest increase in overall primary energy demand and related CO2 emissions.”

That should be compared to the $26 trillion the world needs to spend on new energy investment by 2030 :-

http://www.iea.org/speech/2009/Tanaka/lisbon.pdf

In a policy for the poor of the world, the aim should be to enable energy access, without making the mistakes of the industrialised countries and getting locked into massive Fossil Fuel consumption.

By leapfrogging the Age of Burning Oil, Coal and Natural Gas for power, green energy will give a boost to, and enable, truly sustainable development for the poor.

What would be more costly would be to have to find the money to pay for all the Climate Change disasters, migration and serious adaptation that will be needed if Global Warming is made worse by trying to provide Fossil Fuel Energy to developing countries.

Today’s news is that the pastoral life in Africa is sustainable, even with a certain amount of Climate Change :-

http://www.iied.org/climate-change/key-issues/drylands/african-livestock-can-triumph-face-climate-change

“African livestock can triumph in the face of climate change : Africa’s livestock producers are bucking a trend, by proving resilient to climate change and generating huge economic benefits for their nations and regions, say researchers in a book published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and SOS Sahel. It shows how pastoralism is a major economic player and contributor to many African economies and one whose importance is only set to grow as climate change takes hold. “Pastoralists manage complex webs of profitable cross-border trade and draw huge economic benefits from rangelands ill-suited to other land use systems,” says Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, writing in the book’s preface. “Their livestock feed our families and grow our economies. And mobility is what allows them to do this.” The book, Modern and Mobile, shows how livestock play a key role in the economic prosperity in African’s drylands by supporting hundreds of millions of people, and a massive meat and leather industry. “What is remarkable is that these benefits all arise from animals fed solely on natural pasture,” says Ced Hesse, a researcher at IIED and one of the book’s authors. “The financial inputs are minimal but the benefits rapidly extend beyond the herders and their communities to enrich the lives of millions of people involved in the livestock supply chain including consumers in far off cities,” he adds. “This shows how crucial it is to support Africa’s pastoralists for their contribution to wider economic development.” The book shows that contrary to popular belief pastoralists actually profit from climatic variability…”

Free download :-

http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=12565IIED

I think after the amazing drought and its awful consequences in Kenya in 2009, I’m not entirely convinced by this argument. However, it’s worth thinking about : local practices are usually the most successful in coping with environmental change.

Plus, African pastoralism doesn’t depend on Fossil Fuel imports or any kind of novel infrastructure. It also doesn’t depend on “trade” with the rest of the World, who use that word to denote their usual plundering activities.

However, what I am convinced about is that other regions, and their corporations, and state apparatus, should leave Africa alone. Africa doesn’t need “investment” for the sole purpose of growing green beans for Western supermarkets :-

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/06/02/africa.beans/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6383687.stm

Africa doesn’t need to be the bread basket for China :-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7086777.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/03/africa-land-grab

And Africa doesn’t need Genetically Modified crops : it needs rainwater management and indigenous wisdom :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/19/gm-crops-aid-uk-funding

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Endowment_opportunities_from_rainwater_in_Africa

http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=4723&lang=1

Download the UNCTAD Report :-

http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ditcted200715_en.pdf

When people trained in Economics think about what “Sustainable Development” means, they normally assume that Nature’s continuing bounty will sustain our development path. That the pyramid of wealth, the wealth accrual machine and monetary incentives will bring more and more people and material resources into optimal production, and there will be no end to the development of the enrichment of all peoples and the quality of their habitat. Growth is good, for it brings prosperity to all, health, wealth, education, freedom from want and a top-notch built environment.

When people trained in Ecology think about what “Sustainable Development” means, they know that there are limits to how much the human race can extract from the Earth, both in terms of mining the crust and the biological productivity caused by photosynthesis. For them, the sustainable part is the most important – how the whole “development” thing can be kept in motion, given the stress on the environment. Nature’s bounty has some clear limits for ecological thinkers, including the Earth’s carrying capacity, the risks of damages from Climate Change, and the peaks in the production of the extractive industries, such as Uranium, Oil, Coal and Natural Gas.

This week I was trying to explain why Wind Power is effectively free Energy. Yes, you have to spend out in terms of Money, Carbon Emissions and Energy to erect Wind Turbines, but the servicing of the machines is not a major cost. Over the lifetime of a Wind Turbine, it pays back in all three values of concern : Money, Carbon Emissions and Energy. You get back more than you put in, qualifying it as a true investment, as it has a clear return. At the end of the lifecycle of a Wind Turbine, practically all the material resources in its construction can be re-used, reducing the costs of erecting a new Wind Turbine. Only a small part of the return on investment in the original Wind Turbine is needed to fund the building of the next one. Plus, importantly, you don’t pay for the fuel. And so, after the initial investment, Wind Power is effectively free.

Compare and contrast to Nuclear Power. It is contestible if Nuclear Power plants pay back in any of the three indicators : Money, Carbon and Energy. And at the end of the lifetime of a Nuclear reactor, the equipment and most of the radioactive waste cannot be re-used, turned into new Nuclear Power. So, Nuclear Power is effectively a dead-end on spending. Nuclear Power is not an investment, as it does not offer a return for money spent. In fact, it wastes environments, materials and expenditure – environments where the Uranium is mined, and where the Uranium is processed and “burned” and disposed of. With Nuclear Power you continue to have to find solid, weighty investment to build the next generation of plant, and you have to continue to purchase the fuel.

New Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom will provide a certain amount of economic stimulus, as it will create employment and work contracts and a hive of activity. This production would be accounted as “sustaining” “development” of the Economy.

But Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom would, at best, be a stop-gap on the road to fully Renewable Energy. It will be an expensive, one-time-only use of funds, and desecrate environments even barring radioactive leaks or explosions during its use.

A new fleet of Nuclear Power plants in the United Kingdom is a wasteful, unsustainable proposal, and should be buried, along with the last 50 years of radioactive waste we haven’t dealt with yet.

An uplifting, positive plan to green the world’s energy, composed by two Marks, one Delucchi, one Jacobson, both in American academia, yet not dreamers; their practical brains fully switched on and their souls engaged.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/susenergy2030.html

“A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030″ contains some excellent mythbusting material as well as practical proposals for turning over all our Energy supply to truly sustainable sources.

A full-colour PDF is available online :-

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf