The environment – Page 111 – a sibilant intake of breath

Obama’s Earth Day speech

It is heartening to see that Barack Obama has at least rhetorically accepted the fact that the fossil fuel industry has no long-term future:

Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: the nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.

More from this speech is available on the Climate Progress blog.

While it is important to make people aware of the dire threat posed by climate change, and the gross immorality of not dealing with it, it is also vital to stress the opportunities associated. Foremost among them is the chance to shift society from dependence on harmful and dwindling stocks of fossil fuels to clean and inexhaustible renewable forms of power.

Baseload solar power

Albiasa Solar, a Spanish company, is planning a 200 MW concentrating solar plant in Arizona that will feature the capability of storing heat in molten salt, so it can continue to generate power throughout the night. The plant is expensive, with a cost estimated around $1 billion, but it will require no fuel and produce no waste. Hopefully, it will also provide experience that can be used to reduce the costs of such construction in the future.

All told, concentrating solar with energy storage is a very promising looking technology. It has many of the advantages of fossil fuel and nuclear plants, no fuel requirement, and good sustainability credentials. Plus, there is a lot of high quality solar land available in the southern US, as well as southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Needless to say, this is a much more practical way to get 24-hour solar power than space-based systems would be.

Biofuels and nitrous oxide

In theory, biofuels are an appealing climate change solution. They derive the carbon inside them from atmospheric CO2 and their energy from the sun. They can be used in existing vehicles and generators, and store a lot of energy per unit of volume or weight. The raw materials can be grown in many places, without massive capital investment. Of course, recent history has given scientists and policymakers an increasingly clear understanding of the many problems with biofuels. A report (PDF) from Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council for Science (ICSU) concludes that, so far, biofuel production has actually produced more emissions than using fossil fuels would have. Partly, this is on account of the nitrous oxide emissions associated with the use of artificial fertilizers in agriculture. Over a 100 year period, one tonne of nitrous oxide causes as much warming as 310 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Corn produces especially large amounts of nitrous oxide, because it has a shallow root system and only takes in nitrogen for a few months each year.

It is possible that better feedstocks, agricultural techniques, and biofuel production processes will eventually make these fuels ecologically viable. Not all transportation can be electrified, and there will probably always be industrial processes that require petroleum-like feedstocks. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that the world has been going about biofuel production in the wrong way. That is something that should be borne in mind particularly by the citizens of states that are lavishing government support on them, both in the form of subsidies and by mandating that they comprise a certain proportion of transportation fuels.

Counting greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions figures, as dealt with in the realm of public policy, are often a step or two removed from reality.

For instance, reductions in emissions are often expressed in relation to a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, by governments wanting to flatter the results of their mitigation efforts. That means, instead of saying that emissions are X% up from last year, you say that they are Y% down from where they would have been in the absence of government action. Since the latter number is based on two hypotheticals (what emissions would have been, and what reductions arose from policy), it is harder to criticize and, arguably, less meaningful.

Of course, the climate system doesn’t care about business-as-usual (BAU) projections. It simply responds to changes in the composition of the atmosphere, as well as the feedback effects those changes induce.

The second major disjoint is between the relentless focus of governments on emissions directly produced by humans, compared with all emissions that affect the climate. For example, drying out rainforests makes them less biologically productive, leading to more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Similarly, when permafrost melts, it releases methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. It is understandable why governments don’t generally think about these secondary emissions, largely because of the international political difficulties that would arise if they did. Can Canada miss its greenhouse gas mitigation targets because of permafrost melting? Who is responsible for that melting, Canada or everyone who has ever emitted greenhouse gasses? People who have emitted them since we learned they are dangerous?

While the politics of the situation drive us to focus on emissions caused by voluntary human activities (including deforestation), we need to remain aware of the fact that the thermodynamic balance of the planet only cares about physics and chemistry – not borders and intentionality. When it comes to “avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system” we need to remember to focus on both our absolute level of emissions (not their relation to a BAU estimate) and to take into account the secondary effects our emissions have. Doing otherwise risks setting our emission reduction targets too low, and thus generating climate change damage at an intolerable level.

2007 Canadian emissions data

Back in May 2008, the figures for Canada’s 2006 emissions were released. They were made into a graph for a previous post. Now that the 2007 figures are available, the chart can be extended to show the 4% jump in emissions, putting Canada 26.2% above its 1990 level of emissions and 33.8% above its Kyoto Protocol target. In order to meet our target of cutting to 20% below 2006 levels by 2020, we will need to cut Canadian emissions by around 170 MT during the next eleven years.

The causes of the increase are also described:

“Between 1990 and 2007, large increases in oil and gas production – much of it for export – as well as a large increase in the number of motor vehicles and greater reliance on coal electricity generation, have resulted in a significant rise in emissions.”

Between 1990 and 2007, emissions rose by a total of 155 million tonnes (MT). 143 of those were from energy industries, including transportation and the oil sands. By contrast, residential emissions have basically been flat since 1990.

Obama’s high speed rail plan

Obama’s high speed rail plan is appealing in many ways. It has considerable scale, $13 billion of funding for the next five years, and it includes connections to Canada, for instance. That being said, rail will only really be a sustainable when it is powered in a zero carbon way. While trains with diesel locomotives do generally produce less CO2 per passenger mile than aircraft, the real reason air travel is so emissions intensive is because people travel greater distances by plane. If we want to be able to travel those distances while shifting towards a low-carbon society, better options are necessary. Replacing fossil fuels with biofuels is one option. It has the advantage that it would not require major modifications to either tracks or rolling stock. The downside, of course, is all the limitations of biofuels: from land and water use to effects on food prices to the use of fossil fuels in producing most of them. Also, if sustainable biofuels were available in quantity, it might actually make more sense to use them in aircraft.

To me, it seems like the best option is the progressive electrification of the rail network, with the power coming from renewables and perhaps nuclear. Ideally, the electrified tracks could also be electricity transmission corridors. That way, new renewable stations like wind farms and run of river hydro stations could feed into the grid from the closest rail line. Because of its variety in both sources and uses, it seems that electricity will be the principal energy form in low- and zero-carbon societies, both for private vehicles (in the form of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) and for both urban and intercity forms of public transit.

Such a deployment would probably be hugely expensive. That being said, it seems like the way to establish a sustainable, zero-carbon system for intercity transport. It’s a goal that doesn’t need to be met instantly and which can be worked towards piecemeal, with intermediate steps like using high speed rail to displace short-haul flights and fuel switching to genuinely sustainable and low-carbon biofuels. As with the current plan, the focus can start off with the most commonly used routes, then branch out to the rest of the network gradually.

The possibility of rapid sea level rise

A recent study in Nature examines data from corals in Mexico and concludes that very rapid sea level rise took place during the Eemian period – a previous interglacial where temperatures were about 2°C warmer than they are at present. Sea level rise during the period is estimated at four to six metres, as the result of ice sheets collapsing. On the basis of this data, geoscientist Paul Blanchon concludes that: “a sudden, catastrophic increase of more than 5 centimetres per year over a 50-year stretch is possible.” Obviously, that is a much more rapid and dramatic increase than the one included in the fourth report of the IPCC.

Joseph Romm has more commentary on the study.

The EPA endangerment finding on CO2

Some very encouraging things are happening over at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In response to a Supreme Court decision, they have issued an endangerment finding – paving the way to regulation. According to analysis on Grist, automobiles are likely to be the first sector targeted, though they represent only 20% of emissions. Later possible targets include coal power plants, which generate 40% of American greenhouse gasses.

In addition to prompting regulation, the finding may drive action in Congress, since legislators will likely prefer designing a greenhouse gas mitigation system themselves, rather than leaving it to the EPA. As such, this raises hopes of the United States passing a cap-and-trade bill sometime this year – the first absolute necessity in kicking off the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The Grist analysis above is well worth reading, as it is quite comprehensive. Along with Obama’s new commitment to high speed rail, this justifies considerable optimism about changes in American climate policy. That, in turn, might go a long way towards making the international negotiations in Copenhagen this December more successful.

Math and sea ice

Over at Eureka Science News, there is an interesting post about mathematical insights into sea ice dynamics. It describes work done in the mid-nineties by mathematician Ken Golden, who realized that sea ice shares certain mathematical characteristics with the powders used to make stealth materials for military vehicles:

His model captured one of the key features of sea ice: When the volume of brine is under about 5 percent, the sea ice is impermeable to fluid flow. But when the brine volume passes that critical 5-percent threshold, the sea ice suddenly becomes permeable to fluid flow. This 5-percent threshold corresponds to a critical temperature of -5 degrees Celsius for a typical bulk salinity of 5 parts per thousand. At first Golden did not quite realize what a breakthrough this work represented. “It was just a cool observation, with the comparison to stealthy materials,” he remarked. “I didn’t realize how important it was at the time.” But today, polar scientists routinely refer to the “rule of fives” that emerged from Golden’s work.

Hopefully, such work will eventually help us reach a much higher level of understanding of icesheet dynamics and the relationships between climate change, ice, and the oceans.

Space-based solar power

The Pacific Gas and Electric Company is seeking regulatory approval for a space based solar power system. The plan is for a 200 megawatt (MW) facility that will generate electricity from sunlight in orbit and beam it to a ground receiving station using radio waves. Older gamers may recall this technology as the basis of the ‘microwave’ power plants in SimCity 2000. Unfortunately, while the SimCity plants cost just $30,000 and produced 14,000 MW of energy, the 200 MW PG&E facility is expected to cost several billion dollars – far more than ground-based facilities with comparable output. The one real perk of space-based systems in geosynchronous orbits is that they will be exposed to the sun at all times, eliminating the need for storage or load balancing. Some have even speculated that the technology might eventually be able to direct beams of energy directly to facilities (perhaps even vehicles) that require it, reducing the need for transmission and energy storage infrastructure.

I am not sure how to feel about such initiatives. On the one hand, it is possible that space-based solar power will eventually be a commercially and ecologically viable source of energy. On the other, it may be a distraction from the urgent changes that need to occur in the near-term. There are also issues with the emissions associated with space launches, as well as the limited number of slots for satellites in geosynchronous orbit and ‘optical aperture’ issues. For now, it really doesn’t seem like a viable technology. That being said, if a private group can convince regulators that it is safe and environmentally effective, and investors that it is viable, I don’t see any reason to interfere with the attempt.