I’m involved in an ongoing email debate over the wisdom of “clean coal”—that is, coal power plants that capture and sequester their carbon dioxide emissions. It will eventually be published on a State Dept. website, and then in Grist. In the meantime, a preview of sorts.
A frequent argument one hears in favor of a heavy focus on carbon sequestration goes like this: fossil fuels are fantastic energy carriers, dense, portable, and cheap. People will burn them up no matter what. So we might as well figure out a way to make them low-carbon by sequestering their emissions. It’s a way to buy time as we figure out other clean energy options.
It’s a seductive argument. It sounds easier to convince people to clean up what they’re already doing than to persuade them to do something entirely different.
But I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny. It trades on the implicit notion that sequestering CO2 is just a matter of tweaking our current power system a bit—a quick, low-cost twist on business-as-usual. That would be easier than shutting dirty power plants down and building a new infrastructure based on renewables, efficiency, and intelligent grids.
It’s wrong, though:
1. Sequestration is not a low-cost alternative. CCS is expensive! Nobody has any idea how much it will cost once it has been scaled up to the point that it’s capturing the bulk of CO2 emissions from the bulk of the world’s coal power plants. Most current estimates, though, are that it adds about 30-40% on to the cost of building a new plant and up to 50-60% to the cost of running existing pulverized coal plants. That is not a low-cost alternative to higher-cost renewables. It’s one higher-cost option among others.
2. Sequestration is not modification of existing infrastructure. It’s new infrastructure, and a lot of it. As Vaclav Smil pointed out in a widely cited 2006 paper in Nature (PDF), capturing and sequestering just 10% of global CO2 emissions would require the creation of an infrastructure that would handle as much as or more volume than that extracted by the global oil industry (which has been built up over a century). Sequestering the 40% of global emissions for which coal plants are responsible would mean infrastructure four times as extensive as the entire global oil industry’s. That’s not some tweak on what we’ve got; it’s a mind-bogglingly enormous new industrial project that wouldn’t be up and commercialized until, on the most optimistic projections, 2025-2030.
So the Argument from Fossil Fuels (as I will now take to calling it) needs to be clarified. If the point is that the countries of the world are going to keep burning fossil fuels because they want the cheapest possible power no matter what, then we’re doomed. Period. No country that prioritizes the cheapest energy in the short-term is going to opt for CCS—it’s not cheap, or short-term.
If, on the other hand, the argument is that countries will opt for the low-carbon energy path that represents the easiest, cheapest, and fastest alternative to dirty fossil fuels, well, then, now we’re really having a discussion. Now the argument for CCS has to show that it’s easier, cheaper, and faster than efficiency and renewables. I don’t think it can win that argument.
Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations
Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?
Comments
View as Flat
Subu Posted 2:51 am
13 Nov 2009
You argue that CCS is too expensive. Well then: we are doomed.
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dtrom4 Posted 9:55 am
13 Nov 2009
Energy effiiency is cheaper, faster, and cleaner than "clean coal" or any other supply option, and can alleviate a lot of the burden in the next 30 years before any of the various supply options catch up.
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Subu Posted 10:57 am
13 Nov 2009
[Current per-capita energy consumption: India is 10% of Sweden and China is 20% - I am not even comparing them to the US.]
Sure energy efficiency can save a little bit. But to the levels needed to curb climate change - I don't think so.
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:05 pm
13 Nov 2009
Wind and solar. And I would think that most people familiar with renewables would automatically add in hydro, tidal, geothermal and a few other technologies to the list.
And storage. Of course the wind doesn't blow all the time nor does the sun shine all the time. Neither do coal and nuclear plants operate 100% of the time. We use source diversity and storage to deal with those disruptions right now. And we will add load shifting to our bag of tricks as grids become smarter.
As for distribution, read up on the Europe Super Grid which is now starting to be built. It's a lot easier to ship electrons down a wire than to ships millions of tons of coal from mines to burners.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/01/solar-power-sahara-europe-desertec
EDIT:
This should appear underneath SUBU's "Didn't you?" comment.
Don't know why I'm having such a hard time with this site's software....
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Subu Posted 12:13 pm
13 Nov 2009
As a professor of solar energy once taught me: Sure, we have plenty of solar energy. Problem: it's distributed all over the freakin' world (my words, not his). As Roberts Tweeted earlier, last year's solar PV installations totaled 5.6 GW - out of a current demand of 15 TW. As I mentioned earlier, India and China are leagues away from their maximal energy demand. Then, 15 TW will be peanuts.
When solar plants can reach that present and future demand (or a similar magnitude), and wind energy can prove a steady, dependable source, we can talk about renewables meeting all the global energy demand.
Not before that.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:09 am
14 Nov 2009
Buy the false premise (the distributed nature of renewable energy makes it unreliable), and follow the unsound argument down the garden path...to the false conclusion.
The fact that renewable energy is virtually everywhere, fuel-free, and doesn't cost a penny, makes it much more reliable than central fuel based power grids. As more and more fossil power plants are built, fuel gets more and more expensive with scarcity and market manipulation.
As more and more renewable energy is tapped it gets cheaper, because the devices to harvest and transport it get more efficioent and cheaper due to mass production. This is happening right now with wind and solar power. Costs per kwh keep on dropping...while fossil fueled energy gets ever more expensive.
And this is really a bonus! No wars need be fought over renewable energy, like they are over oil. There's a really big hidden cost of fossil fuelisness.
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Billhook Posted 5:06 am
13 Nov 2009
For instance, we have so pathetic a track record of R&D of non-fossil energy that the first floating deepwater wind-turbine is only now under construction, and the first broad-front Offshore Wave Energy Vessel has yet to be commissioned. The potential for replication of these devices is not limited by the geographies of extant land-use.
Similarly there is little research as yet of the synergies between wood refinery outputs and power-yielding renewables meeting in the stable and very clean-burning energy-carrier called Methanol (CH3OH).
Similarly research is only now gaining scale in the potentially vital option of Afforestation for Biochar, which, beside raising farm yields and supplying Syngas, Biodeisel or Power, also offers "Carbon Recovery & Burial" (CRB, not CCS) potentially to the tune of ~8.0 GT C /yr.
So, far from being doomed, I think we'll only discover just what we can achieve with both the non-fossil supply and conservation options when we actually invest in them on a serious commercial scale.
Regards,
Billhook
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neosapiens Posted 9:50 am
13 Nov 2009
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Clifford Wells Posted 11:28 am
13 Nov 2009
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Sean Casten Posted 12:03 pm
13 Nov 2009
1. Coal plants even without carbon sequestration are lousy investments (at least in the US given environmental considerations: the only way coal is a good investment is if you don't have to spend all the $ on Clean Air Act compliance.)
2. Coal with CCS is even worse, as it has higher capital costs of the plant and increasing the operating cost due to higher parasitic loads.
3. Every other approach to CO2 reduction at least saves operating costs (by burning less fuel).
As such, I think one can safely conclude that CCS will never happen, for the simple reason that any carbon pricing regime will never clear at a high enough level to justify investments in CCS until every other option is exhausted. It's an R&D boondoggle - nothing more.
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Billhook Posted 3:29 pm
13 Nov 2009
But the idea of building infrastructure to handle >8 times the global oil industry's volume of thruput, in order to control less than 30% of the GHG problem, seems so implausible that to me its research looks more like political circus, the fig leaf giving the appearance of competent action, than just a commercial research scam.
The fall-guy, as long as CCS is touted as credible by its proponents, is of course a rational scale of investment in sustainable energy supply R,D&D.
OTOH, the expectant beneficiary of both the vital climate treaty and the CCS-extended marginalization of the sustainable options, is the nuclear industry.
This might perhaps be nailed as the "Last-Man-Standing" strategy.
Ironically the fact of the un-affordability even of replacing the current nuclear fleet seems thus far to have escaped the nuclear-zealots' attention.
Regards,
Billhook
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piglet Posted 12:15 pm
13 Nov 2009
There are no sane quick fixes. We just have to roll up our sleeves and address the core problem - stop polluting our atmosphere, water and soils - that have massive impact on both our environment and human health - AND CONSIDER EVERY SOLUTION AS TO ITS END-OF-LIFE CYCLE AS IT IMPACTS THE ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH IN BOTH THE SHORT AND LONG TERM.
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F James Handley Posted 12:35 pm
13 Nov 2009
Thanks for questioning CC&S.
I studied and practiced Chemical Engineering. Thermodynamics dictate the minimum energy required to capture CO2 from a coal-fired power plant and the energy needed to compress it to liquid and inject to a particular depth in the Earth. These minimum energy requirements are independent of the process chosen. Then you have to add losses and inefficiencies that are design-dependent, along with the pumping costs to move CO2 to the sequestration site.
Here' a reference that's looking at the basic thermodynamic limitations: “Carbon capture and storage: Fundamental thermodynamics and current technology” by Page, Williamson, and Mason, published in the journal "Energy Policy" (2009):
"… CCS is considered a leading technology for reducing CO2 emissions from fossil-fuelled electricity generation plants and could permit the continued use of coal and gas whilst meeting greenhouse gas targets. However considerable energy is required for the capture, compression, transport and storage steps involved. In this paper, energy penalty information in the literature is reviewed, and thermodynamically ideal and “real world” energy penalty values are calculated. For a sub-critical pulverized coal (PC) plant, the energy penalty values for 100% capture are 48.6% and 43.5% for liquefied CO2, and for CO2 compressed to 11Â MPa, respectively. When assumptions for supercritical plants were incorporated, results were in broad agreement with published values arising from process modelling. However, we show that energy use in existing capture operations is considerably greater than indicated by most projections. Full CCS demonstration plants are now required to verify modelled energy penalty values. However, it appears unlikely that CCS will deliver significant CO2 reductions in a timely fashion. In addition, many uncertainties remain over the permanence of CO2 storage, either in geological formations, or beneath the ocean. We conclude that further investment in CCS should be seriously questioned by policy makers. ”
[Emphasis added.]
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:10 pm
13 Nov 2009
"Xcel Energy Corp.’s proposal to build the largest power plant burning biomass in the Midwest is moving forward after state regulators unanimously endorsed the project.
....
The project will convert a coal-fired boiler on Lake Superior in Ashland to burn wood waste left over in forests after loggers harvest timber. Xcel will also set up test plots for “energy plantations” that would grow fast-growing poplar trees that could be burned in the plant, said David Donovan, Xcel manager of regulatory policy.
The Ashland plant already burns wood in two of its three boilers but this project would enable the entire power plant to be run on renewable energy, Xcel said."
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/business/68594702.html
and...
"Southern Company Breaks Ground on Biomass Plant"
Their second biomass plant. 100MW and expected to be finished in 32 months.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/200911101329PR_NEWS_USPR_____CL08825.htm
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cyberfarer Posted 5:14 pm
13 Nov 2009
When you look at governments committing billions of dollars to perpetuate an entirely destructive industry, along every step of the supply chain, and waste not just dollars but opportunity on a technology that even its faith holders say is at least a decade away, you must recognize your grandchildren are having their lives traded away for false promises.
What's incredible to me, is the lack of anger. I attribute that to people not recognizing the nature of a system which measures only short term profits derived from liquidating our life support system.
It is not inevitable that we must "burn coal anyway." That is a political and social choice and it is a poor one.
Spain's wind turbines supply half of the national power grid ( http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6910298.ece ).
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Billhook Posted 5:35 pm
13 Nov 2009
For this CCS is helpful, but only temporarily - the fraudulence of its potential is too easily demonstrated by even a few pilot projects - which may well be the reason why, despite hype since the '70s, actual projects are still so rare.
You're not alone in finding the lack of peoples' anger incredible - quite apart from western concerns, I would think that the Pentagon must be beginning to wonder just what America is going to reap as its conduct persists in sowing the whirlwind of famine across Asia and Africa.
Regards,
Billhook
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Clifford Wells Posted 7:54 pm
13 Nov 2009
Really, look at a map!
Too often we think about "new growth" power plants which were designed for added capacity as the population grows (in certain geographic areas). Unless you're able to stop the coal trains from Wyoming and the lesser players, those coal trains and coal emissions are going to continue to go up the flume.
My perspective is, let's get off the coal and transition to a blend of natural gas and alternate power source. Less coal trains. Unfortunately, I don't see less coal trains in your future right now.
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Bob Armstrong Posted 2:34 am
14 Nov 2009
However it may well be economic for coal fired plants to feed their exhaust thru algae beds in their cooling ponds . I know some pilot projects to "sequester" CO2 thru such methods have been thwarted by watermelons too anti-life in their misanthropy to allow anything other than enforced privation . Such Luddism is just plain dysfunctional .
And incidentally , one look at the yearly relaxation seen in the Mauna Loa CO2 record shows that its atmospheric half life can't be more than a couple of decades , as I believe has been confirmed by a number of studies . After all , all green life on the planet gobbles it up - and as that life flourishes , gobbles more .
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neosapiens Posted 8:18 pm
14 Nov 2009
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last/
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Bob Armstrong Posted 11:36 pm
14 Nov 2009
What's rehashing propaganda ? Certainly the fact that you and I and everything else in the biosphere are constructed about 90% or more from CO2 + H2O is a simple truth . Or are you disputing that CO2 was much greater during the lush ages when all the coal and oil was laid down ? How come rather than being lush ages didn't the 30 or 40 molecules of CO2 per 10,000 of air rather than the 3 or 4 we have now fry all life off the planet ?
David Archer in your link gives a range 5 years on up to essentially infinity . In his description , he totally ignores the biosphere - which , of course , is where all the carbon we're recycling got sequestered the first time around . I've seen several papers estimating CO2 atmospheric half life in the 5-30 year range . I make my observation just looking at the yearly sawtooth of the Mauna Loa CO2 data . I've seen plenty of exponentials to eyeball that it would be half way to 0 with no additional input certainly in no longer than that . Estimates of centuries are simply absurd . Except , of course , most life as we know it would be dead from suffocation if CO2 actually dropped in half .
The idea that we are facing some "runaway" , beyond the fact that it didn't happen before , is somewhere between extremely improbable and totally impossible . Consider that the Stefan-Boltzmann&Kirchhoff; equation , even just the gray body approximation I've gotten done , predicts our temperature within a few percent . No "runaway" has occurred getting all the way from 0 to our ~ 285k making it prima facie highly unlikely that a discontinuity would be lurking near by . Actually , the mathematical arguments against such an event are far stronger .
Finally , the benefit to agriculture in every corner of the planet from increased CO2 is not just common sense on the most basic level of high school chemical equilibrium laws , it has been quantitatively proven ofer many years in labs . I most recently saw one showing its effect increasing spinach yields and nutrition .
So what have I said that's false propaganda ? Seems to me that industrial agriculture has reliably performed miracles over the last century . And a rational evaluation of our restoring CO2 from past lush ages must weigh its proven greening effect against the fears that have been ascribed to it for a variation in our temperature of less than 1 part in 300 over a century - less than perhaps 1/20 the average daily variation in temperature almost everywhere .
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Clifford Wells Posted 8:39 am
14 Nov 2009
However, I believe that the CO2 much be in a fairly clean state, that is, stripped of most of the acid gases and compounds at would either affect the pumping equipment or the underground reservoir itself.
And pumps they do require. I am not a geologist or engineer, but know that the pressures to force any gas or liquid into an underground formation can be quite large. But I am familiar with oil field "workover" rigs and often three or more truck-mounted diesel pumps of several thousand horsepower each are used, a quite dangerous, loud, and greenhouse gas emitting process may I add. In these cases, a separate diesel fuel truck is used because the engines can consume 30 to 50 gallons per hour, each, if not more.
Once an underground oil field is adequately pressurized, often in combination with some chemical or brine injection, the field is allowed to rest after a few days of pumping, and the well(s) are checked for improved flow rate, if any. In other words, unless you have a gigantic salt dome, you can only pressurize that part of the field so much. Naturally, the formations are studied in detail because you want to push the oil towards the collector well, which often involves drilling more wells around the formation (this is also used in some oil sand projects in Canada).
I'm writing this just to show some, not all, of what is involved in injecting large amounts of CO2 underground. You can't just drill a well next to a coal power plant and start pumping partially scrubbed stack gases. Push the underground aquifer waters the wrong way, you could poison entire water districts in a short amount of time - which is why Norway sends some power plant CO2 to an offshore natural gas field in the North Sea that was becoming depleted.
But isn't that something? Every time people mention CO2 injection, at least in the literature I've read, it is closely tied to the oil & gas industry. Way to go team! LOL.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:54 am
14 Nov 2009
Renewables, conservation, electric transportation, are the right targets for investment dollars. These other plans are delay and diversion, plain and simple.
Invest in wind, solar, and a super grid and coal can be stopped. Keep on with lame excuses, talking points from coal industry lobbyists, and misdirection will doom our national future as a green manufacturing leader and leave the biosphere a dangerous place for humans and other living things.
CCS is nothing but a corporate mirage, but even if it could be made effective, the much lower efficiency actually dictates the combustion of much more coal. Running CO2 separators, compressors, pipelines, and wells takes energy, that energy will come from burning even more coal.
It's a vicious delayer cycle of carbon death for the human friendly climate.
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Delay And Deny Posted 9:43 pm
14 Nov 2009
For solar panel advocates, there is a model where every house has a rooftop collector, and another that says big solar farms are better. These advocates seem neutral as far as the ownership of the production mechanism.
Because of the obsession with CO2, many of the problems of traditional pollution have been neglected. For example, a recent study showed that most of our nations schools are near highways, and so children are exposed to noxious streams of fumes from autos.
While enviros spin their wheels arguing about carbon credits, they fail the public, who would benefit in their cities and towns from an immediate conversion to hydrogen. With a hydrogen, we can manage the initial production from hydrocarbon sources and sequester the by products, until we switch to the Nocera process using only solar and renewable sources to generate H2 from water.
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Bob Wallace Posted 10:19 pm
14 Nov 2009
Rooftop solar and big solar farms are not competing, but complimentary ways of capturing energy. Rooftop solar is a best choice in some circumstances as it is power generated close to source, reducing transmission costs. Inland solar farms, especially solar thermal with storage provide power after the sun goes down.
Now, conversion to hydrogen. Not really a very workable technology. Cracking water uses a lot of electricity which could more efficiently be sent down the wire or stuck in batteries. Then comes the storage, transportation, and distribution of hydrogen. We would have to create an entire new infrastructure to utilize hydrogen.
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cyberfarer Posted 8:27 am
15 Nov 2009
The logic of the pseudo-intellectuals, as noted above, is that because CO2 is a "building block of life" and because CO2 was once at higher concentrations, it's all good. Earth once had a nitrogen atmosphere as well. No doubt pseudo-intellectuals of the denial industry will soon be telling us the increased levels of nitrogen in the atmosphere is a natural cycle that will usher in a world rich in carbon deposits (us). Following along the logic of the pseudo-intellectuals, a planet entirely submerged in H2O would, of course, be utopia, or at least Atlantis.
These pseudo-intellectuals want to point out, for example, that there was much higher CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere when the planet was too hot to support much life and again when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Yes, but of course, again, there were no humans at that time. It was the golden age of the reptiles that was introduced by a major extinction event. Perhaps we are opening the door to a re-emergence of the golden age of reptiles.
The other fallacy put forward by the pseudo-intellectuals is the type and breadth of flora under a changed atmosphere. You see, we have no idea how global warming will change weather patterns, hydrological cycles, wind patterns, etc ... Lush areas today may be deserts tomorrow, while frozen areas may be temperate. But the other aspect of global warming is what it does to weather variability. Agriculture was successful over the past 6,000 or more years because we more or less knew when the seasons would arrive and when we should plant and harvest our crops. Global warming changes everything.
As well, it may be true that agriculture could benefit in the short term from higher concentrations of CO2, but not in the long term:
"In 2050 climate change will decrease food and agricultural production by up to 30 percent in parts of developing countries, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) director-general Jacques Diouf said on Monday."
http://english.cri.cn/6966/2009/10/13/1721s521980.htm
Even the FAO warning assumes all else remains equal. It will not.
More:
"Dropping levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide may have given primitive land plants the cue to spread their leaves and soak up the sun.
Four hundred million years ago, leaves were not the broad, efficient, solar panels they are today. Instead they were tiny stick-like projections called microphylls."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6111-broad-leaves-evolved-as-carbon-dioxide-fell.html
Unbelievably, the psuedo-intellectual, denial industry has a web site called ilovecarbondioxide.com where you can read the lies of sick people willing to trade our entire planet for their short term greed.
These are the new child pornographers in my view.
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Bob Armstrong Posted 4:03 pm
15 Nov 2009
What an absolutely idiotic non sequitur of a second paragraph .
And the rest of the gibberish says first "we have no idea how global warming will change weather patterns ..." , then cites a UN prediction for 2050 that agricultural production will be down 30% . Which is it , Cyber ? Do you know what's going to happen or not ?
Talk about pornographic ill logic . Cyber , you illustrate why minds like yours must be kept out of the driver's seat .
To put all the "warming" over the last century in context , I really like this graph from Richard Linzen showing how insignificant compared to daily variability it has been : http://cosy.com/Science/Linzenlineplot800.gif .
One thing that there is no argument about is that increased CO2 will reduce the variance in temperature of the planet , and thus decrease the intensity of storms .
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cyberfarer Posted 4:10 pm
15 Nov 2009
We don't have any idea of what the weather impacts of climate change will be. The study cited is based on increased temperatures rather than any knowledge of changing weather patterns. It really isn't all that hard though I appreciate your efforts.
A denier with graphs. How charming.
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Bob Armstrong Posted 4:35 pm
15 Nov 2009
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Ashley Braun Posted 1:06 pm
16 Nov 2009
Remember what everyone agreed to when you all signed up to comment here:
Rule #4. Do not direct personal attacks at a poster or fellow commenter. Substance, people. Substance.
http://www.grist.org/commenter-posting-rules
Anyone is free to disagree, of course, but please hash it out civilly. Thanks!
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Bob Armstrong Posted 2:34 pm
16 Nov 2009
I apologize unilaterally , but suggest the same admonition be applied to Cyberfarer as well .
Frankly those of us who are realistically trying to understand the actual science of the matter , so often on our own dime , get pretty tired of the ubiquitous ad hominems we are so frequently subject to rather than ration debate .
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Clifford Wells Posted 5:08 pm
15 Nov 2009
The fact is, the EPA is looking at regulating major sources of CO2, and the coal powered electrical units are a prime candidate. True, some enabling legislation might be needed, but the concept is that "Best Available Control Technology" could include sequestration, CCS, regardless of what we think about it. If we could incinerate the stuff, or use it all for making beer, I'm sure that would be on the list of options.
The main point here is that we really don't think that carbon sequestration exists except in some experimental tests and small applications, and there are some fundamental issues which how to pump the ground full of CO2 in a safe manner, without disrupting the groundwater or causing earthquakes or some other unintended consequence. Clearly, this isn't as simple as using conventional controls such as scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, or even catalysts and treatments for mercury removal. It seems expensive and the parasitic loads - all the energy to clean and inject all that CO2 - would seem to defeat the purpose.
The ultimate outcome is to make coal so expensive that many power companies will invest in natural gas and renewables. None of that is cheap, either, but the point is that coal could become prohibitively expensive. Seem in this light, CCS seems to be just propaganda and subterfuge to convince Congress that coal is the winner in the race for "clean power."
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neosapiens Posted 10:06 pm
15 Nov 2009
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/co_2-fertilization/
On a small scale, as long as there is enough nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, abundant water and protection from disease and insects, plants do temporarily enjoy faster growth from higher CO2 levels.
If we stopped emitting CO2 and did our level best to cultivate plant growth, it would still take centuries for the damage we've already done to be reversed. But we're emitting CO2 at rates that are far above what the natural world can process, and we're defoliating the planet at a rapid pace instead of fostering plant growth. And the CO2 is acidifying the oceans and tipping conditions back to what they were the last time there was a vast die-off of sea life. High levels of CO2 are not harmless.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-acid-ocean-the-other-problem-with-cosub2sub-emission/
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Bob Armstrong Posted 2:48 am
16 Nov 2009
"The CO2 fertilization fallacy has been studied and debunked" .
Given that , again , each of us , being members of the biosphere , is composed of over 90% CO2 photosynthesized with H2O , anybody who believes that idiocy , I have a great belt and braces bridge to Brooklyn that filled my windows for a couple of decades that I'd like to sell you .
There's a certain level of purposeful stupidity at which I feel no point in continuing the conversation and I think we've about reached it here .
A pox on all religions and most quickly on this anti-life assault on the this building block of life and the freedom of an educated population to make their market choices for the welfare of themselves and their posterity .
Still waiting for someone to comment on Lindzen's piece of common place data .
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Bob Wallace Posted 9:30 am
16 Nov 2009
It applies to CO2. We need some for life (as we know it) to exist. And we need some in our atmosphere to keep our temperatures moderated so that we don't experience the sort of temperature swings that the Moon suffers. (-387F/-233C to 253F/123C)
But too much CO2 and we die.
"On August 21, 1986, possibly triggered by a landslide, Lake Nyos suddenly emitted a large cloud of CO2, which suffocated 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock in nearby villages."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos
Our bodies also contain a very large amount of water. Too little and we die of dehydration. Drinking too much water can also kill you. (To say nothing of the inconvenience of drowning.)
The CO2 issue is not about whether CO2 is good/bad or worthless/valuable. It's about how much we can allow in our atmosphere and maintain our current lifestyles.
It's pretty clear that if we continue to remove more carbon from under the ground, burn it into CO2, and release it into our atmosphere we are going to have to change the way we live.
Yes, for a while agriculture will improve in higher latitudes as temperatures increase. But that's not an overall gain as we at the same time will lose agriculture land closer to the equator.
But later on, we will all be crammed together toward the poles and on higher ground as we make lots of the Earth unlivable. And mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. Look how South America and Africa taper as one moves toward where temperatures are going to be tolerable for our crops.
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Bob Armstrong Posted 12:39 pm
16 Nov 2009
Many ag lab experiments show plants thrive best on CO2 several times current atmospheric concentrations . ( Ask your local marijuana dealer ; they may have the data for that crop . ) Plants preferred concentration has been related to the concentrations under which they evolved .
It takes hundreds of times those concentrations to be even in the range of animal discomfort . I believe I saw statement the other day that if all the carbon laid down in creation were restored to the air it would represent about 50 times the current level . But I just glanced over it so "don't quote me" .
Those CO2 lakes are certainly a bizarre phenomenon and I'm not sure that it mattered what gas came out of the lakes as long as it was heavy enough to displace the air in those calderas and simply suffocate the people from lack of oxygen .
They are a real demonstration that there are some pretty massive natural geological sources of CO2 out there also .
But my real efforts have been to quantitatively understand the temperature physics of the issue . And while I've not had time , being "self funded" , to extend my StefanBoltzmann&Kirchhoff; implementation to full spectra and find sources for those spectra , it's pretty clear that CO2's spectrum is pretty full saturated at much lower concentrations , so even doubling or tripling it at these levels makes very little difference .
I still am waiting for any comments on Lindzen's graph showing how small the total change in mean temperature over the century has been to the daily variation in Boston in April .
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Clifford Wells Posted 11:26 pm
15 Nov 2009
Your second paragraph where you say we could stop emitting CO2 right now and still have problems in the future, speaks volumes to me. I hear ya.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:31 pm
15 Nov 2009
"A report by the European Environment Agency released today shows that the European Union and all Member States but one [Austria] are on track to meet their Kyoto Protocol commitments to limit and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions."
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/12/europe-exceed-kyoto-target-european-trading-system-has-worked/
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BrianS Posted 2:08 pm
16 Nov 2009
As for me, I'm desperate. That means try everything. I have no idea if CCS will work, but even if it adds 60% to the cost of coal power, that could be a politically feasible number.
More important, Dave's math is unclear - read page 22 of the link he gives (and it's not to a Nature article). The 10% figure is for all CO2 emissions, not 10% of global coal emissions. CCS is for coal, so this is an apples and oranges comparison. And the infrastructure involved, anyway, is injection infrastructure, not all oil infrastructure. The scale of the challenge is much less than suggested.
Two other points: F James Handley quotes a study about pulverized coal plants, but the real option for CCS is with IGCC coal plants. And finally, with friends like Bob Armstrong and the Breakthrough Institute, new technological approaches to climate change have no need for enemies.
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cyberfarer Posted 5:46 pm
16 Nov 2009
I apologize for calling you, personally, a pseudo-intellectual but I do not withdraw the accusation against the denial industry and its faithful masses.
You say, "those of us who are realistically trying to understand the actual science of the matter", but that is patently untrue. The science is well documented and readily and freely available. One cannot have read and understood the science and still deny it.
I can understand those people who deny global warming because they fear it. What I find criminal, and what I think ought to be as socially abhorrent to all of us as child pornography, is those who know the science but still deny it and agitate against any mitigating actions out of short term financial interests.
I stand in awe at the ability of conspiracy theorists to invent the dots for lines to be drawn when the very real conspiracy of the denial industry has been well documented including but not limited to the connections between big oil and coal to the same "scientists", PR firms, and communication strategies of big tobacco.
In fact, one such PR guru even openly admits that the goal of the denial industry was to create a debate where none existed.
The only exception to where on can read and understand science but still deny it is the case of religion where intelligent design "scientists" can place humans on earth with the dinosaurs. The climate denial argument is on the same scale of absurdity and engages in the same practice of ridiculing real science and scientists in order to raise up the ridiculous.
The denial industry engages in a rather simple, but effective for the simplistic, strategy. They don't actually refute the findings of mainstream science, but instead they attack the models.
But, of course, no model can be perfect because it is a model. It can only reflect what we know and what we can program into it. What ought to be alarming to most observers is that the models have been uniformly incorrect. Not in their predictions but in the speed at which their predictions are coming true.
I'm sorry. I accept the Darwinian theory of evolution. I accept that smoking causes cancer. And I accept that pumping billions of metric tonnes of CO2 into our atmosphere is responsible for warming our climate and threatens our planet.
If you want to put your children and grandchildren on a poker table and gamble on their lives, be my guest. But the gamble here is all life and the denial industry is not welcome to gamble with mine and that which I treasure.
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Clifford Wells Posted 6:50 pm
16 Nov 2009
Deniers hate being labeled like that, by the way. They're supposed to have "family values."
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