Comments Billhook has made

Earl - your view of the basis for proposing 350 ppmv plainly differs from mine.

Mine is drawn directly from Hansen's paper on the matter, which includes, as I recall, multiple references to the potential need for further reductions in airborne CO2 below the 350 ppmv target. It also includes the justification for a present target specifically within the range 325 to 355.

However, for all Hansen is undoubtedly well aware of the DOC feedback (first published in "Nature") he chose not to mention it, nor the fact that it would, on present trends, swamp the planet's carbon sinks by itself, somewhere around mid-century, nor the fact that it was first observed to be accelerating when CO2 was at only about 317ppmv.

With just the evidence of hazards that he did include, there is a prudent case for a target at 300ppmv or even a full cleansing back to 250. But what would the outcome of that proposal have been in a culture struggling with 450, where even passionately commited diplomats like Evo de Boer says 350 "hasn't a hope in hell" of being agreed at Copenhagen ? Hansen would have lost what little traction he still has with the political establishment, who regularly snub him as it is.

In this sense, the choice of 350ppmv, not of 300, 325, 349, 351 or 355 was essentially pragmatic, being a nice round number that has already been aired in UNFCCC, and that leaves another large step down to the obvious final target of 250, and is of course more than amply supported by evidence whose cogency rises weekly.

Just today I read that 3.4 million Nepalis face starvation due to a destabilized climate causing the failure of their harvests.

With regard to the potential of sustainable afforestation for Biochar interrment, your chosen quote from the 350 paper refers to the potential from the processing of wastes for Biochar, not new forestry. The sentences around it refer first obliquely and then directly to that massive potential, with a wise caution that the practice must be done carefully.

From page 12, para 1. :-

"Carbon sequestration in soil also has significant potential. Biochar, produced in pyrolysis of residues from crops, forestry, and animal wastes, can be used to restore soil fertility while storing carbon for centuries to millenia (82). Biochar helps soil retain nutrients and fertilizers, reducing emissions of GHGs such as N2O (83). Replacing slash-and-burn agriculture with slash-and-char and use of agricultural and forestry wastes for biochar production could provide a CO2 drawdown of ~8ppm in half a century (83)."

"In Supplementary Material we define a forest/soil drawdown scenario that reaches 50 ppm by 2150 (Fig. 6B). This scenario returns CO2 below 350 ppm late this century, after about 100 years above that level."

"More rapid drawdown could be provided by CO2 capture at power plants fuelled by gas and biofuels (84). Low input high-diversity biofuels grown on marginal or degraded lands, with associated Biochar production, could accelerate CO2 drawdown, but the nature of a biofuel approach must be carefully designed (83, 85-87)."

Given that the ancient sustainable silviculture of Coppice Forestry, and its use for Biochar that I proposed earlier, along with its co-product biofuels in gaseous or liquid form, is precisely the sort of careful low-input high-diversity design than Hansen calls for, and given that Hansen is far too experienced a scientist to disdain efficient pragmatism (as I hope I may have shown above) I think you're mistaken in assuming that my post does not "jive" with his seminal 350 paper.

Regards,

Billhook

Perhaps Pachauri's optimism for Copenhagen is not surprising given that, as a senior IPCC scientist,

he has long observed the absurd Sino-US brinkmanship over "Who can ignore climate destabilization the longest ?"

and given that both nations are now facing a potentially catastrophic loss of their farm outputs both through intensifying long-term drought and loss of vital snow and ice-cover,

meaning that Copenhagen has become not just another nationalists' strutting-ground but actually a vital mutual escape-route from the outcome of their brinkmanship.

Pachauri has certainly started encouraging non-governmental contributions to the event - it is only recently that he went on record to declare his forthright personal endorsement of the global climate policy framework of "Contraction & Convergence" as the necessary basis of UN negotiations, in a recorded interview.

Clearly, with spoilers including even US Democrat calls for trade threats against foreign polluters (!), he sees that there is everything still to play for.

Regards,

Billhook

While I share the author's enthusiasm for the potential of Biochar, I'd differ somewhat in the details, such as the choice of feedstock resources that he endorses.

The people who treated an area of the Amazon equal, in total, to that of Spain plus France, no doubt had crop wastes to deal with, but charring them in simple mounds would surely have been a quick way of reducing the vital soil nutrients that were, presumably, a primary interest.   Their other feedstock option was wood, which was super-abundant for them, even if it was most easily collected by ring-barking young trees and breaking them up when dead. The sheer volumes of charcoal that they produced and buried makes crop wastes look a rather doubtful feedstock option.

In our current predicament, the use of crop wastes whose nutrients would otherwise be lost to the soil is clearly sensible, but I think the International Biochar Initiative [IBI] has diplomatic reasons for staying silent on the major ecological value stream that Biochar can and will provide, namely the funding of a worldwide advance of sustainable coppice forestry. 

This would offer a range of critical benefits, including: 

- a permanent massive feedstock supply for gigatonnes of biochar, & for distributed energy resources in liquid, gaseous or electric forms, (coppice regrows from the harvested stump on a 7 to 28 year cycle, yielding around 20% more wood than equivalent deciduous cohort foresty);

- the restoration of degraded and deforested land to provide habitat for exceptionally high biodiversity (working coppices in Europe, some of which were planted in Roman times, hold the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem);

- the provision of sustainable livelyhoods for rural communities practically wherever trees grow well and the land is not suitable for farming, thus helping to halt the ruinous global drift to ever more unsustainable city poverty in the shanty towns and slums (coppice can be worked very well indeed on a low-tech basis with machetes, ox-carts and village scale cordwood-refineries, serving the local community with its produce as well as 'exporting' a proportion further afield for better prices);

- the very large additional carbon sink established by the coppices, which, unlike cohort forestry, is not lost at harvest since the trees' large root-masses continue living and feeding new growth and building new soil.

Such is the antipathy in some bits of the environment movement to the [very ancient] practice of productive forestry (in favour of weird anthro-exclusion policies) that this seminally important option is hardly even being discussed.

Instead, the canard that, because it could, potentially, be done really badly it should not even be attempted, seems to be treated as a serious argument. There is of course no question that current commercial forestry has employed grossly unsustainable techniques, but the novel lever of projects' need to gain UN accreditation for carbon sequestration would clearly be quite sufficient to enforce compliance with an agreed code of sustainable practice, starting with showing local support for the establishment of native species coppice rather than exotic species cohort forestry.

For the moment, IBI are focussed on getting the Biochar option written into the UN Climate Treaty, with the issue of developing sustainable forestry feedstock-resources being sidestepped for the present for reasons of diplomacy. Suffice to say that the reforestation that Biochar could finance will provide a massive and uniquely valuable additional stream of benefits.

Regards,

Billhook

With all due respect for Bill McK's steadfast endeavours, in the quote above he may be rather overstating his case, which of course is exactly the sort of opening that opponents will distort and exploit if they're given the chance.

Thus I'd point out that De Boer's dismissive words "Not a hope in hell" smacks of  Ghandi's stage 2, "they ridicule you" not his stage 3, "they fight you".

Moreover,  getting even this far for the 350 ppm peak hasn't taken just 18 months as Bill describes it - we at Global Commons Institute started pushing for 350 ppmv as the formally agreed peak in the COP in Geneva in '95, which is now 14 years ago.

In one thing we have reached Ghandi's stage 4 - "then you win." After facing 20 years of dogged campaigning, the British & French govts have at last formally declared their commitment to the global climate policy framework of "Contraction & Convergence", shortly before the recent G8 summit. Which brings the 3 main EU powers into a concerted focus, in common with the Africa group of nations, and with India and the other sub-continent nations, along with Brazil and various others. With regard to China, we have only India's word for it that they share the Indian outlook that, "C&C is the starting point of our position."

There is something that has long puzzled me about the strategic policy-making of 350.org - what is the recommended means of international distribution of (declining) emission rights ? Dr Hansen's idea (which perhaps has been misreported ?) of the US holding the world to its preferences by threat of a trade-war (for >41 years !) is hard to take seriously - it is surely of more effect in deterring Annexe 2 (developing) nations from any constructive input at Copenhagen ?

So, rather than just demanding that Copenhagen somehow manifests a viable formula to ensure a 350 peak without passing 2 C, perhaps it is time for 350.org to declare just what framework of burden-sharing the organization is campaigning for ?

regards,

Billhook

It seems there is a growing need for a stringent global authority on the accreditation of offsets - and that this must be comprised of scientists of the relevant fields to be effective, rather than housing the usual ideologically-led economists and politicians.

Without that authority, the kinds of permitted frauds that we now see as scandals will be small beer compared to the scams hatched under a global climate treaty. These would be damaging in deferring change, but potentially ruinous in destroying public confidence first in effective longterm offsets as a necessary component for industrial reform, and second in destroying developing nations' confidence in wealthy nations' will to honour their treaty commitments.

The loss of that latter confidence (which in fact has yet to be earned) would crash the treaty's operation and so any prospect of avoiding catastrophic climate destabilization and resulting societal collapse.

To preclude that outcome it would seem logical to mandate the requisite 'Carbon Offsets Accreditation Authority' under UN auspice, and to staff it with IPCC scientists -  So when will Washington start building confidence by acknowledging the urgency of this requirement ?

Sunflower - there is a class of greenwash that is at least as dangerously seductive in fomenting inaction as the usual version

it is the claim that all problems will be solved via new inventions, so we need only to get govt focussed on encouraging them.

It is bullshit of course.

First, the largest owner of Sustainable Energy patents on the planet is not America, it is Saudi Arabia.

Second, why would the vested fossil fuel interests allow a world-changing invention to be demonstrated and so  put them out of business overnight ?

Third, why would developing nations, or developed nations for that matter, become clients of US tech, rather than holding out for their own inventions ?

Since it ain't going to happen, I'll not bother with the further constraints, such as the fact that we need global agreement to peak global GHG output by 2015..

I'd just point out that the techno-cornucopian outlook you promote is a classic ploy of the many fossil energy shills around here.

Regards,

Billhook

From Gulleyfourmyle 1st post above :

"Airborne chemicals are heavy and sink to the ground so they are densest the closer you get to the ground."

Does this mean that tinfoil hats are really less use than shin-pads ?

Regards,

Billhook

In one critically important sense Rachman is right, the climate activist is prone to self censorship.

I'm guilty of it myself on occasion - how should one try to explain the super-exponential rate of change arising from multiple, diverse, iterative, positive warming feedback loops to someone with a failed degree in media studies ?

I find such efforts unproductive, and so usually stick to the overviews of outcome, and it is this that is a somewhat lonely position.

Most activists will readily use the term chaos and sometimes catastrophe, but the reality for many millions of people will, more likely than not, be death by famine. Given that this has been readily foreseeable for over two decades (GHG pollution causes GW causes climate destabilization causes widespread crop failure causes starvation) the charge against those politicians and industrialists who've failed to act is one of complicity in genocide.

And how many activists use the term GENOCIDE ? A handful . And what effect will its use have on the national and global policy debate ? Fundamental, for it unveils the moral depravity of the prevaricators, and it raises the awful prospect of fully 'justified' retaliatory violence on a proportionate scale, as well as indicating the mega-scale of climate refugees marching northward demanding safe haven as a right.

So when will the cliimate activists end their self censorship and adopt the charge of genocide as a key advance of the campaign ?

At GCI we've been waiting for this since '94. Please, step out of denial and get on with it.

Regards,

Billhook

Eric - Many thanks for the link to the seminal WSJ article by Antholis, MD of Brookings Institute.

He is the most senior non govt figure so far to publish his unequivocal support for Contraction & Convergence as the framework upon which to build agreement at Copenhagen.

As an insider, his job is of course to hedge that support in public with a spread of concerns, with some, such as the level of per capita emissions at 2050 being more substantial than others, such as the need for a cut-off date for population on which to base the eventual percapita emission rights - Global Commons Institute informed all parties of this need as far back as '92.

It is also good to see his acknowledgement, unlike too many others' ignorance/deception, of India's pledge to limit its peoples' GHG output to being no greater than the per capita output of developed nations, as well as pledging to sign up to a global treaty when an eventual global per capita volume is agreed.

The sticking point is that the science, most developing nations, and some developed nations such as Britain, all see a need for developed nations to cut GHGs by 40% by 2020 off the UNFCCC 1990 baseline. By contrast, the US has yet agree just 4%, (or 17% off its magic-pony-invented 2005 baseline, that itself reneges on its signature on the UNFCCC mandate).

For the Copenhagen Negotiation to reach a sustainable agreement, the US will have to reconsider its position, wholesale.

For a start, why should any nation want to negotiate with it if the declared US position includes reneging on a solemn undertaking ? Doesn't really inspire confidence in US probity, does it ?

Regards,

Billhook

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Robert,

thankyou for this overview of the cost-projections of forestry sequestration options in the US.

Here in the UK we enjoy further options than those assessed in the range of reports you collated, and I'm wondering to what extent they may be applicable in the US.

There are two main considerations : the silvicultural regime chosen, and the harvest utilization's durability.

The conventional regime of 'cohort' forestry, planting en bloc & harvesting en masse, is far from ideal for a host of reasons including its poor carbon sequestration efficiency. The soil disturbance at planting is a CO2 source, and the young saplings have a poor growth rate for some years, and there is major soil disturbance at harvesting, and the entire root ball of each tree then rots down and is mostly lost (as CO2 & CH4) to the atmosphere.

The far older tradition of "Coppice" avoids these drawbacks, but is limited to deciduous species. It consists of the cyclical felling of part of the total woodland area each year, and allowing the trees to regrow from the stump - with, say, 1/12^th of the total felled each year for coppice on a twelve year cycle.

Central advantages include :

the lack of replanting en bloc (1% or so may not regrow and thus need replanting)

the raised yield per acre-year of around 20% over cohort output (due to the mature rootball)

the minimal soil disturbance at harvesting (extracting poles & cordwood, rather than tree trunks)

and the usual survival of the rootball (we have hazel coppice in Kent planted for the Romans).

Peripheral advantages include :

rapid provision of the first harvest (cycle length varies with species and usage between 5 & 28 years)

modest produce size facilitates both transport and fuel and sequestration processing

provision of habitat for the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem (due successive degrees of light and 'edge effects').

With regard to the controversy over harvesting woodland that is dedicated to sequestration, the 'anti' or ‘preservationist' tendency misses the reality of most forest carbon, which is of course that it is mostly retained in the forest's standing growth. The news that the Amazon Rainforest is 60 million years old, and has but a foot of soil under it, tends to be rather a surprise.

In terms of efficient, sustainable carbon sequestration, harvesting the woodland in order to channel the wood's carbon into long-term sequestration is patently sensible in that it allows the woodland to regrow and recover fresh carbon from the atmosphere, rather than just reaching maturity and a near steady-state carbon balance, with old trees falling, rotting, and emitting a good portion of their carbon as methane.

The best retention of carbon in wood is probably in species like oak & chestnut being used in construction - Westminster Hall within our Houses of Parliament has about a half acre of oak-timbered roof, that went up early in the C15 - thus the oaks felled for it could have been regrown four times during its lifespan so far. Yet while there is a version of coppice called 'Coppice & Standards', where a portion of trees are grown to maturity for good timber, the urgency of maximizing carbon sequestration may require a focus on the greater efficiency of harvesting pure coppice.

In terms of the most efficient usage of that harvest, the practice of Terra Preta in the UK is still in its infancy, but in the Amazon where apparently it was first used it has evidently retained charcoal in agricultural soils for over 2,000 years. Much research is ongoing as to the ancient techniques used that allowed the inclusion of that charcoal as a soil amendment to result in a sustained doubling or tripling of crop yields.

Notably, with forest charcoal being interred by farmers as a soil amendment, the carbon it contains would be sequestered in a potentially self-funding manner.

A further relevant option of the conversion of coppice wood to charcoal, is that volatile hydrocarbon gasses are yielded as bi-products, which have (since the C17) been processed to yield the liquid fuel called ‘wood alcohol' or ‘methanol'. As a further income stream this should again lower the cost of carbon sequestration or, more constructively, could provide additional funds for accelerated coppice afforestation projects.

I know of no reason why native American deciduous trees should be any less suitable for coppicing than European ones, but I've yet to hear of this option being discussed in the US. When that discussion gets started, and the major financial and ecological benefits of "Coppice for Carbon Sequestration via Terra Preta" are recognized, I suspect that the price per tonne C resulting from the reports you collated may appear really quite excessive.

Which leads directly to the question of just how to ensure a cap on the fraction of a corporation's carbon output that can legally be offset by forestry sequestration, in order to ensure that technical and behavioral change out of fossil fuel dependence is not undermined.

Regards,

Billhook

Given that the Aces bill proposes only a 4% US GHG output cut on the UNFCCC 1990 baseline,

while the IPCC, UN, EU, BRIC, umpteen academies of science, NGOs and others are calling for around a 40% cut by developed nations, just to have an even chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change,

is it possible that there is a motivation for delay in the senate on grounds that it would be better to have a bill in progress during Copenhagen

rather than trying to negotiate while holding a newly signed but pathetically feeble bill that only further discredits US diplomacy ?

_____________________

With regard to the conspiracy theorists that insist on spouting their guff, it is worth observing that at Copenhagen there will be govt. reps of all the worlds national producers of oil, coal and gas, none of whose govt scientists have been able to refute the work of the IPCC over the last 17 years, despite their massive national interest in finding evidence that can do so.

Which means of course that Saudi Arabia, in endorsing the IPCC reports, is in cahoots with Russia and Japan and Venezuela and Germany and South Africa and Iran and the USA, among many others, in purposely undermining their own economic interests.

Seriously weird

And no shred of evidence of that vast global conspiracy to falsify the evidence, involving the many thousands of scientists, diplomats, politicians, (and all their subordinates and staff) of 187 nations that are UNFCCC signatories, has ever come to light on the web or the trad media -

And that is beyond bizarre.

Personally I see no point in further tolerating the cant of those whose policies of inaction have likely already committed us to intensifying famine in Africa.

Think about it - to what extent would we tolerate such propaganda here if the victims of the consequent genocide happened to be, for instance, predominantly Jewish ?

Free speach has its place, and IMHO it stops at the point where it starts getting innocent people killed as a consequence.

Or am I just old fashioned in caring for children that I'll never meet ?

Regards,

Billhook

Are there really people reading Grist that face a shortage of trivia flooding into their lives, and so come here to find more ?

Or is does this actually apply to the staff /editorial policy that came in with the recent rehash/dumbing down of the site ?

It's really rather a pity, as there were so few sites where informed constructive discussion predominated.

In hopes of an S-turn (please work it out),

regards,

Billhook

Typo correction in last comment:

The sentence starting in para 8, line 3, should read:

"After stating the need for swingeing contraction of developed nations' emissions to respect the 2C ceiling, it remarks:  "

Sorry for any confusion,

regards,

Billhook

Wwagd -

"But what if, the temperatures keep going up despite CO2 reductions?"

If so, then you, like everyone you know, are likely to starve, as global crop failures intensify.

We may have time for sufficient reductions in airborne GHGs to avoid the feedback loops taking over,

and causing that continued warming and massive climate destabilization,

or we may not.

This is one of the uncertainties.

Suffice to say that peaking global GHG output by 2020 offers only an even chance of avoiding a climate crash.

And, by the way, the much-lauded Aces bill proposes a mere 4% cut in US output (off 1990 level) by 2020.

Rather akin to the usefullnes of  Obama's "historic consensus" (not) don't you think ?

Regards,

Billhook

To enjoy a 50% chance staying below 2 dC of global warming, and thus of avoiding runaway climate destabilization, where massive natural stores of carbon (such as in forests, permafrost, and methyl clathrates) are impacted and released to the atmosphere, thus multiplying the rate of climate destabilization,

we need to peak and start contracting our global greenhouse gas outputs before 2020.

There is no technology remotely near capable of achieving this global change as a purely market-driven response.

Nor is there any prospect of the usual "divide & rule" strategy yielding a sufficient or even habitable outcome at Copenhagen, as various nations have been making abundantly clear to the US for quite a while.

Only a global treaty of the atmospheric commons, whereby developed nations rapidly reduce their per capita outputs towards an eventually sustainable level,

with developing nations similarly starting such cuts as their per capita outputs approach parity,

has any hope of :

a/. being agreed at Copenhagen, and

b/. of providing a sufficient contraction of global outputs to enjoy the 50% chance of staying below 2 dC of global warming.

It appears that the US body politic has yet to understand the nature of its real position as a terminally destabilized superpower.

Regards,

Billhook

I've no information on the likelyhood of the Senate strengthening the bill,but there are clear pointers as to the scale of change needed if it is to become more of a help than a hindrance to the resolution of the global problem of human pollution destabilizing the climate.

Both the Chinese govt and the IPCC have been calling for the US to commit to a 40% cut by 2020 on its 1990 emissions, while the UK has, like other EU states, committed to around a 30% cut by 2020 given a global deal being agreed.

Thus if Obama really wants to provide US leadership on the issue, then he'd better see to it that the senate raises the bill's goal from its ludicrous 4% by 2020 at least to more than 30%.

Alternatively, we in Europe could fall in line with US "leadership" by cutting our commitments to just 3%.

If 4% is the best the US can manage, why should anyone else try harder ?

And, given the massive historical responsibility of the US, why should developing countries make any commitment at all ?

Let us be very clear -  a lousy deal at Copenhagen based on the present Waxman-Markey bill would be a far worse outcome than no deal, and ongoing negotiations.

Regards,

Billhook

China, like every other sovereign nation, has a perfect right to do as it pleases. Americans who feel that they should be allowed, or denied, the "privilege" of fossil fuelled development out of massive poverty have merely fallen for the imperial propaganda of America's might, and thus its "right" to order the world as it sees fit.

In reality, America is not only going broke (relative decline is slipping into absolute decline), its material power is so eroded that the latest bunch of tribal zealots it's chosen to suppress are well-experienced in imposing a lethal quagmire.

America's moral power, the international respect for its ethical conduct, is in still worse nick. Not only has Obama chosen to continue Bush's policy of reneging on the Berlin Mandate(whereby Developing nations would participate in the UNFCCC in return for Developed nations making siggnificant cuts below their 1990 GHG outputs before Developing nations would be asked to follow suit )Obama has also now declared the goal merely of cutting US GHG output to around 1990 levels by 2020.

And he's done this this when it is very plain that we need a cut in Developed nations' GHG output of 30% to 40% by 2020, just to have an even chance of avoiding catastrophic global climate detabilization.

Here in Britain we know that when a storm drives 20ft waves onto our coasts, the energy flux is around 1.0 megawatt per metre of wave-front. And the Obama Admin's response to this knowledge ? Cut the funding on Wave Power technology from a mere $40 million to a pathetic $30 million, while pouring another $30,000 million into building GM motorcars.

Not trams or light rail, just motor cars. So we can simply forget the idea of the world buying sustainable US tech en masse.

America's moral authority was ousted during the coup against President Carter; it would be less depressing if more Americans realized this.

Regards,

Billhook

Dave - I see no good reason for you to apologise -

those famous writers who not only fail to inform the public

that the destabilization of climate is an issue of genocide-by-famine,

but also use their texts to undermine the long awaited US legislation on the issue,

richly deserve such critique.

Those who don't see this I guess don't yet see the scale of the genocide that is being prepared.

Maybe it's worth noting that being American is unlikely to grant them immunity ?

Regards,

Billhook

Gesture politics serving right-wing isolationism

Given that Hansen has already claimed that "Science" supports his plan of banning coal while burning all oil & gas ASAP (without the plan's endorsement even by the US National Academy of Science, let alone other nations' academies)
I think you can expect him to claim any support the demo gets as endorsement for his disdain of a global treaty, on all the media that are interested.

To the extent it boosts Hansen's profile, the demo is thus very far from being merely about "getting off coal".

Be assured that I shall be watching very carefully, from across the Atlantic.

Regards,

Billhook
On Authors of economic collapse advise us to stick with coal posted 9 months ago 25 Responses

A demo to enhance Hansen's credibility ?

I'm not aware of the "limited resource" to which you refer; please could you clarify ?

In answer to your question, it is possible that you have not seen (or maybe have not closely considered) Hansen's published proposal (in the letter to Michelle & Barack) regarding an international climate deal.

His aim is, apparently, to get allies to accept a US proposal for a carbon tax, and then to present a fait-acompli to developing nations with the promise of trade sanctions against any nations that fail to comply with America's will.

The idea of coercing all nations into compliance by threat of a trade war, on a critical issue with a scope of many decades, is so farcical that I question his reasons for pushing this line. He is, after all, quite bright.

A line about how the EU carbon trading system has failed, so all cap & trade systems are not viable, is a further example of the utter lack of intellectual rigour he displayed.

So if you want to go to the demo and inadvertently endorse his promotion of those evidently destructive proposals, that's up to you -
but personally I'd at least make clear on a really good banner the sort of global treaty worth aspiring to,
and I'd get it up near the front, facing the cameras, with several stalwart assistants !

Regards,

BillhookOn Authors of economic collapse advise us to stick with coal posted 9 months ago 25 Responses

Can you say "Blind Alley" ?

Or "Cul de Sac", or "Dead End" ?

Whichever term is current in American parlance, it neatly describes the folly of the coming demonstration.

Consider, protesting a token coal-power station, that is so easy a target for reform that Congress leaders have pre-gutted the demo by calling for its closure in advance ?

And consider, protesting the new administration's policy of renegeing on the US' formal commitment to the Berlin Mandate by setting a derisory target of cutting only to 1990 output by 2020 - while doubtless insisting on developing countries' comparable commitments later this year.

Going to Copenhagen with that target would be asking for the BRIC nations to do nothing to constrain their rising output until even later - which will be far far too late to avoid catastrophic climate destabilization.

So which of these two issues urgently needs protesting ?

And which is a blind alley ?

Those who boast about how they're "willing to be arrested" on this demo need to stop and consider just what that arrest would achieve,
and whether this demo is merely a safe sink for dissidents' concerns,  
and how some of us have occasionally faced arrest for over 15 years, but only for worthwhile issues.

Regards,

BillhookOn Authors of economic collapse advise us to stick with coal posted 9 months ago 25 Responses

Hare & the Tortoise

Frflier -
I guess I should have written more clearly with regard to the leading options for remewable power -

Solar PV & Onshore Wind have been pushed as being that, but for all their rates of deployment are ahead of other options their intermittency remains a drawback,
as they require either spinning reserve (usually fossil fuelled) or other similarly costly backup-storage before they can contribute to a power-on-demand supply.

Largely for this reason, Wind has, as you mention, only got as far as about 1% of national power capacity installed last year. We need a rate of replacement ten times that, both in the US and in countries poorer by an order of magnitude.

Thus while I share your interest in CSP, and of course look for such extant intermittent renewables' US deployment as can be funded in a depression,
I remain convinced that there are far better sustainable energy options than have yet been commercialized,
and that it is only by their development that we'll see the global energy-industry reform at the rate required.

Funding for the R,D&D of full or near Power-on-Demand options is thus the priority in my view.

Regards,

BillhookOn Superb NYT story captures both coal's peril and the barriers to its elimination posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 38 Responses

Affordable Power-on-Demand

The absence of an easily demonstrable on-demand non-fossil alternative is surely the fossil lobby's strongest suit.
Which means that its provision would be the sharpest of blades at the throat of the coal industry.

Thus the funding of additional non-fossil energy sources' RD&D seems a paramount priority, but I've heard nothing of it in the Stimulus Bill.
Can anyone say if it's there, and, if so, how much ?

Options such as Geothermal, Coppice Biomass and Offshore Wave, with full or near 24/7 availability, seem to be neatly overshadowed by the options favoured by corporations, such as the notably intermittent Solar PV & Onshore Wind.

Do people really expect the selection of alternative energy options for development NOT to be bent in favour of the fossil fuelled status quo ?
Given that most of society's choices are bent that way, it would seem a rather naive expectation.

So will US environmentalists now press for more energy options, or will they just carry on pushing for the corporations' choices "because they're biggest" ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Superb NYT story captures both coal's peril and the barriers to its elimination posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 38 Responses

Why feed them ?

The primary function of the denier shills is not to win converts,
but to maintain the focus of public debate on the truth of AGW,
thus precluding effective public discussion of what must be done to remedy the problem.

So why, in God's name, would anyone here want to engage these fraudsters ?

And why, given that they regularly violate the site's code of conduct,
is their slander of honest scientists tolerated and published by Grist ?

Regards,

BillhookOn The entire conservative media is informed on climate science by the office of James Inhofe posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 23 Responses

SLR - why no integrated threat assessment ?

thoughtfulman - your assumption that SLR has been a constant 4.6mm/yr for the last 20,000 years is, of course, groundless.
A rather brief survey of the literature will confirm this for you.

Your conclusion, that our pollution thus cannot be causing the current acceleration of SLR reflects a different but equally elementary error, which I would hope the average high school science teacher could explain for you.
.

Joe - I wish you could say when we're likely to see an integrated forecast of SLR within present adults' lifetimes, that is, by say 2050.
By integrated I mean one that includes thermal expansion plus sundry glaciers' melt plus Greenland Ice Cap melt (as the Arctic Ice Cap is lost) plus WAIS melt plus the latter's consequences.

In total these could eventually yield perhaps 17 metres SLR under BAU (roughly 56 feet). But there needs to be a credible assessment of the likely all-sources rise by mid-century under both BAU and war-footing mitigation [WFM}, if this threat is going to properly assist the climate-treaty's negotiation.

Is there someone you could nudge ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Rising sea salinates India's Ganges posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

WAIS poses a far higher threat

The ongoing destabilization of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet threatens far greater additional inundation "in the coming decades & centuries", if we fail to recover sufficient airborne GHGs to achieve global cooling.

As reported here : www.livescience.com/environment/090205-more-sea-level-rise.html

The time scale of such a recovery project implies that we probably cannot avoid the loss of much of the best of the world's farmland, plus our coastal cities and docks.

The foreseeable consequent disruption of our capacity to trade, manufacture and organize complex operations implies that we now face a declining window of opportunity for getting that recovery program under way.

The very possibility of doing so rests, of course, on achieving a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons rather then sliding into mere "devil take the hindermost" confusion & strife.

Regards,

BillhookOn Rising sea salinates India's Ganges posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

Sigmoid Change

The outcome of a 6%pa CO2-eq output cut would not, sadly, get us down to near zero by 2030.
Under the rule-of-70, a 6% exponent would give less than two halvings in that 21 years, i.e. around a 70% cut.

By contrast, a more stringent 9%/pa cut would achieve 75% by 2025, which looks more appropriate, but very severe in its impacts on energy usage in particular, thus
a. predictably cutting economic activity, and
b/. arousing vocal opposition.

However, a simple exponent is far from the optimal rate of change, which would in fact be a sigmoid curve (S-bend) starting slowly before accelerating towards a steepest rate of change as we pass zero net emmissions, (by 2030 ?) and then decelerating as we advance net carbon recovery towards say 265 ppmv CO2-eq. airborne concentration.

These numbers are of course only illustrative, but they may help to impress the point that an effective UN treaty is pre-requisite: it will engage the common interest and effort of the nations, and cannot be replaced (as Hansen proposes) by a mere coercive lever by which the West seeks to force developing nations' compliance.

In the long term, which this issue embodies, global co-operation is plainly our only recourse, meaning that the West's first duty is to acknowledge the equity of a transition to per capita parity of national emissions entitlements.
From this starting point the transfer of funds (for traded entitlement) ring-fenced to recipients' mitigation options, becomes relatively simple and routine.

Under the global economic stresses now foreseeable, it is crucial that this essential transfer of funds reflects the transparently equitable dynamic of Convergence.
Anything less would lack durability.

Regards,

BillhookOn We need to cut emissions faster than 80 percent by 2050, but how fast? posted 10 months, 1 week ago 39 Responses

Accurate Descriptive Warning

Since both Global Warming and Climate Change have long been useful to those who would soothe society into continued inaction,
I've long used "Climate Destabilization" as an accurate descriptive warning of what has begun and what we face in growing intensity.

There are some for whom "destabilization" is reportedly too difficult a word to comprehend, whereupon Climate Chaos, GW or CC must serve.

OTOH, the concept of destabilization tends to be particularly effective in alerting people in finance, industry and politics (for whom stability is golden).
Moreover, awareness of the equally worrying concept of "Climatic Destabilization" flows directly from the use of this terminology.

Regards,

BillhookOn 'Climate change,' 'global warming,' 'climate chaos' -- what terminology fits best? posted 10 months, 1 week ago 34 Responses

Obama to Africa, first.

The smart-suited enviros' long effort to win the public's self-interest argument for appropriately extreme action on climate change has not avoided the present peril.
Nor has it even built a strong protest movement (I saw '68).
Nor has it even got the media addressing the issue as it deserves.

Others may wish to persevere with that strategy, but it seems long past time to me to lead with the moral imperative for stringent action now.

Getting the impacts of climate destabilization on poor Africans into the awareness of wealthy populations could I think be a major step forward, since, (and I'd repeat) at IPCC AR4's launch it was forecast that some African nations will lose 50% of their former food production, by 2020.
The scale of famine there, which our pollution is going to cause, is not easily imagined.

So, if Americans (& others) are to wake up really fast to the scale of what must be done, I'd urge that the president make his very first trip abroad into Africa, including Kenya & Tanzania, (and invite a small excellent press corps).
There are in those countries a good range of both the prototypes of appropriate technologies and farm & forestry practices, as well as the frightful impacts of a destabilizing climate and the cruel suffering that this generates.

The US president will need a new sort of authority to address the climate issue at home and in the UN:
I think he'd better go and get it.

Regards,

BillhookOn What the Obama presidency means posted 10 months, 1 week ago 26 Responses

Upholding the rule ?

Below are Grist's "Posting Rules"

   1. Don't be a jerk. Nobody likes jerks.
   2. Try to avoid profanity. The English language is vast and magnificent.
   3. Do not direct personal attacks at a poster or fellow commenter. Substance, people. Substance.
   4. Don't be a troll. (Troll: Commenter who makes outrageous or provocative statements purely in order to derail discussion.) You know who you are.
   5. No spam, no solicitation, no links to porn, no internet detritus of similar ilk.
   6. Seriously, don't be a jerk.

The post above this appears brazenly to violate items 1, 4, & 6,
with a bunch of tedious long-refuted denialist cant.

So to what extent will Grist's Posting Rules be enforced ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Does a serious bill need action from China? posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 11 Responses

Denialism here is patently Off Topic - divert it !

Given that the obvious central goal of malign denialism
is to anchor debate on the probity of AGW evidence,
thus neatly precluding the advance of discussion onto policies of mitigation
(whereby the shills' benefactors will lose market share)
as is neatly demonstrated above,

it is surely time to constrain the intrusion of brazen denialism (such as this mrrightwing) from diverting threads addressing the mitigation solutions
and most especially the primary mitigation issue of the requisite international negotiations by which a treaty will be achieved.

No doubt there are still enough denialists around to justify some threads addressing their concerns,
but the question should be addressed:
how serious a threat must we face for the flow of constructive discussion to warrant being conserved ?
Kilo-deaths? Mega-deaths ? Giga-deaths ?  A Mass extinction ?

Regards,

Billhook
On China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015 posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 28 Responses

A few millenia of experience of negotiations ?

The government of China is quite capable of fulfilling these threats -
after all, with US AGW culpability and intransigence well attested, it can afford to lose a million people to an extreme climate impact more easily than Washington can ten thousand.

That govt has faced the intransigence of wealthy nations for 17 years since the UN.FCCC was launched. Why should we expect anything but the hardest of hardball tactics ?

The fact of a new US president changes none of the basic calculus:
there is a very limited budget of viable GHG output for this century;
 the US has determinedly spurned each & every opportunity to advance an equitable framework for the international allocation of that budget as tradeable national emission entitlements, progressing over time to per capita parity.

The recent bizarre intervention by Hansen (the most high profile of US scientists)
publicly calling on Obama for the setting of punitive tarrifs on imports from any nations refusing an American regime of carbon taxes,
may well appear from Beijing's POV to signal just more of the same obstructionism
holding policy sway under the new administration -

Neither Europe, nor India, nor Africa, nor Brazil, nor China itself, will accept a treaty based on the mere pork-barrel haggling Hansen presumes.
Any resulting treaty would have little chance of enduring the foreseeable geo-political stresses,
and most nations are fully aware of the need for a durable climate treaty.

Contraction & Convergence was formally tabled by Brazil at Poznan; the seminal change Obama can bring to Copenhagen is to declare US support for Framework, not Guesswork, as the equitable and efficient basis of negotiations.

Regards,

BillhookOn China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015 posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 28 Responses

Testable Hypotheses ?

Research on the incidence of wildfire in US forests showed a very substantial rise that was attributed to climate destabilization.

Not being a statistician, I'm unable to test the degree of confidence behind that claim, nor can I test the degree of probability  that extreme weather events are being similarly multiplied

As I understand it, an untestable hypothesis is one which cannot be verified or disproven.
So what prevents an analysis showing the likelyhood of increasing weather damage being other than a mere fluke ?

Regards,

BillhookOn The real cost is the cost of doing nothing posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 16 Responses

The Farmer's Terms of Trade

Jim, thankyou for this critique of agribusiness.
As a farmer, I'm writing to identify further aspects of the problem that are critical to its resolution.

People working the sheep farms and mountain common grazing here in Wales, just two generations ago, used to get about 60% of the retail price of their stock.
Now we are lucky to get 13%.
Even with subsidies (ending in 2012) we don't make the minimum wage for the hours we work -

We are, effectively, being suppressed in favour of industrialized livestock production abroad. The prices paid here reflect those imports' minimized production costs - which include practices that are both unethical and illegal here.

For example, to avoid the cost of annually dagging their flocks (shearing off shit-caked wool to avoid maggot attacks), it's been standard practice in some countries to skin the area (without anaesthetic) so that surviving ewes will have only wool-free scar tissue.

Those businesses can profitably undercut sustainable EU production costs while sending their meat halfway round the world.

Further raising the bar here for ethical and sustainable production standards will not help - it will only drive more small farms out of business while large concerns just set the costs against tax and swallow the failing small farms.

What is required is the reform of trade rules, from the vicious farce of "free" trade NOT to the gross follies of trade protectionism,
but rather to what should be called "Trade Stewardship."

This is about evaluating the sustainability of agricultural practices and, where particular imports are indexed significantly higher than the mean of the home product they are actively encouraged, but they are tarriffed if indexed significantly lower.

I suggest that there is no more powerful dynamic than trade, and the changes you propose will not only prove unachievable without the above reform of trade terms,
even if they were somehow achieved within USA your newly trained legions of farmers would promptly be put out of business by unsustainable cheap imports.

Is it time for Grist as a whole to face this fact that there is simply no prospect of "Sustainability Within One Country"
however great that country may believe itself to be ?

Surely the critical role for President Obama is not primarily within the US;
it is to help achieve the equitable and sustainable international agreements whereby all nations may start to optimize our common global interdependence.

Without those global agreements, local and national efforts, however laudable, are just pissing into the wind.

Regards,

BillhookOn Studies show mono-cultures, GMOs, and globalization are problems, not solutions posted 11 months ago 3 Responses

Doctrinaire denial serves the corporate interest.

Those who would disdain the use of geo-engineering perhaps overlook the degree of international co-operation required to achieve even Very stringent mitigation, let alone the very very very stringent version remarked above.

Given the necessity of that degree of co-operation, the selection and application of the most reliable geo-engineering techniques becomes feasible as a vital adjunct to the global treaty. Their use would be under highly responsible control, and thus should not form an excuse for any lack of mitigation effort.

To proscribe all such geo-engineering options is doctrinaire politics run wild - and it is also patently impractical.

For instance, this morning we've been moving trailer-loads of cordwood (cut from derelict hedges & coppices) in preparation for kilning it to charcoal prior to its interrment for CCS & soil fertility. Short of being jailed, I and millions of other farmers will continue to expand this practical geo-engineering technique.

We will also lobby for official support to accelerate the option's deployment.

The Biochar Intiative remarks this option's worldwide potential for self-funding CCS from airborne CO2 stocks measured in gigatonnes of carbon per year.

At the other pole of the range of geo-engineering options are fantasies of giant space mirrors, hosts of mechanical trees, etc, whose credibility is enhanced (for some) by (some) Greens' disdain for all the options.
The most lethal critique of such diversions is not mere abstinence, but demonstrating the preferable & viable alternatives.

Surely what is needed is scientists' professionally skilled discrimination to select options for international trials, not those options' arbitrary wholesale rejection on grounds merely that "it might be done badly."

Regards,

Billhook
On Desperate enough to contemplate geo-engineering posted 11 months, 1 week ago 22 Responses

Non-conformity more than skin-deep

It is very good to see a scientist with the courage to disdain the fashion for fabricated facial baldness so promoted,
when so many, even among supposedly free-thinking environmentalists, are subdued into the conformity of the daily ritual farce of shaving.On John Holdren reportedly to be named science adviser posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 4 Responses

The fuel option hidden by CE hype

Hidden behind the hype of this wondrously unproductive CE option for turning biomass to Ethanol lies a largely untapped global resource, namely the coppicing of woodland.

That resource could be multiplied in scale worldwide by orders of magnitude, if there were a sufficient incentive for doing so, without significantly reducing the farmed land area.

The production of liquid fuel from the annual coppice harvest can (and should) yield surplus carbon in the form of charcoal for use in raising soil fertility while also achieving self-funding CCS on a massive scale.
The pyrolysis of wood that allows this diversion of surplus carbon yields the liquid fuel called Methanol (originally called Wood Alcohol).

The best yield to date is from EU funded catalyst research giving 65% by weight, being 650kgs of Methanol per tonne of dry wood, which equals about 120 gls of petrol-equivalent. (Methanol is less energy dense than petrol).

The smallest process tech I've heard of is Washington State Uni's truck-mounted prototype mobile unit for working within the forest.

Methanol's compatibility with IC engines, turbines, and fuel cells is a matter of record, but its potential as a low-temp low-pressure store of hydrogen from surplus renewable electricity is still unrecognized.

Its potential to justify worldwide 'Hansenian Reforestation' with entrained CCS, makes it unique among energy options.

Crucially, it does not rely on the farce of the illusory displacement of fossil fuel by renewable fuel to yield its benign effects.

Yet as long as the CE lobby is allowed to maintain its hype & its subsidy-sucking charade, the Coppice Methanol option seems likely to be ignored, to our immense loss.

Regards,

BillhookOn Cellulosic ethanol's bumpy ride posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 19 Responses

Moreover, Amazing . . .

with respect, I think you may be overlooking the impacts of oil supply peaking.

The possibility of a treaty-led 4% /yr cut in global oil usage in the next few years seems very remote, given the passion for mobility and also the far greater TsGHG / MWH of coal-fired power - (Not interchangeable of course, but you see the point).

The IEA projection is of a massive depletion rate IF there is huge (unprecedented) investment in oil E&D,
yet we are instead seeing the global E&D budgets being hacked by the day.
Without that scale of investment, the IEA projects a pretty catastrophic rate of oil supply decline.

As a long time climate campaigner, I don't question climate's supreme relevance.
Yet the economic impact of PO, with oil supplies getting so tight as to spike prices so as to crash any nascent recovery from this Depression,
I see as a critical hindrance to organizing the finance and logistics for the requisite global industrial reform.

We in the EU & US are in danger, just the same as people in India & China, of knowing fairly well what is needed to end fossil fuel dependence and recover airborne carbon,
but also of lacking the wealth to bring it about as PO both guts our economies
and further empowers the filthy oil substitutes, which cannot of course ever be scaled to resolve the PO destitution problem.

Regards,

BillhookOn After Poland talks, a new reality starts to set in, says McKibben; 350 ppm must be the goal posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 22 Responses

Cunning Stunts at Poznan

Can anyone explain what exactly is meant to be stunning about the tableau shown above ?

The inanity of the banner's message is one possibility, but the fact that neither of the men are wearing skirts while all four women are wearing trousers may well cause much puzzlement in some cultures. But it really doesn't seem very stunning.

So maybe it is the fact of EJCC staff having campaigned on this issue for some years without now proposing anything more helpful than a basic principle (sans definition),
one that is anyway already enshrined in UNFCCC agreed conduct -
that really is a pretty stunning lack of productivity.On Youth advocate for equitable international response to climate change in Poznan posted 11 months, 4 weeks ago 2 Responses

Is Obama competent , or just lippy ?

Joe - you've not given the reasoning behind your claim that a signed but unratified treaty would be the worst possible outcome of Copenhagen.

Nor have you stipulated what global trade penalties would be levied under that treaty against signatories failing to ratify & comply within an agreed period . . .

Nor have you stated just how many Americans must be killed, or farmers made bankrupt, or cities destroyed, by unprecedented weather events before the GOP senators realize that obstructing global mitigation is truly lousy politics . . .

As for your suggestion that President Obama is going to "have to figure out how to replace the UNFCCC process with something more viable",
I think you're overlooking the fact that it is the US (a signatory of UNFCCC) that is disfunctional in its participation, not the UNFCCC process.
For example, as you'll know, the US has yet to honour its formal undertaking in signing the Berlin Mandate.

It would seem you've little regard for the president'elect's judgement in this matter - but again, you've yet to explain why this is so.
Are you able to make such judgments because you are privy to his intended negotiating strategy ? On Obama will never get 67 votes for an international climate treaty in the Senate posted 12 months ago 10 Responses

Fertilizer issues -

Whiskerfish -

as an organic farmer (of native breeds sheep, ponies & Cattle, at between 800ft & 2,000ft in Wales, 52 degrees N)
the fertilizer problems are far easier here than in the drylands of Africa.

We can produce fodder for cattle wintered in, whose dung is then matured before spreading.
It could, with some heavy capital input, be processed via a fermenter into a really high quality fertilizer.

The use of those slurry fermenters (aka "methane digesters") has been tried for decades in developing countries, with no very notable successes on extensive farms. In India the gov.t funded over 60,000 village scale brick units, before realizing that they were not being used because the villagers didn't find plodding round the fields daily to collect the dung worthwhile.

It appears this tech is useful where many animals can be housed either daily (for milking) or seasonally (to avoid poaching the land) or on an agribusiness feedlot system.

With regard to the use of inorganic fertilizer, there is of course much that can be done (over a number of years) to avoid dependence on it.
Meanwhile, people need to eat.

Thus if the West's free market economy is going to avoid causing unprecedented genocide by famine as climate destabilization intensifies, among other things chemical fertilizers must where necessary be made available for poor nations to distribute.On Impoverished Africans can't eat their own crops posted 1 year ago 18 Responses

Peak Oil intensifies climate destabilization.

Given that only one Saudi-scale resource has been found in the last 70 years of prospecting, there is plainly no prospect of unearthing six more by 2030.
Moreover, we cannot afford the unconventional liquid fuels' expansion, either financially or atmospherically or, bizarrely, in energy terms, (given their consumption of coal or gas or power as process inputs).

The crash in oil prices from $147/bbl was mirrored in many other commodities as the scale of the looming recession became clearer, and as the margin calls on major banks positions became imperative.

Thus it may be that the rate of oil supply in Sept '08 was the final peak, with continued depletion during the recession precluding increased supply (above 85mbbl/day) if and when economic growth restarts.
Certainly there are reports from worldwide of vital oil exploration & development being sharply curtailed under the $50/bbl price regime.

A likely prospect is of a sawtooth progress of economic decline, with spurts of growth allowing oil-demand, & prices, to rise to the point of stalling that growth back into recession.

The recent drives for tar-sands, ex-rainforest biofuels, coal-to-oil, methyl hydrates, liquid hydrogen and even nuclear electricity
all stem to some extent from the long-foreseen crisis of peak oil.

Perhaps the most vicious of cycles that we face is the fact that the poorer our societies get, the less able we are to afford the orderly adoption of sustainable technologies and resource-usages that could launch a new global economy that is not reliant on the discredited doctrine of endless economic growth on a finite planet.

Thus I have to draw attention to that fine old quip:

"IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK !"
On Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? posted 1 year ago 6 Responses

Coal Moratorium - Who goes without ?

Vakibs -

I see you choose not to address the various points listed above, which cuts the scope of discussion substantially.

FYI, my first successful campaigning against coal-fired power (intendedly the largest such plant in Europe)
was at Fawley in Hants., UK back in the mid '80s, when we had no support at all from the NGOs.
So no, I'm not from the deniers' camp.

That Hansen claims "It will be easy" to get BRIC support for a coal moratorium in 2030 if western nations adopt one in 2015, is news to me. I've seen no such quote.

Your faith in the affordability, practicality & desirability of techno solutions to energy shortfalls,
such as nuclear power for developing nations like DR Congo, Vietnam, and Venezuela,
is really touching, but wholly unconvincing.

And by the way, not all scientists care a zilch about politics - some take their duty to participate very seriously.
Sadly Hansen, great scientist that he is, has apparently yet to give enough thought to this matter to provide a useful proposal.On James Hansen's recent post on climate change posted 1 year ago 26 Responses

Prof. Hansen - Political Strategist ?

Ive yet to see a cogent account by Hansen (who has my profound respect as a scientist)
as to why he claims it is practical politics to end coal-usage globally, but not oil usage.

For those nations with much coal and little oil,
(such as China & India, whose assiduous co-operation is indispensable)
this apparently arbitrary preference cannot be raising confidence
in the good professor's political judgment.

OTOH, this US-led ban on coal would be a convenient stick for a newly zealous US climate diplomacy
to weild against the BRIC nations . . . .

The actual problem is of course excess GHGs, not one or other particular source of them.
TsCO2eq is the unifying metric for accounting the nations' compliance with their Treaty-allocated emission-rights, under a rapidly tightening global cap, on the curve to per capita parity.

Why Hansen wants to try to distract attention from this widely recognized reality has yet to be explained.
On James Hansen's recent post on climate change posted 1 year ago 26 Responses

Durability under operational stress

I'm unable to argue for the superiority of the carbon tax,
but there is an aspect of the case for "Cap, Allocate & Trade" which warrants wider discussion.

It is the matter of practical electoral politics and the responsibility for setting C tax levels to meet an emissions goal agreed by binding global treaty.

Had Obama been promising to get gas prices up over $4.50 to choke off demand significantly so as to meet that goal,
by how wide a margin would he have lost the election ?
And just what fraction of republicans candidates would honour problematic international treaties ?

OTOH, had Obama been promising to set up the auction of C emission-rights
to respect small businesses' weaker bidding power, might he not have won by a larger margin,
perhaps with the vital extra few senators to preclude filibusters ?

Just asking . . . On Why should we assume that a carbon tax will be simple and transparent? posted 1 year ago 11 Responses

Transformation, using what for money ?

There are indeed "so many opportunities", but ironically the US is no longer in a position to invest in them on a scale to transform the society.
Reagan's coup against Carter foreclosed on that option.

The real wealth declined years ago, (along with the C20 protestant work ethic), and the virtual wealth, namely international creditworthyness, is next to go.

As elites worldwide strive to maintain the tottering global house-of-cards financial structure, US treasury bills are still respected,
but the thought of loading foreign creditor Govt.s with enough of them to fund the proposed transformation of US industry,
well forget it.

The transformation that America can afford is to a simpler, lower tech, lower energy, more localised way of life.

Aiming too high is a sure way of missing the trail altogether.On Republicans refuse bailout; Obama wants auto czar posted 1 year ago 13 Responses

Sustainable Baseload Options

2Wheeler -
sorry to have posted so as to lead you to read me as a "naysayer" --- I ain't one of those.

There are of course options, and lab hypotheses, for energy storage of intermittent power supplies,
but the costs of applying them on the scale needed erodes the whole package's affordability for developing countries, without whose co-operation we're finished.

Therefore we need to focus first on the PoD options (Power on Demand) such as coppice forestry, geothermal, etc;
then on the schedule intermittents, such as tidal currents;
and only then on minimal intermittents, such as wave energy, solar thermal, etc.

Highly intermittent sources, such as Onshore Wind, should have minimum priority.On Sierra Club win shuts down 30 proposed coal plants at a stroke posted 1 year ago 14 Responses

After crude coal, what fuels baseload ?

Were the new govt to uphold this decision, and were no further coal without CCS built,
the consequences would remain unclear.

The rust-out of old coal-fired plants means either : that reduced supply will be available -
or that massively costly CCS must be developed in extreme haste for all new plants,
or that still greater reliance must be invested in exorbitant new nuclear plants,
or that unprecedented govt. funds must be printed for a crash program of non-fossil energy deployments.

Sadly none of the above seems electorally benign.

Personally I doubt that the US fixation on Wind & Solar would be as helpful globally
as other simpler technologies.On Sierra Club win shuts down 30 proposed coal plants at a stroke posted 1 year ago 14 Responses

Woodfuel's infinite bounded potential

For all Mr Gore richly deserves the Nobel prize for his campaigning,
his claim that the British industrial revolution turned to coal
because it had reached peak wood fuel supply
is simply wrong.

Speaking as a Brit, I'd point out that "peak forest area" occurred here well before the industrial revolution - at around 5,000 BC.
"Peak fuelwood usage" was around 1700 AD, but that was essentially from wholly sustainable resources known as Coppice Woodland.

[In this silviculture, deciduous trees are felled at between 5 & 30 years of growth, and are then allowed to regrow from the stump, which they do about 20% faster than a new sapling. Our oldest such tree, a hazel at Ashford in Kent, has been regularly coppiced since it was planted during the Roman occupation].

To avoid ridicule as an ill-informed bandwagoner, Mr Gore needs to understand that,
in the early C18, the largest industrial building on the planet
which was an iron foundry at Backbeck in Cumbria,
was fuelled with charcoal made from some of the coppice woods
that then clad most of the lake district.

What coppice could not offer industry was exponential economic growth, given its land-use constraints.

Coal mine owners were of course happy to oblige foundry owners with sufficient fuel for that terrible folly,
whose consequences now imperil us all.

WIt bears repeating: what drove the shift to fossil fuels was not a prospect of a decline of fuel wood supplies;
it was the long-term exponential growth potential of coal-firing.

Moreover, I'd challenge Mr Gore's implication that PO is driving the development of sustainable energies -
it is not - these have been in sporadic development for 40 years,
primarily as a means of avoiding ecological & societal damages.

What PO has driven has been huge investment variously into Agri-biofuels, into tar-sands, into tar shales, into CTL, into nuclear, into C. Ethanol, etc.

Plainly, the ethic of the motivation for a new energy supply is critical to the ecological & societal consequences that are generated.

So when is Mr Gore going to acknowledge that economic growth
was & is a suicidal doctrine,
that is now in terminal decline ?

Regards,

BilhookOn Al Gore stumps for climate action at Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire fundraiser posted 1 year, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Baseline solution in isolation ?

While any such official planning of significant CO2e output cuts is to be welcomed,
hyping the target numbers to the public seems just counterproductive,
given the need to build trust around the issue.

The UNFCCC baseline for national cuts in emissions is 1990,
and the projected peak of Florida's output is 2010,
but instead of either of these dates, 2005 has been chosen as the baseline,
which just happens to give a notional 50% cut by 2025.

Assuming that America will one day return to diplomatic relations
with the rest of the world (as opposed to current pseudo-imperial ones)
the UNFCCC 1990 baseline is very likely to be acknowledged
since the US has in fact already signed up to it. [Berlin, 1995].
So hadn't Florida better participate now
rather than backtracking before its electorate in the future ?

In doing so it would then be aiming for around a 36% cut by 2025,
which would be comfortably close to the EU (multilateral) target of a 30% cut by 2020.

Regards,

BillhookOn A 50 percent GHG cut by 2025 will save Florida $28 billion posted 1 year, 1 month ago 1 Response

If it ain't global . . . . . qui bono ?

It is puzzling just why those posting here on Grist sometimes seem unaware that environmental damage issues are inherently global -
and so propose solutions that may be apt for the US,
but do so with no apparent interest in their outcomes for the ecosystems around the other 95% of humanity.

There are of course national nuances to any solution with global applicability, but essentially, if it lacks that overall relevance then,
as some dishonest thug once declared accurately,
"it ain't global and it won't work !"

Two such cases are advocated in posts above.
Cellulosic Ethanol, with its highly patented high-tech massive-scale processing,
and Biogas Fuel-cell Power, with its long proven dependence on intensive livestock agribusiness,
may perhaps function in the US for a while,
but the chances of them making any significantly useful impact in the rest of the world are negligible.

Another post above declares that wood should only be used to displace coal-fired power and not for making liquid fuels, and so overlooks a different weakness of global relevance -

Many poorer nations are near or already past the peak of oil supplies affordable by their populations. The ongoing basic supply of liquid fuels is crucial for these societies, which, due to their poverty, anyway tend to have low GHG emissions relative to wealthier states.

In these circs. it is entirely justified that sustainably produced wood be used for liquid fuel for primary transport, tractors, etc, rather than for power production.

Wealthy nations should of course know well their direct strategic interest in avoiding poor countries' falling into extremism and ungovernable chaos. To this end, R.D&D to encourage novel production of affordable liquid fuels is of more than just ecological & climate-stability interest: both humanitarian and security interests are also engaged.

So, meaning no disrespect, I'd urge Grist participants to apply the test of global relevance to proposals before advocating them in the discussions here.

Regards,

BillhookOn AP: cellulosic 'not even close' to being ready to satisfy government mandates posted 1 year, 1 month ago 30 Responses

The denial of Wood Alcohol's development.

The much touted promise of cellulosic ethanol has already achieved a significant effect, whether intentionally or not.

It has for many years swamped any commercial effort to advance wood alcohol production, aka the brilliantly clean-burning fuel, methanol.

The formal planning in the 'late '70s/early '80s by International Harvester Corp. of a small modular wood-to-methanol plant reduced the capital cost per "annual gallon" produced by more than an order of magnitude.
The corporation was then dismembered before the plans were enacted.

We now have even greater need of sustainable coppice reforestation globally for a broad spectrum of reasons. These include, IMHO, the provision of charcoal for Terra Preta and of liquid fuels for primary transport.
Pyrolysing wood yields twice the carbon per unit of hydrogen that is required for methanol production [CH3OH], so a synergystic dual-yield production regime is entirely feasible.

By the concerted sales of these two products from village scale refineries (that minimize feedstock transport costs) the reforestation projects could become very attractive for investment, meaning that one of the major carbon recovery options could become self-funding in any country where deciduous trees grow well.

That bears rephrasing - a major self-funding carbon recovery option, that offers a means of liquid fuel production, while enhancing food production, can be established wherever in the world deciduous trees grow well.

Who could object to that ?

But no, the shills say, let's just carry on waiting for the modern high tech option of cellulosic ethanol - which someday could process all that wasted corn stover - oh and maybe some "forest residues" too !

Regards,

BillhookOn AP: cellulosic 'not even close' to being ready to satisfy government mandates posted 1 year, 1 month ago 30 Responses

Auction-your-neighbour's energy usage ?

A critical demerit of the option of auctioning emission permits is being demonstrated in the EU.
The proposal of an EU-wide GHG cut of a mere 20% by 2020 is being blocked by eastern states ostensibly because of the impractical inequity of energy usage rights going to the highest bidder.

Quote:

"Under the EU's voting rules, some decisions may be blocked by a certain number of member states representing enough voting power.

The EC's proposal sets full auctioning of the CO2 emission permits as of 2013. The six states want to delay this, arguing their power plants will not have enough cash to compete with giants like the Germany's E.ON on the free-market auctions.

At present, industry gets some permits for free and companies have to buy additional ones only if they exceed their granted quotas."
______________

This dynamic implies that sufficient permits must be auctioned within each state's suppliers to meet its central needs, for the auction route to be both feasible and durable in operation.

Notably, allocation of the permits per capita, harnessing the local interest in trading them to ensure local energy supply,
and to an extent to encourage sustainable energy projects,
would further nullify this obstacle.

Regards,

BillhookOn Australia's Garnaut Report gets usual reactions from usual suspects posted 1 year, 1 month ago 8 Responses

Urgency counted in (black) families' lives

Upthread Mad Mac writes how there are :

"decent scientific arguments that Climate Change is not a serious issue yet - not serious enough to risk dislocating the global economy."

This ignores the current impacts of climate destabilization on rural subsistence-farming communities,
let alone the IPCC's warnings that, for instance,
some African countries are on track to lose half their farm yields to drought by 2020.

Am I right in thinking that, if the children starving were (white) Americans,
then any claim that
"Climate Change is not a serious issue yet"
would get ripped apart here on Grist ?

The post's tangential claim that effective response risks dislocating the global economy
is of course just special pleading for US decadence to be allowed to continue,
even though its biofuels-mandate and other policies are already dislocating various nations' economies.

This is an issue of US-led genocide, and the record of paid denialists of this fact
goes back even before the scams of the fossil fuel industry set up the "Global Climate Coalition" in the early '90s.

Pretending that trained denialists are just honestly mistaken,
when there are many millions of lives at stake,
is not only a classic propaganda ploy,
it also culpably ignores the duty of care that underlies the Precautionary Principle.On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

Has runaway climate change begun ?

For what it's worth: to answer the thread's question,

we'd need to quantify the total CO2-equivalent influence
of the full range of active positive feedback loops
and also the current annual capacity of the planet's carbon sinks.

This would be no small task.

If and when the former exceeds the latter, then we should be unable
to halt the increase of airborne carbon due to the overflowing sinks,
even by halting all anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Only then would "runaway climate change" have begun.

While we are some way off that point,
the momentum of some of the feedbacks' acceleration
is such that we'd be committed to it long before we reached it.

The one sure-fire way to ensure that awful commitment occurs
is for well-informed people to cop out and seek an illusion of safety
in personalised bolt holes.

An almost equally defeatist & deluded plan is to spend ones time striving
for renewable energy developments, which,
alongside energy conservation & efficiency measures,
merely leave fossil fuels on the markets for others to buy -

What is required is a well focussed global effort
 on achieving an equitable & efficient Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.
Once it is in place, with an agreed declining global budget for GHG output,
and with agreed allocations of tradable national emission rights converging,
over time, from current wealth-based usage to global per capita parity,
then industry is no longer disadvantaged by national carbon constraints,
nor does it have incentive to move abroad,
and the above critiques of practical development actions are nullified.

Perhaps the best black joke around is that,
even with this news of the Hydrates starting to collapse,
just how few people are willing to face personally
 the specific task of advancing that requisite treaty.

By my (uncertain) maths, out of a 6.5 billion population,
it's not even one person in ten thousand !

So if you're not already involved,
and happen to have nothing better to do . . . .

Regards,

BillhookOn Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 2 months ago 31 Responses

The Means [applied] are the End [received]

Joseph -
I'm puzzled by the schedule and orientation of your recommendations.

Thermo-electric would predictably be applied, if researchers are succesful after maybe 20 years of RD&D, primarily to raising the efficiency of FF combustion plants. That efficiency gain (counted in $ & C) would, predictably, raise the saleability of such plants, as is amply evidenced under Jevons Paradox.

TE could of course be applied to H Fuel Cells, or Geothermal, or even Woodgas power, but none of these will gain as much cred from the prospect of TE as will the well-heeled fossil fuel industry.

Declaring that TE is the one tech with potential for a significant scale of breakthrough hints at a dubious orientation. A technology that results in making FF more attractive is surely the antithesis of advancing sustainable energy supply ?

The schedule you propose, of cutting global GHG output by 50% by 2050 [that is, halving it in two generations time] is so late that it's supported by Tony Blair.

You must know better than most that such a delay in energy reform will, very probably, massively accelerate the major feedbacks, (albido loss, forest & soil loss, permafrost, clathrates etc) putting the possibility of reliable harvests, let alone stable seashores, simply beyond our reach. Permanently.

I doubt that you seek merely to appease the status quo, since again you have to know how totally counter-productive appeasement is.

Care to explain ?

Regards,

BillhookOn The one clean-tech breakthrough that could lead to a core climate solution: Thermoelectricity posted 1 year, 2 months ago 10 Responses

Why : Stabilization; 350ppmv ; & 0.6dC ?

Joseph, thanks for your very informative article, with whose final conclusion I'd generally concur.

Three questions arise that I'm hoping you can resolve.

1st, given that we have a small and declining capacity to forecast any year's CO2-equiv output of the diverse accelerating P-feedback loops
(due to intensifying destabilization of the climate)
and given that we'll have a limited capacity even under a global climate treaty to adjust anthro-GHG outputs annually to offset those unexpected P-feedback effects over and above the agreed treaty control-rates,

how exactly is stabilization anything more than a rhetorical goal ?

That we might one day recover sufficient airborne GHGs to restore a pre-industrial climate and thus restore a natural stabilization,
I don't dispute,
but I've yet to see a rational plan for doing so at any level where P-feedbacks are active.

Which raises the 2nd question - The earliest active P-feedback was AFAIK that of the microbial response to raised CO2,
causing an exponentially rising decay of peat bogs globally,
resulting in the troubling DOC count for watercourses.
That DOC count was first recorded in the early '60s, when CO2 was around 320ppmv.
The concentration at which this P-feedback actually began is not known.
So the 2nd question is, why 350 ppmv rather than 320 ppmv ?

The simplest target, which I suggest will also attract the best cultural take-up, is to aim to recover sufficient carbon to restore the pre-industrial concentration just as soon as that is feasible.

A 3rd question is this :- can you explain why, if as you say the P-feedbacks will unavoidably deliver another 0.6dC of GW in coming decades,
short of our somehow cutting airborne CO2 to 350ppmv by the date that they've done so,
what phenomenon is then expected to close down those P-feedbacks from making further contributions after that date ?

Is not the reality that the P-feedbacks will only decellerate (after a time lag) in response to a sufficiently large cut of airborne GHG concentrations below their present level ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Get back to 350 ppm or risk an ice-free planet posted 1 year, 8 months ago 3 Responses

L-W booster reduced to waffle

Without a US signature there will be no climate treaty in 2009 -
as anyone with a basic grasp of the last 16 years of climate negotiations is well aware.

I have explained just what we have to lose in seeing L-W signed off by Bush.

If you choose to ignore that reality for your own interests, then that's your affair;
it's of no further interest to me.

Regards,

BillhookOn Bush administration quietly acknowledges climate plan is doable posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

Delusions of Isolation

How is it that even here, where people are supposedly seeking policies for sustainability,
the naive folly of isolationism is so prevalent ?

Katwink's post is a case in point,
amplifying the complacency of the article above.

We have UN negotiations coming to a head in the next two years and,
far from demanding policy to optimize their outcome,
an utterly irrelevant and potentially critically obstructive bill
is declared to be "a start".

As if we have 95% of the world just longing to fall into line and solve the problem by hacking their economies when America deigns to make even a gesture-scale cut ?

America will have to commit to a radical rate of GHG cuts (X% by Ydate)
if developing nations are going to commit to contracting their emissions sufficiently
to avoid catastrophic climate destabilization.

Likewise, as China has recently indicated,
the allocation of national emission-entitlements under that annually declining budget
will have to converge over a period of years from reflecting GDP to reflecting population size if developing countries are to sign on to a treaty.

To have as new US law a mere 50% cut by 2050 means US negotiators would be hamstrung in the UN talks,
thus minimizing the chance of their agreeing an effective treaty.

And, be it clearly understood,
the treaty is pre-requisite for the utility of any national actions whatsoever.
Without all nations' commitment to its annually declining global emissions budget,
one nation's cuts are just another nation's cheaper fuel supplies.

Thus the L-W bill is a neat spoiler, not "a start".

So wake up and smell the genocide that your country has been leading the world into.

Regards,

BillhookOn Bush administration quietly acknowledges climate plan is doable posted 1 year, 8 months ago 17 Responses

Green bigotry is not affordable. -

Carbon Trading, Albido Enhancement, Reforestation -
everyone knows these are just BAD aren't they ?
I mean, if they can be done badly, that means they are bad,
and their proponents are to be ignored or derided or both.

No matter that doing so excludes options that are patently vital to minimizing the climate megadeaths that US leadership,
aided by the competence of, and public respect, for the Environment Movement,
has imposed on the world.

That absolutist attitude is bullshit, and I suggest the post above supposedly defining the outcomes of all classes of Geo-engineering
is a classic example of that pathetically dumb genre.

On the simplistico flip-side, everybody knows that  Windpower, Solar Power and Energy Efficiency are GOOD, aren't they ?
Regardless of what corporatist slavery underpins their manufacture,
of what vile materials are mined and processed and shipped globally,
of what gross intrusion their installation-impact imposes,
or the fact that they just leave fossil fuel on the market for others to buy and burn.
Everyone knows, anyone raising these critiques is again to be ignored or derided or both.

So isn't it time that these issues were addressed with a more adult sense of discrimination,
rather than the petty schoolyard bigotry of "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys"?

Well let's all join in the chorus now about the fearsome dangers of that dirty woodsmoke with its dioxins and all -
while nibbling on smoked salmon sandwiches and gnawing on smoked chicken drumsticks . . . . .

(Sorry Canis, but I do eat some of your relatives now & again).

Regards,

BillhookOn Geo-engineering: cooking up solutions just like nature used to make posted 1 year, 8 months ago 9 Responses

The Official status of CO2 ?

Some years ago I read of the EPA's prevarication on grounds that CO2 was not a pollutant,
in that it caused no demonstrable toxic effect to organisms at ambient (elevated) concentrations.

Is this still the EPA's position ? I know that Anthro CO2 emissions function re GW is officially accepted, albeit without any intention to act on the issue, but the toxicity issue is actually far more basic, and potentially more potent in turning the EPA's conduct.

The reason I ask is that the toxicity of elevated CO2 was demonstrated about 4 years ago by Dr Farmer of Aberystwyth Uni in Wales, whose findings were then published in Nature.
(The toxic effect was in causing the microbial decay of peat into exponentially rising volumes of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) being transported off by watercourses, to the destruction of peat-bog ecosystems).

If the EPA has not yet acknowledged these findings, then its conduct re CO2 in general are in dereliction of its formal duties.
In which circs the director could be subject to prosecution.

So does anyone know the position on this issue ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Johnson made a decision that should have belonged to Congress posted 1 year, 8 months ago 10 Responses

A Climate Treaty is the first priority

PJD - I'll have a go at what you ask, but please tolerate my going over ground of which you may (but may not) be well aware.

The global requirement advised by the IPCC was to cut our global CO2 emissions by 60% to 80% to stop adding to the problem of the 37% excess atmospheric CO2. (384ppmv over 280ppmv pre-industrial).
This advice reflected the planet's sinks' erstwhile capacity to sequester between 20% and 40% of our annual CO2 output. (Wide annual variability).

Two hazards arising should be noted here -
first, the oceanic sink, which is by far the greatest, is in process of decline due both to the oceans' increasing acidity and to the emerging destabilization of plankton dynamics;
second, a range of positive feedback loops are accelerating, and include several that could grow to simply dwarf our emissions' impact if they are given further stimulus via global warming. There is a possibility that they will offset the 20% to 40% natural sinks' capacity, after which global warming would be entirely self-fuelling - and our belated good behaviour would be entirely irrelevant.

From this viewpoint it is plain that a plan to cut CO2 outputs by 80% by 2050 is, in reality, a plan to continue adding to the problem of excess airborne CO2 for the next 42 years, or 2 generations, until 2050.

Some highly reputable scientists calculated that a ceiling of 2 dC of warming would give a 50% chance of avoiding the feedbacks taking over, and would require a 90% global cut by 2050, keeping CO2 at no more that 450ppmv. For all this ceiling has been widely adopted, it was only produced as an incomplete scenario, in that it took no overall account of the diverse feedback loops, whose dynamic interactions have yet to be modelled reliably.

Hansen has publicized this goal's shortcomings, and proposed 400 ppmv instead, perhaps as the furthest edge of what the fossil-based status quo could comprehend.
I myself proposed some years ago (in New Scientist) that any goal over 320 ppmv is rhetorical rather than scientific, since the impact of elevated airborne CO2 on peat bacteria dynamics
(that have resulted in a 6% p.a. exponential rise in DOC [Dissolved Organic Carbon] in watercourses from decomposing peat, from whence that carbon outgases as CO2)
was first recorded in 1961, when airborne CO2 was around 320ppmv.

Given that this feedback will, if not controlled, be releasing ex-peat CO2  equal to our total global 2003 output by 2060, we plainly have to end additions and to recover airborne CO2 to get down to well below 320ppmv,
and what's more, we have to do so with extreme urgency if we are to outrun the overall posse of feedbacks.

That urgency is one of the problems with the US climate bill.
Given a treaty encompassing Contraction & Convergence
(the contraction being the annual cut in a global GHG output budget to meet a target ppmv x target year,
and the convergence being the transition over an agreed number of years from the present national shares of emission-rights according to wealth to those national shares being set according to population, i.e. per capita)
the US Bill fixing 80% by 2050 would not matter a damn if we had several centuries to address the problem.

Note that the bill sets in US law a goal for the US, the greatest originator of the GW problem by far, that is less than the deficient 90% goal for the whole planet.

If America is only cutting by 80%, to get even to a global 80% cut by 2050 every other nation would have to make the same 80% cut.

So try telling that to Papua New Guinea, with its four ambulances and eleven trucks.
Or to Asia, Africa and South America, with their aspirations to raise their peoples out of poverty.

So, if (1) an 80% cut was sufficient to recover airborne carbon down to pre-industrial level,
and (2) if we had centuries in which other nations could follow suit in making that cut,
then (3) the bill's target might be workable,
but (1) it isn't, (2) we haven't, and (3) it ain't.

The US target cut could rise somewhat nearer 100% (in the absence of Congress clinging to the present bill) but not to a sufficient extent to bring other major IIIW nations on board. The variable that will have to be used is that of the target date for America to reach a deep cut - by the inexorable maths of convergence it will be brought forward greatly to allow the US to carry its fair share of the effort of rapid transformation, without which developing nations simply will not participate.

So, what is the chance of the bill, if it became law, being ditched overnight in favour of a more acceptable US target of, say, 95% x 2028, that will require the US to buy in large volumes of permit quite early in the treaty period ?

Even without the bill as a legal/emotional/media obstruction such a target will be problematic to get ratified;  
with the bill in place the US diplomats would be pretty well hamstrung as negotiators.  

Thus I would repeat that the attempt to get the legislatures fixated on an utterly deficient target of an 80% cut x 2050 is no less than a delayed-action spoiler tactic against the UNFCCC negotiations that will occur after Cheyney and his puppet are out of office.
_____________

Canis - thanks for your response re the `Murkan-supremacist tendency -
One useful line may be that of how there are far more decent, honest, well-educated, freedom-loving Chinese than there are Americans,
which is not at all surprising given that China has over four times the population . . . .
________________

Ce1907 - I don't recognize the limited choice of bedfellows that you propose.
First, there are numerous businesses that see the stark danger of Climate Destabilization, and are actively calling for massive Govt intervention via an effective treaty - (Royal Dutch Shell & Munich Re are two such)
and are doing so out of fear of the chaotic climate impacts on the business environment, let alone on people, and not from any identifiable wish to profiteer from the changes.

Just one such impact is the overnight loss of fixed assets' collateral value that is suffered by any business losing its weather-impacts insurance cover - and that is not a sole-victim event - every business trading with the one so hit is also affected to some extent, notably in terms of investment confidence as climate destabilization advances.

With regard to the ageing hooker Imhofe, to my mind this bill is being shaped by his patrons and is a classic obstruction of the vital global treaty, without which the fear of loss of competitiveness stymies most nations' will to act.

But maybe you think that the US will actually start making serious cuts without a global treaty having been agreed ? If so I think you're in for a long wait.

So if you want to climb into bed with Imhofe's owners in seeing this bill get past the senate, that's up to you - but its not quite the action I'm seeking.

Regards,
Billhook
On A safety valve in Lieberman-Warner is senseless posted 1 year, 9 months ago 24 Responses

Graphic Limitations

While I applaud the author's strong critique of the present irrational support for agri-biofuels,
the chart posted does itself need some critique to avoid some misleading implications,
specifically as regards the "abatement costs" of forest energies.

For instance, it's worth noting that

1/. The chart apparently reflects UK production  costs which, for sylvi-biofuels in developing countries may be an order of magnitude cheaper due to better growth rates and harvesting by machete rather than by huge specialist machinery.

2/. SRC (aka Short Rotation Coppice) requires fair arable land, plus heavy annual chemical inputs, plus grubbing up and replanting after 20 years, none of which applies to traditional moderate and long-cycle coppice, for which no costs are shown.

3/. Domestic heating with local firewood is costing the UK's country people only around £80 T C "abated."

4. The idea of Carbon Abatement, that one tonne of fossil fuel carbon is not emitted because I burn two tonnes of firewood, is a delusion.
All I've done is to leave the fossil fuel on the market for someone else to buy and burn.
Only by means of more Govt.s' accepting Convergence to per capita parity of national emission entitlements
to succeed in negotiating a global Contraction of net GHG emissions
under a UN "Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons"
will such "abatement" become anything more useful than unilateral personal restraint.

Regards,

BillhookOn An alternative view on biofuels, from a Briton in Sudan posted 2 years ago 19 Responses

'Ceptin' Alice . . .

Sam,

would a fuel tank for Methanol (Wood Alcohol) that flows to a reformer which yields H2 & CO to a vehicle's 'Direct Methanol Fuel Cell'
meet to criteria you set ?

If so, that would indeed be cool, since the DMFC is already (thus far) >35% efficient,
i.e. far better than the normal ICE vehicles.

Regards,

BillhookOn Full-cell company bought by Daimler and Ford posted 2 years ago 55 Responses

What action is how affordable to whom ?

Proposing that "action is affordable" seems pretty near meaningless without the relevant qualifiers.

For instance, large standard % cuts in emissions by all nations would not be affordable without massive N to S wealth transfers,
(any more that they would be negotiable),
since, in the absence of those transfers, the ensuing collapse of S nations' economies would be transmitted directly to impact N nations by a host of routes.

An equitable global distribution of future emissions rights, reflecting the current size of nations' populations (and not, de facto, their GDP)
is plainly a requisite factor of the  global solution's global affordability.

This transition, over an agreed period of years, from GDP-based to per capita emission rights, is termed "Convergence" in the UNFCCC negotiations.

The other key requirement is a rate of decline of the global emissions budget to avoid feedback loops pushing the climate into untenable, catastrophic destabilization - specifically of our biodiversity, our potable water, our farming and our built infrastructure.

A limit of 2 dC of GW, reflecting 450ppmv of airborne CO2e, has been widely credited as giving not certainty but at least a fair confidence of sufficiently constraining the feedbacks.

However, researchers working for the British organization, Climate Equity, have discredited this 2 dC target as being utterly unsafe,
given that (to put it briefly) ~
21ft of global sea level rise is held in the Greenland Ice Cap due to the Arctic Ice Cap's encompassing presence,
without which the best of the world's farmland and coastal cities, towns and villages will steadily be lost -

And the loss of the Arctic Ice Cap began when we had only O.5 dC of GW, with a mere 320ppmv of CO2.
(See www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/targets.pdf )

In one sense, the eventual emissions goal is less relevant for us today than is finding the maximum endurable rate of change out of dependence on GHG emissions.
That is the trua application of the concept of affordability.

In this light, the Dem candidates' proposed 80% cut in 43 years time by the planet's wealthiest nation is just more self-serving decadence, and richly deserves the international derision it is going to earn.

The rational and prudent global target-rate for the cutting or "Contraction" of emissions seems to me to pass net-zero GHG emissions well before say 2040, and then to continue with the cleansing of the atmosphere, (by sustainable reforestation, etc) until our descendants have "recovered" sufficient CO2 to restore the natural CO2 concentration of 250 ppmv.

The strategy would thus be one of "Contraction & Convergence for Recovery."

Given that the overall climate policy framework of "Contraction & Convergence" has now been so widely endorsed,
(see www.gci.org.uk )
and that no other such framework has earned the formal endorsement even of a single minor government or UN agency,
is it not time that the US Environment movement  began to discuss (preferably here on Grist)
the C&C framework with which, in all likelyhood, it is going to have to work ?

Regards,

BillhookOn IPCC says debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

Empire of the Sun ?

Greg - I feel I should take issue with your prescription -
". . . the energy we do use should come directly from the source that makes this planet liveable, the Sun."
.
Why on earth should we so constrict ourselves ?
.
As an American, you share the wealth that has been sucked out of the rest of the world by the US' imperial arrangements, and so can maybe afford to invest in solar energy systems taking 15 to 20 years to pay back their cost.
And of course, you could then join the growing chorus  and criticize the relatively impoverished ROW (rest of world) for its use of "dirtier,"  "less efficient" technologies.
.
Then again, maybe you could observe that you are being sold a pup of gratuitously high tech energy systems ?
.
Try, for instance, considering the advantages of forest energies -
being, Firewood, Charcoal, Woodgas, Syngas, Methanol & Derivatives, and Steam & Electricity.
.
Not only does the feedstock production unit (aka forest) offer huge & uniquely vital ecological & social benefits,
and occur naturally from S Chile to N Sweden,
the feedstock (aka firewood) also matures naturally for several years after extraction,
and provides Energy On Demand in any of the above forms,
and does so at any scale from a campfire to a 50MW power plant,
with peoples around the world being very well practiced in its uses.
.
What is lacking is the recognition in wealthy industrialised cultures that they are wholly screwed if they now fail to advance the energy technologies that are
1/. appropriate for global replication,
2/. that offer strong local legitimacy, and
3/. that provide at least a tangible benefit to the natural ecology.
.
Without the take-up that such appropriate energy technologies could achieve,
solar tech on the houses of the wealthy nations will serve only to free up more fossil energy supply for poor nations to burn, to all parties' detriment.
.
But then that is the bind that the bandits running your country have landed you in.
.
My commiserations, and also my encouragement to you to stop pushing solar as THE energy tech - it ain't, and, in failing to serve the criteria above,
it ain't going to be.
.
Regards,

BillOn We have plenty of solutions at hand beyond technology posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

The goal is genocide via stasis

I don't share the belief in a need to counter the prevaricationists fatuous post by fatuous post.

To do so is to advance their primary goal of an interminable futile debate over long sorted issues,
as a means to draw attention, intelligence and effort away from evaluating the key requirements for achieving a swift, equitable & effective treaty of the atmospheric commons.

That distraction is the stasis of corrupt prevarication.

It is patently corrupt in that the prudence option, of reversing AGW for fear the IPCC is even partly correct, let alone understating the threat,
is studiously ignored by the prevaricationists.

Prevarication's function, and in some cases its intended purpose, is to generate an unprecedented global genocide by famine, flood and societal collapse.

David has asked me not to discuss the murder of my ideological opponents on this site.

It's my feeling that we face not mere "ideological opponents," but genocidal maniacs and their shills & dupes.
So when, if ever, will the gloves come off ?

And for how long will people here allow themselves to be distracted from the vital issues ?

Regards,

BillOn Hansen erroneously accused of predicting an ice age posted 2 years, 2 months ago 39 Responses

What is Greenpeace for ?

Randy - you mistake my message. Metaphorically, like you, I'm with the monks.

As spokesman/liason officer for FLAG (Fawley B Local Action Group) in the UK in '86 I campaigned (succesfully) against the building of the largest Coal-fired power station in Europe.

I wasn't actually arrested for continued campaigning against GW till the early '90s, in Berlin, (when the UNFCCC mandate was agreed).

My criticism above is of the Greenpeace routine of high profile stunts by rather small numbers of staffers,
with the convenient effect of encouraging members' continued subscriptions,
but without ever calling that huge membership out onto the streets
to demonstrate their abhorrence of the climate genocide that the US now leads.

Which is why I ask just what is that organisation for ?

Regards,

BillOn Climate protesters arrested outside State Department posted 2 years, 2 months ago 6 Responses

"The right direction" is wrong outlook.

Rdark51 -

I notice that you don't provide a track record of taxation's relevant efficacy.

That, as you say, taxation ".... might .... club us in the right direction ...."
just doesn't cut it.

Face it, if the UK and the US, as the past and present imperial powers,
will not strive for swingeing GHG output cuts to specific levels by specific dates,
why exactly should any other nation even attempt to do so ?

Thus (while I'm sure you're unaware of it),
the environment movement's devotion to general carbon taxes
is actually the very best policy gift that the fossil status quo could hope for.

Regards,

BillOn On whether to advocate weaker climate change bills posted 2 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses

Of Babies, Bathwater, &c

Pangolin - some good news for you -

Hazel is an excellent coppice tree, and was traditionally the staple material for many vital rural artifacts -
While most deciduous trees will regrow from the stump, some, like Sweet Chestnut, Ash & Hazel do so really well and will gain wood about 20% faster than a normal specimen,
thus improving the methanol + TP-charcoal  feedstock yield /acre /year.

We have many Ash & Hazel on the farm here in the Cambrian mountains of Wales,
but the very damaging Canadian Grey Squirrel invaded the UK so we eat rather more squirrel than Hazelnuts.

Hazelnut as a flammble oil source is a novel idea to me, and adds to the goal of eradicating the greys in favour of the native red
(not least to allow the production of Hazlenut butter, which puts peanut butter in deep shade).

It's very good to see that a scientist of Crutzen's renown makes the point of distinguishing between the best and the worst of biofuels :-
"...the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings. Crops with less N demand, such as grasses and woody coppice species have more favourable climate impacts."

Traditional coppice of course requires no chem fertilizer inputs.

Grey Flcn -

I can't follow your critique of nitrogen fixing plants -
As I understand it, the problem Crutzen addresses is particularly with agricultural fertilizer nitrogen ending up as NO2 outputs.

So how does atmospheric nitrogen being fixed naturally in the soil by plants,
thus greatly reducing or even ending fertilizer demand,
become a problem ?

Many thanks for the link to "Growing Solutions"

Regards,

Bill
On Another agrofuel protest hits City Hall posted 2 years, 2 months ago 15 Responses

Florida-sized Proportions ?

Surely Florida is a piddly little ding-a-ling hanging off America's bloated underbelly
compared with the global scope of the sea level rise that now threatens every coastal city, town & vilage,
as well as the best quarter of productive farmland ?

Regards,

BillOn Arctic sea ice continues to melt at alarming rate posted 2 years, 2 months ago 6 Responses

Outing Lomborg

I see no reason to assume that this shill is anything but an highly talented advocate for the fossil status quo.

That he is gifted with sufficient intellect to argue very effectively
means only that he's entirely aware of, and is intentionally ignoring,
the case for prudence, that, were IPCC either correct or understating the risk,
inaction will generate an unprecedented scale of  genocide,
lead by the US, in coming decades.

The simplest means of dealing with one as callous, and as dangerous, as Lomborg,
involves a tree and a rope.

Any better suggestions ?

Regards,

BillOn Debating Bjorn Lomborg on global warming posted 2 years, 2 months ago 13 Responses

Fraud discredits a vital policy tool

Odograph -

you appear to miss the point -

Offsets are a growing fraction of global efforts -

see : www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSSYD901920070905

for Reuters' account of Asia-Pacific Businesses' Call for Carbon Pricing -

Thus the present ludicrous offset scams and outright frauds undermine the efficacy of what is, potentially, a vital component of global GW policy.

Thus it is entirely necessary to critique the present fraudulent offsets -
since they may, if not controlled, cause such public disillusionment as to erode both popular and business efforts for change.

As for your $100 dollars, if you haven't already kissed it goodbye,
I'd be careful to find a project that will use it to sequester some tonnes of carbon
at least for millenia, and that will do so this year, not 60 years hence.

Regards,

BillOn On the problem of carbon-offset projects in developing countries posted 2 years, 2 months ago 49 Responses

Climate Care Fraud.

If I wanted to profit by deferring any serious action against fossil fuel dependency,
I'd actively encourage fraudulent "Offsets"
not merely to allow airhead celebs and their devotees
to do nothing troublesome while having a concerned appearance,
but also for the degree of disempowering disillusionment caused
by the entirely predictable exposure of the offsets' fraudulence.

I think Gar that you address the minor point with regard to the treadle v diesel pump nonsense.

The treadle not only lands the work on the farmer (or more likely on his children)
it also lands that volume of diesel back on the market
where the next bidder will buy and then burn it.
Thus there is no reduction at all of fossil fuel usage.

This is fraud, - obtaining moneys by false pretences - pure and simple.

So when are our supposed saviours, the environmental NGOs,
going to bring a case against this growing class of fraudster ?

Or are they too close to the perpetrators to do so ?

Regards,

BillOn On the problem of carbon-offset projects in developing countries posted 2 years, 2 months ago 49 Responses

Sustainable Foredt Methanol

Biodiversivist -

some rather good news on the forest fuels front
is that Methanol,
with its renowned combustion charachteristics,
can be produced from wood very affordably at present simply by an updated FT process -

Where advances are still urgently needed are in the size of production facilities
to be appropriate for village-scale with > 3 miles feedstock haulage,
(and thus maximized local legitimacy and global replicability)

as opposed to the titanicist status quo facilities now used for converting methane to methanol.

The cellulosic route looks to me like an attempt to profit from intellectual property
rather than from sustainable energy supply.

Regards,

BillOn 'Biodiesel' is looking worse and worse posted 2 years, 3 months ago 21 Responses

Lousy Journalism obscures uncertain science

David -

the assumptions in the press report are pretty wild, but it's so badly written one can't tell just what the experiment's goal was.

Maybe it was to disprove the notion that trees will remove all the fossil carbon we've emitted ?

But if so, how have we achieved a 36% excess airborne CO2?

Are Duke Uni academics really that incompetent ?

The idea of dissing "trees" as a crucial means of addressing GW is,
as Pangolin makes very clear,
sheer nonsense.

What we surely need to discuss are the parameters of the sustainable reforestation by which
C BANKING can occur in new forests' growth;
C SINKING can occur in worldwide Terra Preta farming; and
FOREST ENERGY can be supplied in forms ranging from Firewood to Charcoal to Woodgas to Syngas to Methanol (and derivatives) to electricity.

The idea that trees can be dismissed as a relevant tool for addressing GW
looks to me like nothing more than special pleading by big oil
for funds for their mega-scale Geosequestration fantasies.

Regards,

BillOn They're not going to save us posted 2 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses

G8 "realistic" at 50% x 2050 ???

That Bush nixed an effort by the G8 members for agreeing a 50% cut by 2050
was sheer denialist circus -
for that target was not remotely "realistic" as you suggest.

In fact it was merely a random pair of numbers, chosen for their roundness,
in total denial of scientific advice.

Their adoption would have generated a CO2 concentration of way over 550ppmv,
effectively garanteeing the feedback loops running the climate into a catastrophic instability.

For the record, back in 1990, the IPCC advised that just to stop adding to the problem of excess airborne GHGs
we will need to cut our global output of them by 60% to 80%.

Until the day we have done so, we will continue to worsen the problem.

So, apart from the photo-ops, what would be the point of agreeing a nonsense target,
 for more than four decades hence,
 with an utterly corrupt American regime ?

Regards,

BillOn Again posted 2 years, 3 months ago 2 Responses

Genetically Mutilated Incompetence

"Solving the transport fuels problem" is plainly beyond any technology that demands the seizure of finite arable and pasture lands -

Whether this LS9 process could, (let alone should, given its unknown waste streams)
be scaled up sufficiently rapidly to offset both a probable post-peak 8%p.a. decline of oil supply
plus a 2.5% p.a. demand growth,  remains a speculation -
as does the issue of just how many years this Agri-petrol growth rate could be maintained before it generated untenably extreme reactions to the resulting genocides by famine.

I suggest that, in view of current and projected intensification of climate hits on global food supply,
any energy supply option that competes with food production is unlikely to get off the ground.

To the extent that LS9 at best robs the soil of inputs such as corn stover,
it thus seems unlikely to gain significant market share in coming years.

Maybe, rather than the "emotive" terms of genocide, and of famine (with its black African connotation),
 I should rather ask just how many white American children should be allowed to starve to death each year in the effort of trying to keep the Great Car Economy trundling along ?

Regards,

BillOn New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels posted 2 years, 4 months ago 40 Responses

The attempted smearing of Mr Gore . . .

is surely rather predictable given that
a/. all presidential candidates' fear of him running for the nomination
b/. various corporations fear of both his activism and of his running, and
c/. petty minded pseudo-journalists fear that their denial of climate destabilization may be utterly wrong.

While Mr Gore has my respect for finally coming out and trying to influence US opinion,
I think he's yet to face the critique that he roundly deserves,
which is over his proposal that we need a global cut of only 50% of GHGs, presumably by the much touted target date of 2050, to resolve the problem of GW.

In reality, given that we need a 60 to 80% cut just to stop adding to the problem of excess airborne GHGs,
Mr Gore is asking for the world's fossil energy corporations to be allowed to continue adding to the problem for at least the next two generations.

Given also that his Live Earth Pledge also rudely ignores and directly contradicts the adamant official calls from India, Pakistan, Africa and the EU parliament for the global policy framework of Contraction & Convergence, it seems likely that he will face rather more cogent criticism before long.

Regards,

BillOn Game over posted 2 years, 4 months ago 13 Responses

Nuke Shillery

If the article has had peer review, then the peers were chosen to match Ausubel's integrity.

What stikes me about this is the fact that we long ago got sold the strawman of "Renewable Energy"
which was never more than a smokescreen to avoid categorizing energy resources
by the degree of their potential sustainability.

As supporters of "Renewables," who among Grist posters
would like to speak up for that abuse of Canis' relatives,
namely Battery Chicken Dung Power,
or for Mega-Hydro,
or for Agribusiness Biofuels ?

Isn't it time we simply disowned the term "Renewable"
before the Nuclear industry's shills make further hay by further discrediting it ?

Sustainable Energy is what I'm interested in developing.

Regards,

BillOn Forthwith debunked posted 2 years, 4 months ago 13 Responses

Consequences

David -

the issue of whether a climate bill can pass in the senate seems of tertiary relevance to me.

First is the matter of whether its clauses would help or hinder
the UNFCCC's adoption of the requisite global policy framework of "Contraction and Convergence",
 without which neither India nor Africa will sign on, and both China and EU look very doubtful.

Second, with the denialist opposition demanding appeasement, it is questionable whether the senate bill could actually reflect such industry support as is now emerging.

For example, the following is from a news post on Global Commons Institute (www.gci.org.uk) and demonstrates some of that emerging support.

"US National Petroleum Council [NPC - Chair Lee Raymond] are calling for
a global carbon emissions framework [NPC&C?] in a report just out
called, 'Facing Hard Truths': -

"As policymakers consider options to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,
the United States must provide an effective global framework for carbon
management, including establishment of a transparent, predictable,
economy-wide cost for carbon dioxide emissions."

http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/Facing_Hard_Truths-Report ...
"

That the Warner-Leibermann bill may be the best that can currently pass the senate
thus seems of little relevance -

If I were a hardline fossil-state senator, I'd be planning to allow a spoiler bill to pass,
i.e. one that does little of itself
but wrecks the chance of global agreement of a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons by 2012.

Thus I'd say oppose what is not worth having for all you're worth !

Regards,

BillOn But what will it look like? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses

So who gets to tell it like it is ?

Jon -

your interest in identifying and measuring what might be called "sustainable development" as the alternative to the illusory "economic growth"
is one that I share.

At its simplest, maybe the distinction is between sustainable resource capitalism
and finite asset capitalism.
(E.g. the Amazon can be managed under either outlook, according to extraction rates and managerial care).

While getting into credible positive "development" numbers will plainly take years or decades under the new metric,
at least that prospect would be visible to investors,
while for conventiona;l economic growth, under GW +PO impacts, the coming recession will predictably lack conventional reasons for the recovery of investor confidence.

Bart -

I share your pleasure that this thread has avoided mere bickering, so I'm wary of breaking ranks of approval of the "happy prospects" messaging.

Yet it has to be said that this approach has been gaining sway since Thatcher got power,
and we have not advanced one iota - on the contrary, I suggest that in real terms we are worse off by an order of magnitude than we were in say 1980.

As yet the public knows scarcely anything of the feedback loops' potency and ongoing acceleration.
Without that knowledge they are very unlikely to accept the scale and rate of change required to avoid more than 2dC of warming,
meaning that no politician can safely propose it, let alone demand it.

To give a real example of the happy futures story outcomes in the UK, it's worth noting that FOTE, with the backing of all major NGOs (and, I think,  of Forum for the Future)
demanded that govt put into law its random target for emissions cuts of 60% by 2050,
i.e. less than what is needed even to stop adding to the problem of excess airborne GHGs, and taking a little over two generations to do so.

That the target was in direct contravention both of IPCC advice and RCEP requirement was simply ignored,
apparently due to the turf-war search for NGO subscriptions.

The formalization of that nonsense target into a legal requirement would thus of course be a gift to complacency & prevevarication for decades hence.

So if we, the environment movement are busy telling the public of happy futures,
who exactly is going to tell it like it is ?

Regards,

BillhookOn How to talk about the future without depressing everyone posted 2 years, 4 months ago 54 Responses

Sustainable Silviculture

You have indeed made your point clearly Whiskerfish.

On only one aspect would I differ with you -

being the silvicultural regime to maximize sustainable yields and so GW control.

Here in UK we have an ancient (pre-celtic) tradition of coppice & standards forestry (necessarily deciduous) that is still thriving.

In it, a minor fraction of trees are grown to maturity before being cut for lumber,
while the great majority are cut and regrown from the stump on a cycle averaging around 12 years.
(I.e. cut 1/12th of a given area each year).

Having a mature root ball, the coppice trees grow about 20% faster than new plantings would
i.e. give 20% more harvest per acre.

A tiny fraction may need replanting each harvest, but the strongest can endure for many centuries -
the oldest surviving in Britain were planted during the Roman Occupation.

And as my old ecology professor used to say;
"Coppice & Standards gives the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem."

To my mind the young trees so harvested will at best go to a specific range of uses.

First, the twig, with its high concentration of trace elements, is trimmed off to rot down.

Second,the bark and wood is graded, with local post, pole and tanbark requirements being removed.

Third, the remainder is pyrolized, (kilned with minimal-oxygen) to produce charcoal, some potash, and woodgas.

The potash is returned to the coppice as a necessary trace element.

The charcoal can be milled for inclusion in Terra Preta farming,
while the Woodgas can be used for cooking or for village scale CHP,
or can be put through refinements to yield the excellent liquid fuel, Methanol.
(Max yield of about 1/3rd ton of petrol equivalent per ton of dry wood - half that if the charcoal is removed from the production line).

 This spread of yields from a sustainable resource addresses a host of pressing issues,
ranging from food security, to verifyable carbon sequestration,
to IIIW liquid fuel supply, to reversing global deforestation sustainably,
to helping reverse the pernicious drift of rural peoples' to city slums.

Regards,

BillOn Just when you thought it was over posted 2 years, 4 months ago 15 Responses

Leadership ? To where ?

If Al had serious proposals for the basis of an equitable and effective treaty,
his pronouncements might be taken more seriously outside America.

In his recent letter in the NYT he declared that
there is "no other way" than to base the treaty
on each nation's liability
(being their sum of pollution output plus the ongoing resulting global damages )
and on each nation's capacity to provide assistance
(being their [variable] wealth in finance and other forms).

This seems a sure fire recipe,
If any such treaty could be negotiated at all, let alone in two years
this seems a sure fire recipe
for guaranteeing annual reviews mired in diplomatic deadlock,
and generating pernicious distrust and animosity,
and little of the essential creative co-operation urgently required,
and giving a high probability of the treaty's collapse in desperate acrimony.

As such, Al's proposal is a gift to the prevaricationists.

Which is not to say that I don't respect te man's work on the film, as far as it went.

He is of course dead wrong to claim that there is "no other way" than to base the treaty
on nations' liability and capacity to pay.

Ambassador Estrada of Argentina, who chaired the marginally successful Kyoto Conference,
described the viable alternative climate policy framework as follows :

"Contraction & Convergence . . . is the logical conclusion of an equitable approach to resolving Climate Change."

This framework embodies the requisite effectiveness and equity at the level of principle,
in that the nations' ghg output entitlements would Contract in total,
over an agreed period of years,
to a level set to avoid exceeding 2dC of GW,
while national shares in each year's global GHG budget would Converge over the years
from reflecting financial wealth to reflecting population size,
i.e. to global per capita parity of emissions entitlement.

As a means of optimizing the rate of change
from dependence on deforestation & fossil fuels (the twin main delinquents)
C&C is drafted (by Global Commons Institute, its developer) to accomodate the trading of emission entitlements,
as this would calm the curve of developed nations "cold turkey"
and help to price malign carbon off their markets,
while also serving the curve of sustainable energy RD&D in developing countries.

In reality Al Gore cannot claim ignorance of C&C,
given that the European Parliament has voted that it should be the basis of EU diplomacy,
and that the Africa Group of Nations have long called for it to be the basis of UNFCCC negotiations,
and that a very senior Indian politician (Pradip Ghosh)
recently made a very frank public assertion of his county's commitment to it,
and that there are strong indications backing his report
that India's commitment to C&C is shared by China.

In this light, for Big Al to tell the world that "there is no other way" (than his way)
is not plausibly ignorant, it is just plain offensive.

One of the things he didn't say holographically
was the America is going to be held to account for its wanton pollution,
and that seeing as it can hardly afford the tab it's already run up,
it would be wise to stop adding to it real soon.

So just why is Big Al so tongue-tied when it comes to the solutions to the global predicament ?

Is he perhaps a closet America-Firster ?

Regards,

Bill

 On Check it out posted 2 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses

HSBC Declaration

Further to my post above, this is to remark that
the UK Independent has printed a full page statement by the HSBC bank,
in which it declares firmly for Contraction & Convergence.

But the statement goes quite a lot further than that.

Try reading the following,
knowing that HSBC, "the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank of China"
could not and would not make such a statement without official approval -
__________

But what about the problem of China's emissions ?

China's emissions are growing rapidly as the country develops, but the Chinese government is seriously concerned about the devastating effect climate change would have. Its measures reduced the amount of energy used to produce each unit of GDP by 47 per cent between 1990 and 2005, but is this enough? China needs to develop and believes that most of the action to tackle climate change must be taken by the rich countries that have overwhelmingly caused it. On this basis, it would only join an international deal if the United States did so too.

Can this circle be squared ?

Absolutely. Providing the biggest polluters cooperate, a new global agreement on much deeper cuts is not just possible but likely. Time, however, is desperately short. The best evidence suggests that, if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, worldwide emissions must start to fall within a decade, which would involve making a deal in the next year or two. Over the longer term, the best and fairest solution ­ dubbed " contraction and convergence" ­ would entitle everyone on the planet to the same share of a safe level of emissions and would apportion them to each country appropriately.

But wouldn't such cuts bankrupt the world economy ?

Not really. Any cost of taking action will be far outweighed by that of failing to tackle climate change. A landmark report for the British Government by Sir Nicholas Stern last year calculated that 1 per cent of GDP needs to be invested each year to address climate change and that failing to spend this could lead to a fall in GDP of 20 per cent ­ and another Great Depression. The good news is that the countries and businesses that act first are likely to prosper by developing technologies that others will then want to buy.
_____________

Full text at (PDF) www.gci.org.uk/briefings/hsbc.pdf
_______________

If the above has official Chinese approval,
then the whole negotiation over resolving GW
has just made a major step forward.

At least it seems so to me.

And you ?

Regards,

Bill
On An editorial in the NYT posted 2 years, 5 months ago 10 Responses

Are those blinders Yank Nationalism ?

I'm amused to see that despite a fairly clear description of the actual spread of three choices for putting a price on carbon,
Gristers have shown an almost total lack of interest in anything other that the mutually deficient options of the Grandfathering or Vending of emissions entitlements.

While the sole response to Acknowledgement, in the form of TCQs, was merely dismissive.

So are Americans really so trained that they're looking for American solutions to a Global problem ?
And nothing but an American solution will, in fact, get discussed ?

Meanwhile, here in the UK,
where discussions seem at least marginally more rational,
Milliband, (Environment Sec.y who firmly boosted TCQs)
has been promoted to Foreign Secretary (equiv State Dept) in the new govt under Gordon Brown.

So I guess you'll be hearing rather more of certain un-American ideas in the near future.

Regards,

BillOn I'm sure whoever has the best argument will win, right? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Grandfathering --Vending--Acknowledging

As Brit, I'm aware of the merits of the third option,

sometimes called TCQs (Tradeable Carbon Quotas)

as recommended by UK Environment Sec.y Milliband,

for the acknowledgement of each person's GHG output entitlement,
under an annually declining national GHG budget,

and its formal accreditation as a usable and/or tradeable asset.

This empowerment avoids the surreal absurdity of giving windfall profits
to profiteering corporate polluter-shareholders
(under grandfathering),

and avoids the fundamental inequity of energy usage rights
being granted according to peoples' wealth
(under 'vending', and, notably, under a carbon tax).

That this third option of TCQs gets no coverage in US affairs is no surprise,

but I'm puzzled that it isn't widely discussed by US activists,
as its merits are very relevant for sustainable development.

A further aspect of the welcome discussion of carbon pricing mechanisms,

is that nothing of significance will be done nationally before an international treaty commitment is agreed.

If, as seems highly probable, that treaty results in GHG output entitlement
being surplus in the G-South, and scarce in the G-North,
then wealthy 'northern' nations will need to fund the purchase of GHG output entitlement,
until such time as it gets clean of fossil carbon dependence.

My guess is that there are already UK officials
 quietly planning to put a levy on TCQs to raise those vital funds.

Why else did the UK govt give Milliband so much policy freedom ?

Regards,

Bill On I'm sure whoever has the best argument will win, right? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Perilous Hubris

The idea that US shouldn't assist China's reorientation to sustainable technology & conducts is to me ludicrous,
not least because the US cannot afford the consequence BAU.

Having lead the world in poisoning the atmosphere,
and having twice accepted the denialist duo of oilmen in the Whitehouse that have effectively blocked remedial measures,
most Americans seem clueless as to what kind of barrel developing countries have them over.

Given that destabilization of the global climate is intensifying,
and that developing countries' regimes can tend to afford politically to lose > 50,000 casualties for every 1,000 of losses that Washington could stand,
and that Katrina demonstrated the utter pitiful incompetence of US crisis management capacity,

- it seems pretty obvious that the US will have to accept equitable terms with the global community,
(and that includes China, India, and Brazil),
and that the longer that agreement is deferred, the more painful will be the conditions attached.

Regards,

BillOn That you won't hear in the mainstream media posted 2 years, 5 months ago 18 Responses

An informed public is an empowered public !

John,

I warmly applaud your several decades of staunch efforts on behalf of moving society toward a sustainable way of life.

Yet maybe it needs saying that there is much that doesn't get said because experts feel it is "too complex" for Joe Public to get his head round.

One such item is the culpable lie pushed by GOP + Bush that Kyoto "Ain't global and it won't work" when in reality the US had previously signed the UNFCCC Berlin Mandate that industrialised nations should cut GHGs significantly below 1990 levels before developing nations would be requested to accept GHG limits.
Given the huge swell of current interest in GW, maybe it's now time for you to set the record straight on this issue ?

Your present task of getting 20% RE by 2020 sound like an uphill battle, but one which simply has to be won.  Again there are factors of which the public is unaware, and the longer they are left in ignorance, the harder the likely backlash - but this time against the Dems, not the GOP.

I refer to the almost totally unrecognised fact, which is patently obvious once it's considered, that a supply of renewable energy does not save any fossil fuel usage;  it simply makes that fossil fuel affordable for a poorer person to buy and use in some other part of the world.

RE supply may offer some small confidence-building effect for negotiators of a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons, but it will not lower global fossil fuel consumption.  Only the requisite treaty is capable of ensuring that goal is met.  Again, maybe it is time that this reality was given the publicity it deserves ?

Finally, in case it may be news to you, the Indian govt's ex-Environment Sec.y /now Advisor on GW, gave an interview to the UK Telegraph in which he makes plain that India is, de facto, adamantly committed to the global climate policy framework of Contraction & Convergence, with GHG reductions being measured in per capita terms.
He posed this challenge to the West:
"You do your best and we'll match it."  I.e.: our per capita GHG output will not rise above the per capita level you cut yours down to.

In case it may be of interest the full article can be read here:
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/06/12/eaindia12.xml

Given the seminal importance of a power of India's scale making this declaration, is it not time for a debate in the Senate that demonstrates how Contraction & Convergence amply fulfils the demands of the Byrd-Hagel Act ?

And given the fact that the public are going to be facing the constraints of the requisite treaty, isn't it time they were told something about the equity and efficiency of Contraction & Convergence ?

As if you didn't have enough to do !

With best wishes,

Billhook
On More intransigence on climate change posted 2 years, 5 months ago 38 Responses

The Common Ground of PO & GW

is, IMHO, a treaty progressively constraining nations' GHG emissions entitlements,
(and thus progressively reducing demand for fossil fuels)

and verifyably channeling developing countries' proceeds of trading their surplus entitlements

into Adaption measures
(particularly food production and extreme weather defences)
and into Mitigation measures
(particularly sustainable energies and widespread reforestation).

In this context the more clearly we Northern activists focussed on the two phenomena
can recognize that they are in effect filler-cap plus tail pipe issues,
and effectively inextricably intertwined,
the better.

And the sooner such a recognition triggers a strategy review the better,
for two main reasons.

1/. As PO becomes more widely understood, many grossly unsustainable options' lobbyists will try to exploit the anxiety generated -
that is both nuclear and, absurdly, the Liquid Coal, Tar Shales/sands & Methyl Hydrates options.

And we can forecast very serious anxiety attacks once public recognition of PO occurs.

2/. The Denialists, having been exposed as paid shills or callous morons or both,
show signs of starting to exploit news of PO as a spurious disproof of IPCC projections,
as a means to try to further delay public demand for remedial measures.

(So just what did the US do with those people who ranted on about the glories of misunderstood fascism, once Pearl Harbour was wrecked ?)

So Jon, while I well agree with you, I'd go further
and say that it's now crucial that we (GW activists)
 rapidly improve our inputs and interactions with the PO activists' sites,
with a view to integrating the two campaigns ASAP.

I've no doubt of a welcome from the brighter and more practical fraction.

Regards,

BillOn Who knew? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 70 Responses

Karen - you've been had.

Karen -

I won't repeat your error of trying to speak for other countries' outlook on nuclear power,
as your information is just patently wrong about my country.

Here in the UK I haven't seen ANY public  discussion
of replacing coal power with still more nuclear fiascos,
let alone any official decision to do so.

What Blair, (who used to be anti-nuclear before getting bought),
has done for the industry is a delight.

Admittedly, when it went bust he baled it out with £400Mn of taxpayers' money,
but since then, as a lame duck PM he's had the hubris
to try and push the replacement of old nuclear stations onto an unwilling public.

It is now becoming crystal clear just why, in Blairs decade of power,
sustainable energy has received such paltry govt. support -
those energies' success will be nuclear power's demise.

So, far from your nonsense of the UK "replacing coal with nuclear"
it is looking increasingly unlikely that we shall even renew the nuclear plants we have.

Given that their decommissioning is expected to cost over £60Bn,
our 60Mn population will pay over £1,000 of tax per head to do so -
and you really think we want more of them ?

In reality, the global nuclear industry remains just one bad accident from global abandonment.

It is the classic C20 titanicist folly, and it has had its day.

I suggest you get over it.

Regards,

BillOn The days when they would take whatever you served up are gone posted 2 years, 5 months ago 14 Responses

Curves of Change

JMG -

its a good proposal that you make in that it does ease the pressure as the decades pass,
while still heading for >80% cut of US GHGs.

Yet there are a couple of points worth considering, which might justify a review of the system.

1/. We need of course to cut global emissions by >80% just to stop adding to the problem of excess atmospheric carbon.
So to start cutting that excess atmospheric carbon we need to go considerably further, which means both swingeing cuts in emissions AND ALSO effective carbon recovery programs.
And given the rates of acceleration of the major feedback loops, it looks highly unlikely that we shall have 43 years, (till 2050) to achieve such changes.

2/. Public, business & political opinion has yet to get really fired up over the issue, as most people have yet to face the scale of loss & injury that is coming.
When people realize that the problem is one to two orders of magnitude worse than the public now sees it, then the long-term curve of change must be able to utilize that new commitment.

3/. The naturally occurring curve of transitional change is an S-bend or "Sigmoid" curve, : staring gently, turning much steeper, and then completing more gently again.
This is also the curve most practical for both the public and business to accomodate, in that it provides a clear path that includes some preparation time.

With these factors in mind, I'd suggest graphing out the Sierra Club's straight line fantasy,
the JMG (1) somewhat cliff-like exponential curve,
and the Billhook (1) sigmoid curve of transition.

With these curves in view I hope that you might find time to reconsider the structural detail of your proposal.

Regards,

BillOn Your math teacher knew you'd need this stuff someday! posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

Mother Nature's damned feedbacks

. . . are a reality Sam, and they come in both positive and negative varieties.

RealClimate.org will no doubt provide chapter and verse on these phenomena,

but I'll point out that there are a range of potentially massively potent positive loops
(as well as sundry minor ones) that GW has already awoken.

The simplest of these are:

Loss of albido (reflectivity) with declining ice & snow cover,
which is causing more solar heat to enter the soil and sea ,
rather than being reflected off the planet;

Increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires releasing extra CO2 and CH4 (methane), the latter being over 20 times as potent a GHG as the former;

Accelerating melting of permafrost peat bog,
which is again releasing extra methane and CO2.

Comparable active negative feedbacks have yet to be identified.

In that all positive loops contribute to GW,
which then accelerates each loop directly or indirectly,
all the feedback loops are effectively interacting with eachother.

They are perhaps the most dangerous reality we have to face.

Regards,

BillOn Dirt cheap carbon posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

Belt & Braces revisited

Rune - in the post titled "Belt & Braces" above, I wrote:

 -----  "That we are going to make swingeing cuts is unavoidable,
and that they are already very late in view of feedbacks' acceleration, seems obvious.

Thus it seems to me increasingly certain that,
once those successive GHG cuts are a matter of international treaty law,

we are going to have to employ all the sustainable sequestration techniques we can,
(i.e. a giga-hectare of reforestation, and worldwide terra preta, and CCS)

as well as at least researching the reliability of the emergency measures of water &/or sulphur delivery for atmospheric cooling,

in order to maximize the chance of avoiding the feedbacks' swamping the declining carbon sinks
(after which we'd have no further mitigation options)." ----------

From your post above, it seems that you consider carbon banking in forestry too slow a mode of sequestration to be worthwhile.

Do you really think that we should limit our efforts just to cutting GHG outputs ?

Even though a giga-hectare of afforestation could, under the terms of a global treaty,
start recovering over two gigatonnes of carbon per year by 2027 ?
Even though this could be the difference between a 30% global GHG cut by 2030
and a cut of 60% ?

(Remembering that we need to cut global emissions by > 80%
just to stop adding to the cumulative problem of excess atmospheric carbon).

As for your anxiety about charcoal production, maybe it would ease your mind to research current best practice standards in the industry ?

It's also worth noting that the bi-products of pyrolization for charcoal production include a wide range of potentially valuable materials,

which can not only be synthesised into an excellent liquid transport fuel - Methanol -

they can also add wonderful flavours to fish or meats smoked in them,
which, in addition, has an excellent preservative effect on the food.

The uncertainty over terra preta BTW is not about getting charcoal into the soil,
and thus a given volume of carbon banked;
it is about how to do so in a manner that permanently enhances soil fertility,
rather than just raising it for 3 or 4 years.

Which is of course a tertiary issue for this  thread on the dynamics of ending deforestation.

Finally, I'd ask whether you propose some other self-funding globally replicable option
that can potentially Bank more than 2.0GTC /yr before 2030
while also yielding a host of benign secondary goods and services ?

Regards,

BillOn Dirt cheap carbon posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

Trees as Carbon Banks

Sam -

I think that planting perhaps 1,000 trees may be sensible in the particular case of banking the CO2 from our farm's FUV -
which is indispensible in present circs for towing trailers for livestock, fodder & gear -

Personally I'd simply ban SUVs outright, and penalize gratuitous pollution in general.
If this appears extreme, it's because I see the causality between GW and megadeaths in Africa by drought-based famine.

I take your point about wildfire, but would respond that a new forest burning after say twenty years' growth,
has held perhaps millions of tonne-years of carbon out of the atmosphere.

Clearly there are of course issues over where and how to plant such forests to minimize fire risks,
but in principle the more native forestry we can plant on non-agricultural land,
and as shelterbelts and copses on farmland,
the better in my view.

Regards,

BillOn Dirt cheap carbon posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

Forestry Carbon Banking

Sam -
I think you're mistaken to call the present carbon banking in trees over 5 to 15 years ludicrous.

First, what's being offered here in UK is 60 years, i.e. the tree maturing.

Second, buying this service each year means that you're not carbon neutral till 60 years after your death / stop emitting GHGs.

Third, the term for this degree of dishonesty is not ludicrous, it is fraud.

The worst aspect of this fraud IMHO
is that it acts to discredit the concept of carbon baking in real time,
that is planting sufficient trees to mop up this year's output from a given source this year,
which, given the acceleration of Climate Destabilization and its feedbacks,
looks increasingly essential.

And this is one major option for funding the necessary reforestation.

Regards,

Bill
On Dirt cheap carbon posted 2 years, 5 months ago 30 Responses

Decouple my arse !

Canis -

I well agree that the use of such jargon is essentially exclusive of those not informed of its meaning.

For anyone unclear on "decouple" it refers to the wish to end the fossil fuel dependence of economic growth.

As such it is fairly straightforward nonsense -
eternal growth on a finite planet is patently an artefact of ideology, not strategy.

"Energy Intensity" is a far more devious jargon, first pushed on Bush's behalf by the hag Klausen at the Pew Centre.

It pretends to a benign intent - being a measure of the energy required per unit of GDP produced.

But using reduced energy intensity as a target allows the charming fraud of expanding energy use while growing the economy even faster -
In reality it would only function benignly when a society declared that it was rich enough and renounced economic growth.

Regards,

Bill

  On Are the two inextricably linked? posted 2 years, 5 months ago 27 Responses

The Cindarella Option

Karen -

I wouldn't argue with Friedman's thesis that agri-biofuels are unsustainable
on the scale needed to supply even a minor fraction of present road fuel demand.

Robbing the soil of crop residues,
let alone local and export markets of the crops themselves,
is a shortcut to famine.

However, these critiques need not apply to sylvi-biofuels
IF, (large IF),
they are produced under well enforced  sustainabilty criteria.

Wood Alcohol, aka Methanol, aka CH3OH,
was first traded commercially in the late C17,
when it was a by-product of coppice-sourced charcoal production in Britain.

As one of a raft of motivations for a Giga-hectare of sustainable afforestation globally,
the development of village scale methanol plants could be of real significance
for maintaining primary liquid fuel supplies.

Regards,

Bill
On Global warming, agriculture, and fossil fuels posted 2 years, 5 months ago 47 Responses

Messenger with enough scars

Jon -

as I see it what is happenning now is what we've been warning about all these decades -

for instance in Geneva in '96 I breakfasted with the lead US negotiator and, in among the chat, we discussed the predictability of a 7 metre rise of sea level that once formed the Greenland ice-cap,
and how fairly early in that melting the world's freight docks would be affected. (Swamped)

So if we cannot at present usefully say "Told you so, so listen carefully", when are we going to be able to say so usefully ?

Regards,

BillOn Scientists weigh in posted 2 years, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Apologia

Tom -

I wasn't referring to you as sufferring from defeatism:

I should have been more explicit and written
"I spit on Daily Kos defeatism"
but it didn't have quite the same ring to it.

I well agree that the situation is dire,
but having seen the idea that we need to lead with self interest, fun, fashionability, green trivia etc,
getting nowhere remotely useful in the 27 years since Thascism discreetly brought the idea into being,
I have to differ with you over the correctness of "fear is not the way forward".
I'd say it is one large part of the requisite motivation for radical change.

Personally I choose to focus on the climate threat to children,
according to which Bush & Co are already history's greatest child abusers.

The difficulty with the fun/self interest line is that it does not deal either with greater profits from, say catching the last sturgeon than from conserving it,
nor can it deal with the essentially ethical issue of the welfare of future generations.

Thus ethics (a humanitarian concern for others, even to the extent of fear)
have to function in tandem with prudence (self interest)
if we are to maximize the rate of change towards achieving the first real portal,
which I'd call a Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.

Regards,

BillOn Scientists weigh in posted 2 years, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Motivation - follow the $s' stench

One well noted motivation for this latest Whitehouse gambit
is the small matter of disrupting any G8 momentum for the adoption of binding targets and transitional national emission entitlements, served by trading in the latter.

Yet this assessment rests on giving credence to the regime's obsession with BRIC nations' verifiable, and enforceable, participation.

In reality, as Bush has now made very plain,
the regime does not wish the BrIIC nations
(Brazil - Indonesia - India - & China) and others
to sign up to binding commitments to an anuual  cut in GHG outputs,
let alone transitional national emission entitlements,
served by trading in the latter.

"Long-Term Aspirational Goals," that will be agreed over an arduous 18-month US-hosted negotiation,
are apparently the desired outcome.

So, just supposing that this is merely the bidding front rather than the real ambition,
just what is the latter ?

It seems safe to assume that Haliburton's peers foresee GHG constaints looming,
and will now be looking to shape those constrains to optimize US corporate benefit.

As far as I can see, that requires the allocation of tradeable emissions entitlements by so-called "grandfathering,"
rather than by wealth (auctioning)
let alone by public (per capita) distribution.

Under this system, the major extant polluters are gifted entitlements by the state
not only to profit reliably from incremental GHG cuts,
but also to maintain market share by their raised advantage over new entrants to the market.

This is, of course, no less than the hasty privatization (siezure) of the entire national stock of personal GHG emission entitlements,
by the corporate state.

Sadly it appears that US E.NGOs are, once again, all too likely to be outflanked -
for while the somewhat shrill campaign for a Federal Carbon Tax
must appear like a gift-horse for GOP election strategists,
and an embarrassment for their Dem counterparts,
and a clear non-starter for the requisite bi-partisan consensus with future GOP presidencies,

that Carbon Tax option is in reality a neat diversion of attention from the efficient, equitable and electable alternative to "Grandfathering,"
namely the national distribution of tradeable personal emission entitlements.

What is just shameful is that Blair & his ilk are already remarking that EU & US must use "the same"
trading system for it to be effective -
i.e. the quislings are seeking to grant the US regime design rights on the system to be deployed,
when in fact that is a decision for all member-nations of the UNFCCC.

As to Bush's gambit, no doubt it will, if allowed, advance the day when the US eventally deigns to adopt that perverse allocation system,

but only if they are allowed to get away with it !

Regards,

BillOn Poor guy posted 2 years, 6 months ago 9 Responses

Newspeak

Rune

thanks for those three neatly described lies -

I suspect there is a fourth, which I hope I can put as succinctly -

It is about the public being "sold a rat" conceptually,
when it thought it wanted a kitten.

This is a step beyond traditional "Bait & Switch,"
in that the "kitten" is effectively superceded across the marketplace.

"Renewable" is the prime example of such a rat -

there are vague unattributable rumours launched that
"Nobody knows what Sustainable means" and
"And anyway you've got to be a hippy or a geek
to want to waste time over it,"

so here's this great new buzz-word "Renewable"
(with added built-in foggy-flexibility for maximum spin capacity)
so lets go sell it!

Mega Hydro power ?
Cellulosic Ethanol ?
Battery Chicken Dung Power ?
Fast Breeder Reactor ?
No problem - they're all Renewable !

Are they Ecologically Sustainable ?
Oh that's so 1970s . . .

This greenwashing of language,
and thus of peoples' intellectual/conceptual capacity to discriminate effectively,
seems to me by far the most dangerous technique
that is now being applied by the corporations' propagandists.

In this sense, greenwash is a central component
of the unprecedented genocide in Africa & elsewhere,
to which America is now committing itself.

So no - on balance Greenwash is liable to be lethally bad for you,
and for the profiteers' myriad other victims.

Regards,

BillOn Not always, but green branding has potential to connect consumers to their 'inner green' posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Replicability

The entirely uncompetitive pay-back period for PV
appears to indicate that this option is,
at its present production costs,
very far from being inevitably dominant as the alternative energy supply,
even in industrialized nations, let alone in developing ones.

That costs may be cut dramatically is possible, but patently not inevitable.

And given the looming collapse of confidence in economic growth,
even the continuance of R&D funding at the more costly end of the options range
itself looks to be questionable.

I suggest that the energy options which will become dominant post peak fossil energy
will be those which meet the circumstances of around 3 billion people
in advanced-developing countries.

Yank-o-centric solutions need not apply.

Regards,

BillhookOn Regulatory infrastructure will be crucial posted 2 years, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Jon, sorry, the post above is to you !

On Concrete images of a greener society posted 2 years, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Why the Gratuitous Rudeness ?

It seems to me that denigrating ones opponent's integrity,
and repeatedly distorting the title of his proposal,
demonstrates rather neatly your lack of confidence in the cogency of your own proposal and in its ability to stand on its own merits.

As Ive pointed out in other posts, the efficient alternative to the various disbenefits of a Carbon Tax
should logically be titled "Cap, Allocate & Trade,"since the form of Allocation is critical to the outcome.

Tom A wrote confusedly of three types, being Grandfathering, Auction and Allocation (including per capita).

Clearly all these are types of Allocation, ranging from the least equitable -
 Grandfathering (allocating to incumbent polluters)
through auctioning, (allocation by wealth)
to an allocation converging to per capita parity.

Of these options, you assume arbitrarily that Grandfathering would be legislated,
despite the absurd inequity and market distortion it generates.
Yet you somehow feel that there is sufficient support in Congress & Senate
to get a water-tight carbon tax onto the books ?

On at least one aspest of this issue you seem confused.
A cap on emission entitlements means just that, a cap, ceiling or limit.

A carbon tax is the Bush-like alternative to this,
 that is, it disdains any binding limit -
it merely hopes that a sufficient influence will be generated,
and will then maintained over successive elections for 43 years.

With regard to the gaming of systems, be it clearly understood that I've campaigned for the utmost stringency first on carbon sequestration
and then on offsets in general, since the mid '90s.

I've not been similarly involved against the massive and routine net-tax avoidance by corporations,
as I see no prospect of a Carbon Tax being anything more than a distraction and an tragic delay
in establishing the durable effective alternative.

Regards,

BillhookOn Getting something done is the priority posted 2 years, 6 months ago 10 Responses

Re-orienting Resources

America's core delusion is that it isn't broke.

Its debts are unprecedented, while the dollar's mainstay,
the global oil market's practice of pricing in dollars,
is under both political and direct technical threat.

In terms of assembling the resources for such a transformation
to a high tech sustainable culture,
including the presence of an appropriately skilled and habituated workforce,
and the abrogation of the despicable "Free Trade" rules,
under conditions of intensifying climate destabilization
and declining energy affordability,
such scenarios start to look like calming fantasies for the nervous,
not serious strategic assessment.

Regards,

BillOn Concrete images of a greener society posted 2 years, 6 months ago 27 Responses

Perverting the course of discussion.

Alexandra -

I agree with you strongly over the abuse of the term skeptic -

what this site is being parasitized by are plainly denialists -

for as Andrew remarked, they show no interest in evidence contrary to their chosen speel.

It seems to me a real mistake to engage directly with them in any way,
and about as productive as trying to talk cockroaches into behaving considerately.

It is a mistake in that denialists are then able to set the course of discussion away from addressing the intended focus.

This thread is a classic case in point.

Here is a pertinent excerpt from Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, whose veiling under tosh may have well been the goal of this latest troll fest.

Gore has after all aroused serious angst among the vested fossil interests.

Quote from "Time"

"Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason
Wednesday, May. 16, 2007 By AL GORE

Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: "This chamber is, for the most part, silent--ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."

Why was the Senate silent?

In describing the empty chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.

To take another example, for the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

It is too easy--and too partisan--to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us?

Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned?

Faith in the power of reason--the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power--remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault. "

Regards,

BillOn A great profile posted 2 years, 6 months ago 42 Responses

US Left can't afford Carbon Taxes

- owing to the prolongued period of debate and conflict over their imposition,
deferring the date of operation perhaps by several years,
when we face a global energency today,

and owing to the fact of that debate and conflict being triggered when national unity of purpose is more urgently required now than for many decades,

and owing to the low efficacy of a C Tax in generating new options,
meaning that high tax rates are required to cause significant effect, which,
in tandem with its regressive impacts would, very likely,
result in a single term presidency.

All in all, if I owned a chunk of Detroit, or of Heuston for that matter,
I'd not only have my shills encouraging the environment movement
to demand a Carbon Tax,
I think I'd also start showing interest in Cap, Allocate & Trade
as a pretty sure were of further encoraging that demand.

Regards,

BillOn A new study with intriguing conclusions posted 2 years, 6 months ago 10 Responses

Practicalities

GreyFlcn -

your post appear to imply that a Carbon Tax could fulfil its purpose in a poorly regulated market (which seems to me unlikely)
while by contrast the trading of emissions entitlement could not.

I can't see the logic of this.

Here in the UK, in a very closely regulated market, there is so much tax on road fuels that we pay the equivalent of almost $9 gl for deisel.

This has raised enough interest in fuel efficiency to get an average of over 35mpg (I think)
but this is simply offset by unchanged growth of vehicle numbers of over 2%/yr.

Given that US drivers don't have the UK's public transport options, and tend to have far longer commutes, shopping runs, etc,
what chance is there of politicians imposing a stiil higher Carbon Tax that is really effective ?

Just supposing President Edwards were to set such a tax to price gas at $9/gl
(which price utterly fails to constrain the growth of UK petrol usage)
then a. would he have any chance of a second term ?
and b/. would US motorists really noticeably stop driving ?

The is one of my main concerns with the Carbon Tax - that imposing it at a rate to be even partly effective is political suicide for the rare brave politician.

Regards,

BillOn And if not, why not? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Response ?

David -

above are quite a spread of viewpoints on the questions you posed us -

How about doing us the honour of responding to them with your thoughts on the issue ?

Regards,

BillOn And if not, why not? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Jet Stream

As I understand it, the jet stream's wind speeds are  quoted as being from 350 mph to 700 mph -
which implies a very large energy flux per m2 swept by a turbine.

However, on the downside, the jet stream changes course, often by hundreds of miles or more,
so FEGs would either need to microwave power to the ground station
(with an auto self-destruct built in for malfunction)
or be installed on tethers in great numbers to allow for redundancy while yielding the target output.
With the latter set up, each would require its sole use of a landing site, crew, monitoring gear, etc.

Which factors appears to pose some major technical & logistical issues.

Regards,

BillOn Neat posted 2 years, 6 months ago 31 Responses

Discouraging Fossil Carbon

David -

there are so many design factors around the operatios of "Cap, Allocate & Trade" and of a "Carbon Tax" that I for one can't give any useful advice as to whether they may be incompatible
without some thousands of words of prior discussion.

Which discussion needs doing somewhere, but not here.

Below are some observations that I hope might be helpful in light of comments to date.

First, the "After-You-Claude" problem applies directly -
why would any nation take more than token action (welcome, but not itself significant)
unless all nations have agreed to accept binding commitments to their
"common but differentiated responsibilities" ?

The price of that agreement will be steep for the US -
of all nations it has both the greatest wealth and by far the greatest Carbon Debt.
(No, China's debt is not greater, it is far far smaller; China's annual GHG output may soon equal that of the US, although it has >4 times the population).

Given that the Washington regime has no sole patent on banditry,
we can be sure that other powers can and very likely will drive the hardest of bargains -
indeed some say that the last 15 years has been about who can ignore GW the longest.

From this perspective, and in light of unswerving US diplomatic pursuit (as far back as '95)
of emissions-entitlement trading as a central plank of a treaty,
we can surmise that once the treaty is in force the US WILL be buying large ammounts of entitlement on the global market.

What measures it takes within the US to constrain emissions are a US decision (there is simply no prospect of all nations accepting a single methodology within their borders).

It is worth noting here that, far from funding goodies in the US,
the proceeds of a national Carbon Tax would, undoubtedly,
go to purchase emissions entitlements from abroad.

Perhaps the starting point for internal US policy is the KISS principle
("Keep It Simple, Stupid" for those who need to know)
Under this outlook, there is the recognition that we have three sectors, Public, Business & Govt,
of whom the first are both inately doubtful of politicians' global schemes and are also ill-equipped to comprehend the subtle dynamics that will be in play.

Therefore, whatever the policy, in a sense, the simpler it is the better it will help win public credibility and strong voluntary commitment to ending fossil fuel dependency ASAP.

Neither C,A&T nor CTs offer any surety of social fairness - achieving that is up to the electorate, and the ethics of the politicians they put in power.

Here in the UK the relevant Govt minister has called for personal carbon allowances being given annually to all adults, which can either provide emission entitlement (e.g. when buying fuel) or can be traded in a public spot market for the going rate.

This would ensure the public is directly involved in the expense, and the profit, of fully transparent carbon trading.

As yet, this is the simplest, and most politically robust approach I've seen,
in that the annual budget is set by the global treaty, and good politicians cannot be blamed and ousted for its stringency (as they could for setting sufficient carbon tax rates),
besides which, the fact of trading under the treaty budget means that a binding limit is respected
(which ain't necessarily so under Carbon Taxes).

Personally, on the balance of foreseeable factors and dynamics, I'd reserve the use of Carbon Taxes for rather severe application to those individuals who persist in profitting from fossil fuel pollution,
specifically to the shareholders' profits from those energy corporations who fail to have better than 50% of their R,D&D in the Sustainable Energies by 2012.

Sorry this is so long.

Regards,

Bill

PS - Stuff "Renewables" !

"Battery-Chicken-Dung-Power" is Amoral (and is an abuse of Canis' relatives too).On And if not, why not? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 20 Responses

Falwell under a sod at last.!

So who's selling tickets for the dance on his grave ?

BillOn We shed a tear posted 2 years, 6 months ago 11 Responses

The impact of Step It Up

JMG -

This action seemed to me highly successful for a number of reasons.

1/. It triggered, and co-ordinated, many times the original target number of events, and thus of active participants.

2/. It demonstrated a previously hidden level of public concern right across America, and had this made public by quite extensive media coverage, including the front page of the NYT.

3/. Its key demand, of an 80% cut by 2050, was promptly taken up by a candidate for the presidency, John Edwards, thus setting the bar for other candidates on the issue.

4/. Its strong synergy with Gore's film, in demonstrating tangible public concern, will allow policy makers to consider more stringent options than had previously seemed credible.

This is not to suggest that SIU has, by itself, transformed US politics on the issue - the dollar hegemony underpinning empire rests of course on global oil sales being priced in dollars,
so stepping away from oil dependence may still appear somewhat problematic to the establishment.

Regards,

BillOn Garret Keizer burns in anger about 'green capitalism' posted 2 years, 6 months ago 47 Responses

Smearing the UN

I'm amused to see the standard American conditioned response of smearing the UM
voiced so plainly here on Grist.

It might have helped the reader make a fair judgement to have made clear that the meeting the author attended was of the UN Sustainable Development Commission,
which attempts to address the full spectrum of sustainability issues.

If he really wanted to report on the UN's commitment to resolving GW,
he should try attending meetings of the UN "Framework Convention on Climate Change."

As for what is on the menu for pudding at the UN, it seems a matter wholly irrelevant to the issue but quite useful as a cheap & nasty smear,
unless maybe one is convinced that cheesecake is for CEOs, while public servants should have only gruel ?

It seems worth noting that the author shares his contempt for the UN with the likes of Cheyney, Rove, Bolton & Bush,
who are not only trying as usual to gut the current G8 declaration,
but are even trying to excise its affirmation of the UN as the proper forum for addressing GW.

So, if we're questioning credibility here, perhaps we should ask to just what extent is the author in bed with Karl Rove ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Will it be adaptation, mitigation ... or neither? posted 2 years, 6 months ago 12 Responses

How is Carbon Neutrality defined ?

 . . . seems to me to be the core of the doubts over Carbon Offsets.

Starting from why this matters, I don't think posters here need telling of the urgency of our predicament,
which in turn demands that every single sustainable option for minimizing airborne GHG ppmvmust be brought into play,
and a global reforestation ethic, that is planting for sustainable production and carbon banking,
is a large and entirely predictable fraction of those options.

This is abiut reversing, not "slowing" deforestation.

Achieving that reforestation will require very substantial funds, of which only a part will be attracted by the terra preta & woodfuel energy yields.

Carbon banking is a potentially huge and early source of funding,
and anything that discredits it in the public's perception is, in my view,
highly damaging to the prospects, particularly in poor nations,
of enduring the changes we will face.

So, to become carbon neutral, I'd need first to know how much carbon I've sponsored & released to date. That is, my Carbon Debt.
No excuses. Historical CO2 emissions from 1907 are still around us.
(Those who want to ignore them would do better to continue playing with themselves rather than abusing our childrens' climate.

Carbon Neutrality is thus a goal to be achieved over time, unless I'd no better use for serious wealth.

Second, I'd need to fund the recovery of enough GHGs both to start paying off that Carbon Debt and to fully recover current additions to it in the form of current GHG outputs.
And, to reduce the debt, that recovery has to be in real time, that is this year's outputs are recovered this year - simply by investing enough, in tree-planting or whatever, to do so.

What worthwhile options there are for Carbon Banking (technically sequestration) other than terra preta and reforestation remains to be seen.
Those two are probably exemplary in that they have a track record of many millenia of sustainability, have worldwide grass-roots replicability, and have potentially massive local legitimacy given their multiple yields, services and synergies.

I say above "to fund the recovery of GHGs" because we have neither evidence nor credible economic theory of how alternative energies currently displace any fossil fuels' usage.
On the contrary, until we have a global treaty delimiting each nation's emission entitlements,
my energy conservation /efficiency advance /renewable energy supply,
is some poor soul's affordable fossil fuel supply.

There is also the huge issue (long ignored by efficiency hunters) of Jevons Paradox,
which again, in the absence of the requisite treaty, utterly negates the intended gains.

From these perspectives it would appear that Carbon Offsets, by risking the public discreditting sustainable Carbon Banking, are currently doing more harm than good.
What good they do is to channel some funding into some worthy projects
at the same time as some funding goes into wholly unworthy ones.

Given that Offsets, as distinct from Banking, cannot fulfil their stated aim before the requisite global treaty is in operation,
they seem to me a simple fraud with which no serious activist, ENGO or reputable business enterprise should get involved.

Once the treaty is in place (and helping to advance an equitable & effective treaty is surely the real priority for all activists)
then IMV a well regulated global market in Carbon Offsets could become a serious contributor
to accelerating the endurable rate of change out of fossil fuel dependence.

Regards,

BillhookOn Manufacturing a schism posted 2 years, 6 months ago 5 Responses

Why, Oh Why, accept the shills' agenda ?

Andrew -
So here's another long thread focussed just where the shills want it to be focussed -
on the reliability of the science that predicted GW, and has now thoroughly confirmed the accuracy of the prediction by observation,

rather than on just what we are going to do about it, how, when, and with whom.

The shills' owners (they are after all bought & paid for) presume that doing something about GW
will mean hacking the sales of their fossil fuel products,
and may well entail their inditement, trial and imprisonment for culpable mass homicide.

Is it any wonder the poor shills have to persist with such a tedious monotony of propagande?

What is a wonder to me is just why Grist feels the need to keep trailing its coat by posting invites for the shills' participation.

Regards,

BillOn Observed warming since 1990 is greater than the models predicted posted 2 years, 6 months ago 32 Responses

A Rhino & a Gnu too.

Nigel -

your question "How fast can we make the necessary investment without dropping living standards to cause instability" - begs some clarification -

Causing an acceptable degree of instability is normal political practice - and at the other extreme, sufficient instability would fragament and terminate our high-tech gloal society.

So we are looking at the degree of destabilization that society faces,
be that intentionally in attempting to navigate past the hazards,
or be that imposed by the hazards themselves.

As JMG described, there is an Elephant in the spreadshheets which is the profitability of making war, with its vast and ongoing waste of life & resources.

Yet there are also two other pivotal threats, call them a Rhino & a Gnu, which need to be integrated into such an overview.

The Rhino is the full spectrum impacts of climate destabilization -
affecting food security, water security, mass migration, and a host of other interactive and iterative factors.
Among these is the foreseeable necessity of the Re-insurance industry withdrawing cover in areas prone to mass destruction by weather impacts.
At the local level, this is about domestic & commercial mortgages being called in due to the properties' uninsurability.
The shock of overnight loss of business collateral would be seismic. (See Florida housing bubble).
Plainly, the impact of reinsurers' contraction on investor confidence has yet to be properly considered in public fora.

The Gnu is an odder and still less mitigable a beast - it is the wholly unavoidable peak and subsequent decline of global oil & gas production, which even some rather conservative authorities suggest may be within a decade.

On their rising production the economic growth ideology has been built.
With their decline, global economic growth is no longer tenable.

The degree to which this will push our global society towards terminal destabilization is beyond any useful prediction.

While I've no more foreknowledge of what is to come than anyone else, having watched the corrupt negligence for over 3 decades shrugging off attempts at its ouster,
my time is now spread over two fields - campaigning for the Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons
(without which starvation seems quite a possibility)
and establishing a small college of traditional farming here in Wales
(without which starvation again seems quite a possibility).

So finally, in answer to the jist of your question, I'd say no,
it seems unlikely that we can make the investment fast enough to maintain this society's stability.

Regards,

BillOn Population is not the short-term problem posted 2 years, 6 months ago 15 Responses

Economics as Warfare

Given that Cheyney is not only extremely powerful, highly experienced and exceptionally devious, but is also wholly dedicated to the ideology of the corporate state,
I doubt that much is happenning in US affairs that is not either fully intended, though plausibly deniable as unexpected, or tolerable as irrelavent to the program.

In this light the very predictable consequences of Bush's Ethanol drive,
[in terms of raising global traded-food prices to levels that will be unnaffordable for the poorest 20th and a struggle for the next 10th],
were very clearly foreseen and were triggered as a means of generating the poverty & strife on which the profiterring of the corporate state thrives.

This is one example of the reality of "A victory for the nation without a battle."

It is the use of economics as warfare.

Regards,

BillhookOn The hits keep on comin' posted 2 years, 6 months ago 7 Responses

Harnessing accessible resources. for new goals.

Over the decades I've seen a good few rich kids trying to make some change in the society around them.

My neice (whose mother has relatively huge wealth) is right now pushing for a "Fossil Free Day" on midsummer's day in June - when people will, voluntarily, use a minimum of FFs just to experience the change.

Personally I think its got little chance either of getting much support or providing significant education to those who participate.

But, as a first effort, it is making an attempt, and the next attempt will be better, as long as she doesn't get pushed into apathy by being slagged off - as a mere rich kid do-gooder.

The critical issue to my mind is not the degree of wealth one happens to get born into,
but,

1/. the person's determination to step outside the conventional box to try to raise social & ecological justice, and
2/. their effectiveness in doing so with regard both to their application of intelligence and to their utilization of accessible resources.

In these terms my neice's efforts could go a lot further given more care and attention,
while Nathan's sound to be a long way down the road.

There is of course one role that only the children of the wealthy can play, and I think it may be a critically important one.

It is the role of the messenger who can bring the critical issues, and word of their solutions, to the dinner table of the CEOs mandated with awful decision-making power.
Scarcely anybody else can reach them in those circs.

So please, spare us, and the likes of Nathan & his partners, the class warfare stereotyping -
No two people, whether born wealthy or not, will make quite the same use of their opportunities to aid the common good,
but in one thing they are predictably alike -
they tend to respond well to informed encouragement.

Regards,

BillhookOn Some students don't want to go carbon neutral posted 2 years, 6 months ago 36 Responses

Cap, ALLOCATE & Trade

The worth of this approach depends, centrally, of the chosen structure of the Allocation of emission rights.

Could people please help to get this perspective over by using the title above when writing about it ?

Regards,

BillOn Oh what a relief it biz posted 2 years, 6 months ago 8 Responses

People here are not noticeably rascist . . .

but if it were American children now starving and dying
of the ailments of poverty, malnutrition and bad water,
as a result if intensifying droughts,

as is now happenning in Africa,

would we still take this leisurely an approach
to those who seek to disract us and disrupt discussion

of just how we may best curtail climate destabilization ?

Or would those people simply have there posting privileges ended ?

So does it really matter whose children are dying ?

Regards,

BillhookOn Churchill, not Chamberlain posted 2 years, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Edit Capacity PLEASE !

And while we're discussing site protocols,
can we please be trusted with the capaity to edit posts ?
Typos, let alone hasty use of language, can cause needless disruption, and warrant ammendment.

For instance "factets" above should read "facets."

BillOn Churchill, not Chamberlain posted 2 years, 6 months ago 58 Responses

Seeking pro-rata cuts precludes agreement.

Jason -

You wrote :

[I'm] "not sure how China and India, which are building a new coal plant each week and have about 2 billion people that want electricity are going to agree to 85% reductions at just the time they are developing."

This appears to assume that if the US cuts GHG output by 85%, developing nations should be expected to do the same.

Given that we, the developed nations, are responsible for over 75% of the current excess atmospheric CO2,
and for the massed casualties and loss it is causing,
and that we've profited mightily by its emission,
the idea of expecting pro-rata cuts seems to me somewhat naive.
Quite apart from grossly inequitable.
And, critically, wholly destructive of the possibility of an agreement between "North" & "South"
of the requisite "Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons."

In dismissing a pro-rata arrangement,
and recognizing that the nations' CO2 outputs correlate strongly with their GDPs,
I'd suggest that a more equitable arrangement will not only be negotiable,
but will also prove more resilient under the looming strains the nations will face.

What I'd suggest is titled "Contraction & Convergence",
which was developed by the London-based Global Commons Institute,
and has been widely endorsed since its presentation to the UNFCCC in '92.

It proposes that science should provide the target peak of CO2-equiv ppmv within a specific date,
by which GW will be constrained within 2 degrees C of the global temperature prior to fossil energy dominance,
for the nations to agree to accept as the limitation on their GHG outputs.

This scientific advice implies an overall GHG budget for the period,
which in turn implies the scale of a declining global annual budget.
This is the Contraction of the framework's title.

Given the highly unequal national shares of emissions at present,
as well as the need for change in these shares to be gradual
(both to be negotiable and to avoid economic collapse)
it is proposed that all nations' emission rights should Converge
from the present GDP-based shares to per capita parity by an agreed date.
That is, a transition period moving toward national emission rights according to size of population.

With the emission rights being tradeable up to an agreed cap,
and the income earned (mostly by populous poorer nations)
being ring-fenced for sustainable energy development,
this arrangement could provide the most rapid transition from fossil fuel dependence
that is economically endurable.

The right to use the atmosphere's capacity to assimilate our GHGs
cannot, logically, be siezed by any nation, however mighty.
The atmosphere needs to be recognized, and managed, as a commons,
if we are going to see the resolution of the issue of Climate Destabilization.

To this end Contraction & Convergence offers a framework within which the nations can negotiate the key dates,
and so effectively the key rates of change.

It is partly this transparent simplicity that has led to C&C's endorsement
not only by the European Parliament,
but also by the African Group of Nations at the UNFCCC.

I would commend it to you Jason,
as a hugely preferable option to the hopeless dead-end of seeking pro-rata cuts.

Regards,

BillhookOn Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act posted 2 years, 6 months ago 15 Responses

Multiple choices for global feedstock potential

A couple of points worth noting.

First, with regard to the energy potential of gaseous outputs,
I'd well agree that if charcoal is the sole goal of pyrolyzation,
then little bi-product energy will be gained.
For instance, back in 1680 when methanol was first traded commercially,
it was distilled from the fume of charcoal kilns at a mere 3% of feedstock weight.
It was a saleable bi-product, but charcoal was the prime interest.

If wood is totally reduced, then the raw "wood gas" can be processed into a syngas
which holds twice the CO to H2 ratio needed for methanol production.

Rather than providing additional H2 from steam to maximize methanol (CH3OH) output,
a dual output plant would halt the pyrolization at a point to leave "surplus" carbon in the form of charcoal.

I mention the option because there are already nations where liquid fossil fuels are becoming unaffordable,
but are required to maintan food production & basic services.

With the approach of the peak of global oil production,
all nations seem likely to find themselves short of liquid fuels.

On top of which is of course the issue of the intentional displacement of fossil fuels.

With regard to carbon banking, that achieved by the terra preta process
could and I think should be augmented by a global program of reforestation,
that is, productive sustainable reforestation preferably under the coppice & standards sylviculture
to maximize  feedstock yields, habitat, early output, local employment, etc.

Given the standing stock of carbon in in-cycle coppice,
and in its growing root-balls,
and in the growing standards (trees only felled at maturity)
the carbon banking potential of this oprtion is very significant globally.

Regards,

BillOn Charcoal carbon sequestration -- birth of a new CO2 removal wedge? posted 2 years, 7 months ago 28 Responses