Message to environmental groups. Stop the emails telling me that it is urgent to bring global warming legislation up for a vote in the Senate. Over the past two weeks, I have must have received twenty emails (yes, I am a junkie for environmental activism).
Today, E&E Reporter posted an article with the following headline:
CLIMATE: Senate trio courts industry in bid to pre-empt ad war (03/17/2010) Darren Samuelsohn, E&E reporter
The first sentence of the story? "The lead authors of the Senate climate bill are courting key members of an industry coalition that once cheered on Dick Cheney's energy policies."
It is time to admit the truth -- no legislation that actually addresses global warming will pass the Senate this year. With the great majority of the Republican minority committed to a no vote on almost anything, and with senators beholden to powerful coal (think Sen. Rockefeller), oil (think Sen. Murkowski) and nuclear (think Sen. Alexander) only interested in legislation that actually advances their destructive industries, this is a terrible climate to insist that there must be a vote. Anything that could get a supermajority will be a terrible bill.
And the bad news is that the Senate context will probably be worse next year.
There are several culprits, of course, but the biggest one is the tradition of a 60 vote filibuster in the Senate. There might be 50 senators willing to vote for legislation that would start to address global warming, but there are surely not 60. And senators 51 to 60 - that is, the senators needed to get to a sufficient number to break a filibuster - are almost entirely representative of the dirty fuel crowd.
And there price will be extremely high. It took $80 billion of subsidies to the dirtiest industry around - the coal industry - to get a handful of coal state Democrats to vote for a global warming bill in the House where only a majority is required. In the Senate, almost by definition, that $80 billion would be much bigger - and that is just for coal. The nuclear industry wants $100 billion. And these are some of the same people who say we cannot afford universal health care. Their audacity is breathtaking but effective.
I have no doubt that the planet is warming rapidly. I believe we must act rapidly and aggressively to slow and then reverse the accumulation of global warming gases. But the bitter reality is that Senate has demonstrated far beyond a shadow of a doubt that it cannot produce legislation that will move us forward.
Of course, we should not give up just because the Senate has been captured by hostile forces. We have to put as much fight into what can be done by regulatory agencies under the temporary control of President Obama. Coal plants can be denied permits. Appliance efficiency standards can be tightened. The Environmental Protection Agency can be defended against powerful efforts to prevent it from enforcing the Clean Air Act.
As long as we pretend that it is possible to pass strong global warming legislation through the Senate, the longer we waste the efforts of millions of committed environmentalists.
We can handle the truth. It is time to fight on a more favorable battlefield.
It makes so much more sense for the EPA to start regulating carbon emissions right now. The agency already has the authority and expertise to limit carbon emissions, and the Supreme Court has opened the door for such regulations by rejecting the Bush EPA's argument that it could not regulate carbon. Then the vote in the Senate would be whether to prevent the EPA from taking action, and the 60 vote supermajority rule becomes our friend. Even if they get the 60 votes, the President can veto such a bill. And there are not enough votes there to override a presidential veto.
This all seems so obvious to anyone paying attention, I'm wondering why Senate leaders, Obama administration leaders, and the big national environmental groups all want to see a vote on a Senate bill. It makes no sense. Why must we be pilloried, defending an awful bill, that probably won't pass anyway, or won't help if it does?
We know humans produce ~35 Billion Tons of extra CO2/year. Yeah, old data says 26 billion, but we now have China and more people.
A ballpark question is: how much bigger is 35 Billion Tons than CO2's yearly rise rate? Answer:
Earth's radius = ~6,370,000 meters.
Scale Height of the atmosphere (height if it were all at sea level pressure) ~8 km.
Air Density at sea level: ~1.29 kg per cubic meter
So, mass of the atmosphere (4PI r squared x height) is: 4PI x 6,370,000m2 x 8,000m x 1.29 kg/m3 = ~5.26 quadrillion metric tons.
How much is CO2? At a current 388 ppm, it's (388/1,000,000) x 5.26 quadrillion tons = ~2.04 trillion tons.
So, 1 ppm of CO2 is 2.04 trillion tons/388 = 5.26 billion tons.
Ergo, human activity adds 35/5.26 = ~6.65 ppm to the yearly global CO2 budget.
Global CO2 is now rising at ~2.6 ppm per year. This suggests the Earth isn't a perfect sponge, but still re-adsorbs ~60% of our emissions, ~4 ppm per year!
More careful inventory says the Earth absorbs only ~50%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_fraction
But grab a calculator and check it yourself. No computer or outside authority needed.
Americans emit ~20% of global CO2, ~21% via auto exhaust, 40% for home heat/light/appliances, the rest for industrial/commercial, transport, etc.
An average American drives ~12k miles/year at ~17.1mpg.
12,000 miles/17.1mpg = ~700gls of gas/year, or ~a tank a week.
Gasoline weighs ~6 lbs/gl. So, we burn ~6 x 700 = ~4,200 lbs of gasoline/year.
Gasoline is mostly iso-octane - C8H18 (C=12, H=1, so mol. wt. = 114); heptane is C7H16 (mol. wt. = 100). So, 89 octane yields an average mol. wt., of ~113. Burning a molecule of it yields ~7.9 molecules of CO2 (O=16; ergo, mol. wt. 7.9 x 44 = 348).
So, a U.S. auto emits ~(348/113) x 4,200 = ~12,930 lbs or ~ 5.9 metric tons of CO2/year.
If that's 21% of total, then each American emits ~5.9/0.21 = ~28 metric tons of CO2/year.
We have ~240 million U.S. cars/trucks. So, we make ~28 x 240 million = 6.7 billion tons of CO2/year, ~20% of the global total.
That yields 6.7/0.20 = ~33.6 billion tons of CO2 globally/year.
Chip in a few billion for forest fires, deforestation of the Amazon, southeast Asia, and Siberia, desertification of the Sahel, Gobi, Sahara, and there's MORE THAN 35 billion tons.
But the denier myth is dangerous in that it also ignores the intricate and finely tuned web of balances needed to maintain equilibrium in complex systems. Typically for stability, complex systems must juggle many delicate flux budgets, driven by nearly equal inputs and outputs. Even a small excess (e.g., human CO2 contributions), if added too quickly, can disrupt a metastable balance between two large opposing fluxes. Thus, a small deviation from net zero can amplify to change the basic state - doesn't bode well.
So, anthropogenic CO2 is destabilizing. I.e., CO2 level is largely independent of temperature, but water vapor (still the most dominant greenhouse gas) levels tend to rise with temperature. Thus, a little CO2-induced initial warming evaporates more oceanic water vapor, and warmer air holds more water vapor. Since more water vapor absorbs more thermal radiation, warming is amplified. Refinements, such as cellular transport and convection, cloud condensation/rain-out, etc., mitigate the basic notion, but the bottom line is:
THE WARMER IT GETS, THE FASTER IT'LL WARM.
Below is a 5 year moving average (satellite/surface data combo, heat island effects corrected), data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.pdf
Shows temperature rising fast from ~1980 by ~0.6 degs. C. Since then, CO2 also rose from 337 to 388 ppm, ~1.7ppm/year, accelerating to +2ppm/year.
www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full
Combining the two graphs yields ~0.6 degs. C per 50ppm CO2 rise rate.
Given human greed and denial, there's little reason to believe we'll do more than shave the current rise rate back to 1.7ppm/year over the next 30 - 40 years. If so, we pass 450 ppm by 2050, for a total increase of 1.4 degs C (2.5 degs F) since 1980. Or 530ppm with 3.0 degs C (5.0 degs F) of increase by 2100.
This strictly linear calc ignores methane (21 times stronger a greenhouse gas than CO2) from thawing arctic peat bogs, lowered arctic albedo from melted polar ice caps, increased water vapor (still the dominant greenhouse gas) due to air warmed initially by CO2, etc. - all supra-linear effects, expected to increase the rise rate.
If you want a better estimate, try a full-blown model, like James Hansen's that says +5 degs C by AD 2100 and an eventual 9 meter sea level rise.
How much more water can warmer air hold? If mean global surface temperature is T1 ~286.5 degs. Kelvin (56 degs F), what happens if temperature rises 3 degs. to T2 = 289.5 degs. K, a 1.05% increase?
From the Magnus relation for saturation vapor pressure (max amount of water vapor air can hold at a given temperature),
e(T2)/e(T1) = exp(17.625 x T2/(T2 + 243.04) )/exp(17.625 x T1/(T1 +243.04) )
= 1.0467 , or 4.67% more water vapor for a 1.05% temperature increase,
clearly supra-linear.
This rough check neglects many mitigating factors: transport, convection, cloud condensation, rain-out, etc., but consistent with basic thermodynamics, I can think of no instance where intra-system negative feedback ever compensated fully for an initial forcing. So, once CO2 warms the air initially, water vapor increases supra-linearly with temperature, begetting a positive feedback that induces more warming.
wind
and
bio fuels
have been studied and have been determined to be more than able to supply all the worlds energy needs, cheaper, safer, cleaner and forever.
Cheaper when you factor in what we should be charging fossil and nuke for their environment damage.
Rooftop pv can already be the cheapest power you can buy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/profile/research?action=profile
We need to stop waiting for better tech, and spend the money and the very good tech products we have now.
We need a trillion dollar 10 years program of producing and installing rooftop pvs solar in the sunny spots, and wind and bio fuels where appropriate.
and all those fossil and nukes subsides and research should be shifted immediately to green energy, not rich old fat monopolies.
And we need small business preferences to prevent the giants from stamping out and eating up all the new tech companies.
We are at a very good point in hour history to make this change, solar has Finally become available cheaper before subsides. similar for wind. Bio Fuels can be implemented very quickly if the refinery companies would get behind them. It's all old chemistry. (Not food land ethanol!)
1) 2010 - 2020: first 30% reduction requires basic birth control and individual/institutional conservation. I.e., eating 2/3rds less beef (carbon-equivalent to driving 1/3rd less miles), use power strips to short phantom current, phase out tungsten filaments and gas guzzlers. Phase in white roofs in sunny climes, caulking/weatherstripping, programmable thermostats, heat pumps, TELECOMMUTING, etc., all cheap or cost-free to implement.
2) 2010 - 2030: next 20% requires full-scale wind energy deployment, over a 20 year period, with solar, wave, tidal, and geo filling in to help a smart grid. At 25% utilization and $2M per 2.5 MW peak turbine, that's ~$3.2 billion per GW wind farm, ~1/3rd of a nuke plant. Offshore farms run ~ double that. If residential photovoltaic gets cheap enough - well, GREAT. Meanwhile, electric autos, much higher efficiency appliances, and near zero energy homes and high rises, with high-speed rail, cellulosic ethanol, algae fuels, start phasing in.
3) 2030 - 2070: Final 50%. It'll take at least 20 years to begin deploying advanced nuclear - i.e., liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR). They burn existing rad wastes, are proliferation-resistant, have zero-meltdown potential. Traveling wave design eliminates reprocessing rad risk. Thorium's plentiful, and far cheaper to mine than uranium.
Doing ALL of it would stabilize climate. Sadly, most people don't care enough about their progeny to take this on.
I.e., though ice ages have come and gone over time scales of several tens of thousands of years, what we're doing now to warm the planet in a couple hundred years is maybe a hundred times faster than what happens during an interglacial period. So, to use your tired sports analogy, it's "taken climate change to a whole new level."
Target major energy consumers and create intensity factors for their business output and give tax breaks to companies exceeding that intensity by a percent amount. In short directly subsidize activities that reduce emissions per output. This benefits the person financing the activity and the company providing the technology that creates the efficiency.
I think it is very possible in a highly cost conscious world to create vehicles that advance the agenda without a hard mandate. Of course getting the low hanging fruit and removing it from a potential cap and trade offset table might also spur the heavy emitters to come around to getting a bill sooner rather than later. Every reduction voluntarily implemented becomes one removed as a potential offset. If the producers don't want to move first, incentivize the consumers to. It also works on the demand curve as well as the supply curve.
If anyone wants to raise our electricity rates by $3,000 a year, please first invest some time and see for yourself what the uncovered CRU emails and computer programs actually revealed. You never got the full story from the American press. Pay yourselves $300/hour instead and spend 10 hours looking into it for yourself.
The datasets appear as though they were corrupted by the Jones team, and need to be reviewed by an independent team of scientists & mathematicians. This would give us all a six month or so “cooling down” period on this debate. This thing isn’t going anywhere until that is resolved, I assure you. From initial analysis every bias was incorporated into the data always seems to increase the temps in the raw data they received, automatically “proving” that we face a crisis. Everybody uses this SAME data set that has been “adjusted” by Jones, NASA, NOAA GIST etc.
In 1975 Newsweek published an article warning about the imminent dangers of global cooling crisis and how to prevent another imminent ice age, which ended: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.”
http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Rooftop solar pv is already the cheapest electricity in Hawaii, and CA.
rooftop solar, better, cheaper.
see my profile for proof.
Climate change or not.
We don't want to go there just on somebody's whim or crazy idea or cooked numbers
UNLESS YOU ARE GEORGE JETSON..YOU DON'T NEED TO DO THIS!
No matter what the issue is, some politico somewhere is going to say "let's not do this just now".
You don't need to post this, just wanted to let you guys know.
Our investment experts, the EU and China all believe that the global market for clean tech will be over 5 trillion by 2020 which is why the Chinese government is investing 9 billion/month in clean tech. They want to corner the global market. We are seeing Japan, Brazil, Germany, Spain, South Africa and others following suit. America is falling way behind. If we invest via a clean energy bill we garner large market share. How many American jobs would be created by a 2 Trillion global market share?
We now spend over $300 billion per year in importing foreign oil much of which comes from countries that are adverse to us. One way to look at this is that we are funding both sides of the wars we are in. We are currently spending $50 billion per year patrolling the Straits of Hormuz to keep oil shipping lanes open
So, if we approach a new energy bill from these perspectives we are more likely to get something comprehensive through and in doing so we begin to address climate change at the same time.
Any environmental legislation likely to pass THIS Congress will prove environmentally destructive.