In March the biggest climate conference of the year took place in Copenhagen: 2500 participants from 80 countries, 1400 scientific presentations. Last week, the Synthesis Report of the Copenhagen Congress was handed over to the Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen in Brussels. Denmark will host the decisive round of negotiations on the new climate protection agreement this coming December.
The climate congress was organised by a “star alliance” of research universities: Copenhagen, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, Tokyo, Beijing – to name a few. The Synthesis Report is the most important update of climate science since the 2007 IPCC report.
So what does it say? Our regular readers will hardly be surprised by the key findings from physical climate science, most of which we have already discussed here. Some aspects of climate change are progressing faster than was expected a few years ago – such as rising sea levels, the increase of heat stored in the ocean and the shrinking Arctic sea ice. “The updated estimates of the future global mean sea level rise are about double the IPCC projections from 2007”, says the new report. And it points out that any warming caused will be virtually irreversible for at least a thousand years – because of the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Perhaps more interestingly, the congress also brought together economists and social scientists researching the consequences of climate change and analysing possible solutions. Here, the report emphasizes once again that a warming beyond 2ºC is a dangerous thing:
Temperature rises above 2ºC will be difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and are likely to cause major societal and environmental disruptions through the rest of the century and beyond.
(Incidentally, by now 124 nations have officially declared their support for the goal of limiting warming to 2ºC or less, including the EU – but unfortunately not yet the US.)
Some media representatives got confused over whether this 2ºC-guardrail can still be met. The report’s answer is a clear yes – if rapid and decisive action is taken:
The conclusion from both the IPCC and later analyses is simple – immediate and dramatic emission reductions of all greenhouse gases are needed if the 2ºC guardrail is to be respected.
Cause of the confusion was apparently that the report finds that it is inevitable by now that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will overshoot the future stabilization level that would keep us below 2ºC warming. But this overshooting of greenhouse gas concentrations need not lead temperatures to overshoot the 2ºC mark, provided it is only temporary. It is like a pot of water on the stove – assume we set it to a small flame which will make the temperature in the pot gradually rise up to 70ºC and then no further. Currently, the water is at 40ºC. When I turn up the flame for a minute and then back down, this does not mean the water temperature will exceed 70ºC, due to the inertia in the system. So it is with climate – the inertia here is in the heat capacity of the oceans.
From a natural science perspective, nothing stops us from limiting warming to 2ºC. Even from an economic and technological point of view this is entirely feasible, as the report clearly shows. The ball is squarely in the field of politics, where in December in Copenhagen the crucial decisions must be taken. The synthesis report puts it like this: Inaction is inexcusable.
Related links
Press release of PIK about the release of the synthesis report
Copenhagen Climate Congress – with webcasts of the plenary lectures (link on bottom right – my talk is in the opening session part 2, just after IPCC chairman Pachauri)
Nobel Laureate Meeting in London – a high caliber gathering in May that agreed on a remarkable memorandum which calls for immediate policy intervention: “We know what needs to be done. We can not wait until it is too late.” The new U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu participated over the full three days in the scientific discussions – how many politicians would have done that?
WM writes:
CSP achieves baseline power at the same level as coal plants, and a wide-area smart grid can provide steady power from a mix of solar, wind, and biomass. Note also that geothermal is 24/7.
Oh look Methane Clathrates are looking somewhat promising as a new source of energy.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.100-ice-on-fire-the-next-fossil-fuel.html
Pumping cO2 into the clathrates pushes out the methane which I presume when burned produces Co2. Still it might be instead of coal. Fossil fuel companies really do not like renewables apart from the obvious publicity stunt now do they ?
I found this in BioEd Online 19 Jan 06 and was wondering if it was an accurate description:
Data clean-up
Sea levels are closely monitored by tide gauges all around the world. But pinning down average sea-level change is hard, because there are natural fluctuations in sea level that vary from place to place.
The issue is also complicated by subsidence or elevation of land masses. “Teasing out sea level at any scale is a daunting challenge,” says Miller. Most studies using tide-gauge data have failed to spot any acceleration, leading to suggestions that the models needed to be re-evaluated.
Recent satellite measurements of sea level, which are more accurate and less variable than tide gauges, have suggested a relatively high rate of rise over the past decade. But comparing this rate of sea-level rise to rates determined by tide gauges in the earlier part of the century is problematic: researchers weren’t sure that the difference in rates wasn’t down to the difference in measurement methods.
Church and White decided to use both datasets to get the best result. They used satellite measurements to distinguish random ‘noise’ in recent tidal data from more systematic site-to-site variations. They could then use these results to clean up older tidal data.
Jim, what makes you think you are the only ones reading?
It’s possible to read without posting at the drop of every hat!
“This is shown in detail in our Science paper of 2007, the results of which are shown and updated in the Copenhagen Synthesis Report. You could have looked it all up in the report. -stefan]”
Did you change the filter length from M=11 to M=14 in the temperature graph (Figure 3)?
[Response: Almost correct: we chose M=15. In hindsight, the averaging period of 11 years that we used in the 2007 Science paper was too short to determine a robust climate trend. The 2-sigma error of an 11-year trend is about +/- 0.2 ºC, i.e. as large as the trend itself. Therefore, an 11-year trend is still strongly affected by interannual variability (i.e. weather). You can tell from the fact that adding just one cool year – 2008 – significantly changes the trend line, even though 2008 is entirely within the normal range of natural variability around the trend line and thus should not affect any statistically robust trend estimate. -stefan]
#250
Do solar panels work with snow on them? I know they’ll work great in the desert but isn’t transmission loss from Arizona to New York city a bit of a problem? Also, I have not seen a lot of geothermal energy tapped around Chicagoland, how does that get to the midwest from Yellowstone or wherever it is sourced?
Thanks
William
Tommy – I would go to these sites for better polar ice data. Seems no one looks at the South Pole with the high levels of ice.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
http://www.climate4you.com/
#249 Mark:
The human population level is unrelated to environmental degradation? A remarkable assertion.
A thought experiment: if the world were supporting 1 billion persons right now, would our climate problem be so urgent? Would natural sequestration of CO2 be more or less effective in that situation? Would we be burning more or fewer hydrocarbons? Would we have more or less time to abandon combustion as the axle of our existence?
Or, if you can’t fathom that, how about imagining you’re on a submarine that has got itself stuck to the bottom and offers a certain fixed amount of resources, particularly lithium hydroxide and oxygen. Would you suffocate sooner with a full crew or a partial crew?
This is really pretty simple. Once we reach a population level sufficient to produce a few Newtons and Einsteins, our requirement for outliers with mental faculties and the cultural matrix necessary to improve our condition is satisfied. Further population increase will not improve living standards but instead will have the opposite effect.
Conversely, to me you are (probably inadvertently) conveying the impression that you believe the human population level is unrelated to the environmental condition of the planet.
If I were to leap off the same cliff of interpretation you disappeared over a few posts ago, I could probably even speculate that you think –more– people are needed to improve the human condition, at which point I’d have everything I needed to (wrongly) decide you are Catholic and are secretly promoting souls for heaven, just as you seem to believe I’m secretly promoting a lifestyle rollback. But that would be wrong, because you didn’t say that and I don’t have the evidence to support such a claim.
Finally, can you show me where I said that reducing C02 levels will reduce our living standard? That is the basis of your irritation, wrong as it happens yet apparently a notion you’re unable to abandon. Any further discussion with you is pointless until you’ve fixed that problem.
# steve Says:
24 June 2009 at 4:34 PM
I answered this earlier but it did not appear, so I try again with a different answer.
I think that the initial data point is called a bias because it does not tell you an absolute height. As you say, the following points are relative to that and so give the trend.
Hope that helps (HTH),
Cheers, Alastair
RichardC, assuming your big old trees were used for log homes, do you know how much waste was produced? I looked at the numbers for likely comparable timberland just south (Olympic Peninsula) and the answer isn’t ‘completely different’ at all. It still takes at least decades to make up the loss. If you are selling to the best possible log home company they still produce a lot of sawdust and bark. In the Northwest there’s still the same problem Jim Bouldin’s work is addressing — once you break open the canopy you get a lot of sunlight in (at least for 3-4 summer months!) and understory growth, so you need to be doing fire management.
As dhog says, when you define the terms uniquely to your own personal experience, of course your answers are completely different than the research papers. But the comparison isn’t helpful until you do the numbers, and it will confuse people if you don’t make explicit that’s how you’re doing it.
Look again at Jim Bouldin’s 2008 AGU paper at his website, and look up between your trees, and look around for fire risk. That’s his point, as it applies to timber-cutting. Old trees, close to continuous canopy, open space between the trees, much less fire loss.
Such sites, like the one he shows a picture of, are rare.
That’s how I’m managing 50 acres of forest, over a couple of different sites, working it back toward mostly closed canopy, with shaded firebreaks. Can’t take money out of it — that loses the shade long before it’s restored.
RichardC, re 235, 240:
There are certainly better, and worse, ways to cut trees wrt carbon storage, and selective is far better than clear cutting AOTBE. Burying the slash will only slow down, not stop, decomposition, and will be partially offset by increased decomp in the high C soil you are disturbing to do so. Still, I appreciate your efforts to be conscientious.
Re Eric’s in-line response @153: “please don’t confuse Milankovitch forcing with modern climate trends. The timescales are utterly different”
Eric, thanks for the reply. I was not confusing them, or at least I did not intend that meaning. I’m aware of the long time periods of the three Milankovic Cycles, and thus that they of course can not cause short term warming or cooling trends.
What I was getting at is that if the current Milankovic insolation matrix (particularly precession + orbital aphelion) produces slightly milder northern hemisphere summers (very slightly since orbital eccentricity is near minimum), then it must also produce slightly stronger southern hemisphere winters (again, very slightly).
If so, then long-term negative Milankovic forcing would be yet another factor in why southern hemisphere warming lags northern, no?
(In addition to far more ocean & less land mass in the southern, that the geographic position of the Antarctic land mass allows for strong circumpolar ocean currents and air circulation, the altitude, mass and thermal inertia of the ice cap, the ozone hole, etc.)
I just want to double-check that this hypothesis is correct before I repeat it. If even a slight Milankovic insolation forcing is part of the mix, I would think it should be openly included in discussions to counter the “yeah, but Antarctic sea ice is growing” meme.
re 255, that would be because the models say that Southern Polar Ice (you know, those nasty, unscientific, unproven and definitely always wrong computer models) will not reduce until later and that the southern pole may even see more ice.
One reason being that the North Pole is ice surrounded by land and the South Pole is land surrounded by water.
This means, in a very simple (and I really do think I need to be as simple as possible with you) way that the only way to get warmth to the South Pole is to blow it there. The North Pole can be warmed by warmer air masses OR by warm water streams. NP ice can also break up and present a bigger surface to melt from to the environment, which is rather limited when the ice is sitting on solid rock…
“I know they’ll work great in the desert but isn’t transmission loss from Arizona to New York city a bit of a problem?”
Not really. It already happens with the current electrical grid. NY State doesn’t produce enough electric for a surge in demand, they get it from another state.
And if your roof is covered with snow, it’s quite well insulated, so you don’t need much power to replace heat loss.
I think you mean Antarctic sea ice rather than polar ice, given that Antarctica itself is losing ice mass…
Barton Paul Levenson Says (25 June 2009 at 4:37 AM):
“Note also that geothermal is 24/7.”
But (conventional) geothermal also has very limited availability, especially east of the Rockies. Deep geothermal is another matter, but nobody’s actually got that working yet, plus some people are bothered by the earthquakes: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html?ref=science
Mark Says (25 June 2009 at 11:33 AM):
“It already happens with the current electrical grid. NY State doesn’t produce enough electric for a surge in demand, they get it from another state.”
Probably from Quebec, which isn’t a state, and is a lot closer to New York than Arizona is. Line losses are proportional to distance, you know.
“And if your roof is covered with snow, it’s quite well insulated, so you don’t need much power to replace heat loss.”
Huh? Why would anyone use electric power for heat? And you still have all those other things that run on electricity…
244 dhogaza said, “I’m starting to understand how RichardC uses terms like “biodiversity” and “pristine”
And I’m starting to see how you treat people. A lot less kindly than grouse. A five acre suburban lot is never going to be pristine, so [self-edit]
246 Ike said, “Nuclear power plants have an optimal baseline performance that maximizes fuel conversion, so you get the maximum amount of power out per fuel rod. Ramping them up and down is bad for the fuel rods.”
So you’re saying that it is more profitable to give away excess power for free? If so, I’m surprised nukes don’t come with a power-consuming device to bleed off excess power.
248 James said, “If nuclear-heavy France is among the cheapest, and lots-of-wind Denmark among the most expensive… Well, I’d say that ought to be cause for some thought.”
Note that Denmark taxes the bejesus out of electricity – a 58% levy. From your link:
“The share of taxation in household electricity prices varied greatly between Member States, ranging from around 5% in Malta, the United Kingdom and Portugal to more than 40% in Denmark (58%) and the Netherlands (42%).”
256 Hank, 50 acres, eh? That’s a lot. I have 5. Logs bring top dollar when used for log homes and mine were the right size, so yes, I’m certain that’s how they were used. They turn the bark into mulch to be sold, and the sawdust into pellets to be burned for fuel. There isn’t much waste. The fire risk has been eliminated because I had a guy come in and clear out all the slash and use it to build berms, which are covered with a thin layer of soil. On some I planted clover and others I planted rye. I like the clover ones better. This technique might not be a good idea down south because of termites, which release methane. http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/brockberg.html
257 Jim, thanks. It’s difficult to know what works best until after the fact, eh? In my area on Vancouver Island, things don’t rot very fast. It rarely rains in the summer, and the berms ensure great runoff. There’s still a lot of air in the compacted slash and it’s all above true ground level, so I believe it will stay pretty durn dry inside the berms. My guess is that it will take several centuries for the slash to decompose. Of course, that’s impossible to prove.
#247 Ike Solem,
First, even with your system of calculating, 250 mpg is an outrageous claim.
But your statement, ” One gallon of gasoline is the same as 1.3 X 10^8 joules – – ” is absolutely not true. Logically, this is like saying, “A tiger is the same as a rattlesnake,” because either can cause death in a human being. Yes, a gallon of gasoline can produce 1.3 X 10^8 joules of heat, but there is no way it can produce 1.3 X 10^8 joules of electric energy, not even close. The idea of equivalence is only a trick of the units used to measure energy. Yes, 1.3 X 10^8 joules of electric energy will absolutely produce 1.3 X 10^8 joules of heat, but the equal sign only works in that direction.
A clue that motors and engines can not be directly compared is that one is a ‘motor’ and one is an ‘engine.’
You also can observe that natural gas is still sold in BTU units while electricity is sold in kWhr units. The ‘BTU’ units could easily be done away with, except it is useful to keep this old system to keep reminding us of the difference.
The only possible statement of equivalence is one that specifies the path of heat conversion. For electric motors, the path from heat to mechanical energy includes a heat engine; the conversion heat engine just does not happen to be carried along in the vehicle.
We are in the habit of thinking that central power plants are somehow very efficient. They are not. While they are better than conventional car engines, some are better and some are worse than diesel engines in vehicles. The Toyota Prius engine is more efficient (38%) than most central power plant engines, though not as good as the very expensive combined cycle natural gas systems.
260 Mark said, “if your roof is covered with snow, it’s quite well insulated, so you don’t need much power to replace heat loss.”
Sorry, that’s wrong. Roofs are ventilated to prevent rot. In a well-insulated house, the attic is friggin cold in winter, and perhaps colder when the roof is covered with snow (no solar gain).
#253 Kevin
Thanks for calling me on that wrong assumption.
Re. 246. The high volume of water required for nuclear power is because nuclear power steam is lower temperature than that of a coal- or oil-fired thermal station. This can be corrected in one of two ways: 1. used closed circuit cooling which reduces water intake to about 5% or less of open intake and discharge; and/or 2. advanced GEN4 nuclear technologies which have much higher inlet temperatures and thus much higher thermal efficiency. Thus the apparent high volume of water intake is only a characteristic of current plant configuration and not necessarily integral to nuclear power as a whole.
RichardC: Great to hear about what you’re doing–far superior practices than is typical in many places. You’re probably right about decomp rates in the summer if it’s truly very dry, but the thin soil cover (= high oxygenation) will get you good rates in the shoulders (spring, fall, assuming rain). There will be published rates in the literature but the first order rates will be much quicker than centuries. An interesting comparison would be shaded vs unshaded berms (tradeoff: warmer but dryer vs cooler but moister), which you could monitor crudely yourself.
No problem, Jim–hope it sounded jocular rather than snarky!
259 Jim said, “will be partially offset by increased decomp in the high C soil you are disturbing to do so.”
Up north the soils are low C. I dug a small lake, pulling out gravel and clay for the material to cover the berms. The lake catches rain in the winter and so helps the water table and biodiversity. The deer love the clover and build new soil with their feces. It cost a few thousand bucks to do all the earthwork, but the $15k I got for the logs ensured I still retained a good profit.
Jim Eager (260) — Southern hemisphere lags because it is mostly ocean. The Antarctic sea ice growth is due to some complicated processes brought about by temperature increases, something to do with increased Circumpolar Vortex intensity, but don’t ask me to explain all the details.
Anyway, orbital forcing is negligble on the time scales we are considering.
RichardC says “Up north the soils are low C”
No, not as a generalization, but yours might be.
Concerning the discussion about stashing away slash from logging operations, could it be better to put the slash below the water table? I’m thinking about salvage logging operations in dams, rivers and swamps where pristine wood sometimes several hundred years old is recovered and sent to market because it was preserved by submersion in fresh water (come to think of it, excellent preservation of Great Lakes wrecks, too!).
Bear in mind I don’t have any idea of whether this applies to slash, whether ground water would offer the same benefit, etc. Just wondering.
Re #265 RichardC
Don’t they have the usual assortment of grubs and worms on Vancouver Island? They won’t work as fast as termites but they get the job done in a lot less than 100 years.
I think you are on a good track though about the use of wood in building, though unless we get up to the European standard of long lasting construction, it won’t be as good as it might be.
I recall reading that the very common wooden buildings in Russia burn down fairly often on a historical time scale so there are not a lot of really old examples of Russian architecture.
David, did I not mention both the greater ocean area in the southern hem and circumpolar currents and winds in that very post?
Why yes, I did.
And orbital forcings are hardly negligible since they are semi-permanent on the time scales we are considering.
It would help if people actually read a post before replying to it.
Re #266, Jim, I have read and been shown by a UK physicist that a gallon of petrol contains 40 KWhrs of energy equivilent. However as a ICE is only around 20% efficient (energy conversion to useful work?) and an electric motor is 90% efficient (if this is true) but creating electricity to turn the motor over is only around 40% efficient then these energy usage differences sort of equate to being very similar in terms of overall energy efficiency. Something called the coefficient. Could you comment on this at all ?
Jim Eager (277) — Since orbital forcings are essentially constant in during the brief interval of observation (decadal scale), they can hardly explain the recent increase in Antarctic sea ice. Hence, not relevant to the question, as I understood it.
Nest, these comments are available for everyone to read, so it is often a good idea to repeat central points. Don’t take it so personally, please.
re #278, to charge the tesla Roadster’s batteries is 78% efficient, and the motor is 90% efficient so overall the plug to wheel efficiency is about 72%. So a 53 kWhr requires about 68 kWhr to charge and you get 48 kWhr out of it. It goes 220 miles on that.
If you charged it with solar panels from your roof you could get 2000 miles per gallon, assuming it takes 50 gallons of oil to make the solar panels and it lasts 100,000 miles.
A gallon of gas contains as you say 40 kWhr, but at 20% efficiency you get only 8 kWhr out of it. To get 48 kWhr to the wheels you need 48 / 8 = 6 gallons. So this will get you about 150 miles.
“Roofs are ventilated to prevent rot. In a well-insulated house, the attic is friggin cold in winter, and perhaps colder when the roof is covered with snow (no solar gain).”
It won’t be holding much water either. It will have plenty of time to airate what little it was made to hold when the snow melts.
And a very simple device called a “heat exchanger” can exchange stale old air that’s warm with outside fresh cold air and, while they are passing, use the warmth of the air leaving to warm the air entering.
These are available in all large reputable housing stores in many countries.
Re #278 pete best,
You are absolutely right. The Second Law of Thermodynamics pulls through again. Hooray. It seems to be easily ignored these days.
So as you point out, if we start with the heat source as the input, wherever it may be, things turn out to be “very similar.”
As long as cars are more or less of the familiar sort on the road today it is hard to get much more than 50 MPG, or the honest equivalent of 50 MPG using the heat into the engine as the reference. There is a lot of room for quibbling, but for reasonably typical driving, and for reasonably comfortable human accommodations, this number will not go up much.
(How could the US Dept. of Energy accept the nonsense that a car they are giving out money on can get the “equivalent of 250 mpg?” How can we depend on them to be the fountain of all basic data on emissions?)
Then we can quibble about whether there is some way that there will be reserve capacity in solar, wind, or whatever to step up when the electric car gets plugged in, or whether it will be just plain coal that gets burned as the response. If efficiencies are the same, that means the CO2 goes up about 33%. Thus, it probably is better to just build good hybrids and forget about plugging them in, at least for now.
This is not to belittle regenerative braking which is possible with any kind of electric machinery, plug-in or hybrid.
Maybe we should completely rethink the automobile? That could be a chance to change everything.
#278 – pete, back when I was a TA for organic chemistry labs, one basic chore for the students was to calculate the difference between theoretical and actual yields for various reactions.
For an ICE, consider first the efficiency of combustion (complete conversion of hydrocarbons + oxygen to CO2 + water). This is where Japanese engines do quite well – but a lot depends on how you drive them. Rapid acceleration always involves a loss in fuel efficiency, as does any stop-and-go driving. If you’ve ever watched alcohol-burning race cars on a loop track, you can see this – as drivers accelerate out of the turn, flames come out of their tailpipes – unburned fuel gets pushed through due to rapid acceleration – increase the power, reduce the efficiency.
Then, you have to consider the efficiency of conversion of the heat-pressure of combustion to mechanical work (via a piston), and that’s where all the heat losses occur – which is also why ICE engines need a complicated cooling system, to shed that heat and avoid melting down (same goes for nuclear reactors, coal-fired power plants, etc.) This is where the energy losses come in.
Now compare that to an electric vehicle, noting that electric engines deliver power smoothly across a wide range of rpms – thus, complicated gearboxes are not needed. For a 125 HP electric engine, the minimum normal standard is 92.4% efficiency:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motor-efficiency-d_655.html
So, yes it is true.
Now, for your final point: “the efficiency of creating electricity”
First, energy is never “created”, it is merely “converted” – that’s the conservation of energy rule, which is still standing after 150 years of careful examination.
For example, if one runs a diesel generator to generate electricity, then it works the same as an ICE vehicle, with the driveshaft generating electricity instead of movement. Depending on the system, a wide range of efficiencies exist – and research efforts to improve efficiency also exist, and they focus on capturing and using some of that waste heat:
The second project, worth $1.3 million over three years, seeks to improve the fuel-efficiency of the US Army’s portable diesel generators using thermoelectric technologies. It is sponsored by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). SERDP is the Department of Defense’s environmental science and technology program, which is planned and executed in partnership with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/10/rti-internation.html
The typical maximum efficiencies reported by retailers seem to go like this for diesel and gasoline IC engines:
Diesel engines operate at 45% fuel conversion efficiency, as opposed to gasoline units around 30%.
So, let’s say we build a completely electric vehicle powered by a large rechargeable battery. The energy storage of a battery is low, but batteries efficiently generate current with low losses. How can we extend the range?
Well, just put a small ICE onboard and run it at maximum efficiency only, just to charge the battery. Fuel it with ethanol produced without fossil fuels, and all of a sudden you have an extended range EV with no net effect on atmospheric CO2 – very plausible.
Even there, you are still stuck with having to get fuel and charge the battery in the first place. Sunlight and wind are intermittent energy sources – but a large battery is perfect for storing and distributing that energy later. The optimal EV would also have a roof and hood lined with the shaped silicon PV panels, to assist in charging the battery – again, extending the range.
For solar panels, the conversion of sunlight to electric current is about 18% for new silicon commercial modules, and an encouraging 40% for the expensive designs used on space satellites. Of course, the difference is that the sunlight is free – no fuel purchases are necessary. Obviously for the small space available on a car you’d want the more expensive and efficient panels.
If you like, there is a really wonderful graphic depicting how this will all work in practice:
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2008/07/06/opus/index.html
recaptcha says: hopeful :)
David, I didn’t mean to even imply that orbital forcings can explain the recent increase in Antarctic sea ice, so my original post was admittedly poorly worded.
The increase is a recurring talking point for the denialshpere, however, as is the overall lag in southern hemisphere warming compared to the northern hem. My point is that in addition to all the well known and cited reasons for that lag, a small negative insolation forcing also exists in the southern hem as well. That forcing has existed for a few thousand years, however slight, and will exist for a few thousand more, so of course it can not explain any recently observed trends.
Captcha chimes in: “smarmier natural history”
Some are working on how to harvest energy from commercial logging operation slash.
Logging operations are all around me here in the state of Oregon, and these operations always leave piles of slash (small limbs, broken parts, etc.) that is of no use to the lumber mills, and is typically burned where it lay.
I heard a panel discussion on Oregon Public Radio yesterday (6/24/2009) that was discussing the opportunities and challenges involved. From this broadcast I concluded that there are people actively working on this opportunity. But they have not yet figured out how to harvest this slash in such a way to result in a net energy gain while also properly compensating everyone involved in the work. In other words, it doesn’t make financial sense (yet).
This bio-mass material is bulky and not very compact, so it is expensive to physically pick it up for transport. This also means it requires larger trucks to haul it cost effectively, but most logging roads are not engineered for these larger trucks. Some are also working on an idea to avoid these challenges by harvesting the slash in the field, but with the added challenge of how to store/transmit the generated power where there is no infrastructure.
I’m not an expert. I only heard one radio panel discussion on this subject. Google turns up a lot of hits on the subject with much more detail, like this one;
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/wood-biomass-for-energy.pdf
Pete
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says (25 June 2009 at 6:15 PM):
“So as you point out, if we start with the heat source as the input, wherever it may be, things turn out to be “very similar.””
Haven’t we been through this before? The starting point in those fuel economy numbers is at the connection to the car – the gas pump or electric plug – and thus you get a fair comparison of the vehicle efficiency. If OTOH you want to compare full-path numbers, you have to start from the oil well for your gasoline car.
“As long as cars are more or less of the familiar sort on the road today it is hard to get much more than 50 MPG…”
Not at all. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve averaged 71.2 mpg over the last 6 years. (And so far 78.4 mpg for 450 miles on this tank.) Figure the electric motor on the Tesla is about 3-4 times as efficient as an IC engine, and 250 mpg equivalent is right in the ballpark.
P.S. – be sure to cheer when the DOE does something rational!
WASHINGTON, June 25 (UPI) — Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the Department of Energy is soliciting applications for $3.9 billion in grants to modernize the U.S. electric grid.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, Chu said, will allow for greater integration of renewable energy sources while increasing the reliability, efficiency and security of the nation’s transmission and distribution system.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/06/25/Feds-invest-in-smart-grid-technologies/UPI-41541245963863/
That’s some photo – welcome to the hot seat.
On the other hand, what is going on with the State Department and fossil fuels vs. renewable energy?
“US Rep. Delahunt urges Obama administration to join the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)”
http://www.isria.com/pages/24_June_2009_8.htm
They also wrote a letter to the State Department, see the link. However, consider what the U.S. special envoy for Eurasian energy issues had to say recently:
BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 25 (UPI) …Morningstar lauded the potential impact of the project, saying it would not only contribute to energy diversification and security, but also encourage international cooperation.
“Nabucco opens up many possibilities,” he said. “We support all projects that involve the delivery of oil and gas to world markets.”
Does that include working with savage regimes like Burma? Well, yes it does. They support oil and gas projects in the most undemocratic and corrupt nations, but not wind and solar projects. This is probably the central problem with U.S. foreign policy & the State Department, the IMF and the World Bank – namely, the myopic focus on fossil fuel and other resource extraction deals to the exclusion of renewable energy projects.
A first step in changing that idee fixe will be getting the State Department to acknowledge that IRENA exists – so this might be a good time to send your Congresspeople some letters.
Doug (275): Where it’s not impossible, it’s impractical, and where it’s not impractical, there are other issues. The amount of soil you’d have to move in most cases would be huge, requiring energy, increasing soil respiration, and potentially causing other problems (e.g. altering the community dynamics). Better to offset some FFs elsewhere by burning in a cogen. plant (if you’re going to log).
Jim (276): The carbon costs of removing wood has to be less than that from other, more carbon-intensive building materials, (weighted by the relative lifetimes of each), for there to be a carbon benefit. But that’s probably not telling you anything new.
Jim Eager (284) — Aha. Yes, precession was furthest south about 2000 years ago and has been slowly moving the thermal equator further north since then. About another 8000 years to go.
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Re #289, 284–
Maybe, but check out these graphs:
http://climatechange.dynalias.com/graphs/TempFig11.png
http://climatechange.dynalias.com/graphs/TempFig12.png
Lately, the Southern Hemisphere has been heating more, at least if you go by the anomaly. Dunno what it means–if anything. But it was might confusing for the fellow who tried to tell us today that the warming observed is purely NH.
Pete #285: Using the forestry residues such as small diameter wood, twigs and stumps is an area of active development in Northern Europe. Operational production started some ten years ago and there is rapid growth. Obviously the conditions are variable both as to the terrain, road networks, forest ownership and industry organization.
Seems to me that the winning approach is to collect and stack the raw materials to the roadside, let them dry for two summers under paper cover, followed by processing by a mobile chipper. This results in rather dry wood for the burners. The alternative method of bundling the raw materials to a loglike form is easily compatible with the logging trucks, but produces a much more humid chip quality.
A recent summary of activity in Finland:
http://www.metsateho.fi/uploads/Tuloskalvosarja_2007_14_forest_chips_machinery_kk_1.pdf
Another idea of suicidal tendencies …
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.100-ice-on-fire-the-next-fossil-fuel.html
Ike says:
Yes, this is the amazing truth of today’s technology. If we were to build cars that were covered with the 40% efficient solar panels mentioned above, on a sunny day you could 60 km or more for free. This is with existing technology. The only thing holding us back is economics and will. Right now they are too expensive. How do you get cost down? Start promoting renewables and get economies of scale to ramp up mass production and then price will come down!!! However, our leaders don’t want this to happen. The last thing they want is an energy independent populace, because they can’t be energy extorted anymore.
Re #286 James,
Nope, there is nothing fair about giving the electric vehicle a three to one advantage by ignoring the reality of the energy conversion process by which the electric energy is produced.
Yes there are many who think the comparison can be reasonably made at the input to the car. This is a contrivance of the electric car promoters.
Yes, you would get the best comparison using well to wheels etc., but you would never get through the arguments.
On the other hand, a fairly accurate comparison can be made if you compare heat inputs for the whole electric system where the heat engine is in a power plant somewhere, and the whole car engine system where the engine is in the car. It will not be much different if you make a correction for oil refining and coal transportation, but whatever you think is fair, it will not be anything like the error from ignoring the heat engine process for the electric system.
The thing to keep in mind is that the heat engine is the point of enormous loss of energy. This is true for any real known engine. To set this aside by making the comparison ‘at the car’ you automatically give the electric car a two or three to one advantage over any self contained engine propulsion system.
Just for reference, peaking natural gas electric power systems turn heat into electric energy at about 30% efficiency. Coal plants do about 33% on average in the USA. Diesels get around 35%. Combined cycle natural gas plants get about 50%. And I am ignoring the 7% average loss for distribution.
Even at 50% efficiency, the power operators have a hard time overcoming the cost differential between coal and natural gas, per
BTU. This is true even at todays relatively low natural gas prices.
If you get 78 MPG you must be driving a Messerschmitt or maybe an Isetta. Or maybe you drive at steady speeds under about 25 mph.
Surely you have not been victimized by the 100+ MPG promoters. These folks only count the actual gallons and ignore the electric energy input altogether. Some are a bit more forthright, and try to include some equivalent for the electric energy, but the formulation is usually based on wishful thinking about electricity.
‘Hypermiling’ is another possibility, but this is a little like improving mileage by pushing your car yourself. As reported on Autopia, hypermilers get a lot of antagonism from others on the road. The ‘hypermiling’ formula seems to be like I said about driving under 25 mph and trying never to stop or slow down.
And yes, we seem to go through this all, over and over again. Although it is a little tiresome, its not so bad for me since it is kind of fun to be on the side of the Laws of Physics. I might mess up in the way I say things, but I know I will come out winning in the end.
#287 Ike Solem,
I would cheer if I really thought they would modernize the grid in the right way. Unfortunately, it looks more like they are thinking only about shuffling power over long distances. Some of this could be ok, but the bad part of this is that it perpetuates the 100 year old practice of making electric power in power plants where the vast amounts of wasted heat can be thrown away without bothering anyone very much.
The counter to this would be systems where electricity was generated closer to where the heat could be meaningfully used. We had a discussion on a previous thread about how well they use combined heat and power in the Danish system. If that were to be done, the need for long distance power shuffling would be lessened.
As for wind and solar, if long distance power transmission can make these kinds of systems economically competitive, including the cost of the power transmission, then I think that would be perfectly rational.
#275 Jim Bouldin:
Yeah, it struck me after posting that if you’re 2000′ up a mountain composed of hard rock with a skin of regolith and soil, finding the water table would be slightly difficult. Wild-eyed technologists would probably suggest drilling boreholes, macerating the slash and then pumping it down to wherever water can be found, with a pipeline if need be and of course requiring MCF of water and MWH of power to work. About as practical as sequestration from combustion steam generation, really. I can just see the full page spread: “Clean Lumber Harvest Technology! Call your legislator to demand a subsidy!”
Jim 295, well how about not confusing them with irrelevancies about things that have nothing to do with a smart grid?
Which is what the denialists are doing. “Oh, look, it’s going down, so no problem”. Or “The weather stations are all reading wrong”.
That sort of thing can have some thinking to themselves “well, maybe we don’t have to do this properly, we just have to do this so that rolling blackouts are not as likely”.
So get on to the denialists’ backs and get them to shut up at least long enough for them to get the design for this network right.
William writes:
Considering that they’re black and usually at least warm, can snow accumulate on them in the first place?