Alert readers will have noticed the fewer-than-normal postings over the last couple of weeks. This is related mostly to pressures associated with real work (remember that we do have day jobs). In my case, it is because of the preparations for the next IPCC assessment and the need for our group to have a functioning and reasonably realistic climate model with which to start the new round of simulations. These all need to be up and running very quickly if we are going to make the early 2010 deadlines.
But, to be frank, there has been another reason. When we started this blog, there was a lot of ground to cover – how climate models worked, the difference between short term noise and long term signal, how the carbon cycle worked, connections between climate change and air quality, aerosol effects, the relevance of paleo-climate, the nature of rapid climate change etc. These things were/are fun to talk about and it was/is easy for us to share our enthusiasm for the science and, more importantly, the scientific process.
However, recently there has been more of a sense that the issues being discussed (in the media or online) have a bit of a groundhog day quality to them. The same nonsense, the same logical fallacies, the same confusions – all seem to be endlessly repeated. The same strawmen are being constructed and demolished as if they were part of a make-work scheme for the building industry attached to the stimulus proposal. Indeed, the enthusiastic recycling of talking points long thought to have been dead and buried has been given a huge boost by the publication of a new book by Ian Plimer who seems to have been collecting them for years. Given the number of simply made–up ‘facts’ in that tome, one soon realises that the concept of an objective reality against which one should measure claims and judge arguments is not something that is universally shared. This is troubling – and although there is certainly a role for some to point out the incoherence of such arguments (which in that case Tim Lambert and Ian Enting are doing very well), it isn’t something that requires much in the way of physical understanding or scientific background. (As an aside this is a good video description of the now-classic Dunning and Kruger papers on how the people who are most wrong are the least able to perceive it).
The Onion had a great piece last week that encapsulates the trajectory of these discussions very well. This will of course be familiar to anyone who has followed a comment thread too far into the weeds, and is one of the main reasons why people with actual, constructive things to add to a discourse get discouraged from wading into wikipedia, blogs or the media. One has to hope that there is the possibility of progress before one engages.
However there is still cause to engage – not out of the hope that the people who make idiotic statements can be educated – but because bystanders deserve to know where better information can be found. Still, it can sometimes be hard to find the enthusiasm. A case in point is a 100+ comment thread criticising my recent book in which it was clear that not a single critic had read a word of it (you can find the thread easily enough if you need to – it’s too stupid to link to). Not only had no-one read it, none of the commenters even seemed to think they needed to – most found it easier to imagine what was contained within and criticise that instead. It is vaguely amusing in a somewhat uncomfortable way.
Communicating with people who won’t open the book, read the blog post or watch the program because they already ‘know’ what must be in it, is tough and probably not worth one’s time. But communication in general is worthwhile and finding ways to get even a few people to turn the page and allow themselves to be engaged by what is actually a fantastic human and scientific story, is something worth a lot of our time.
Along those lines, Randy Olson (a scientist-turned-filmmaker-and-author) has a new book coming out called “Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style” which could potentially be a useful addition to that discussion. There is a nice post over at Chris Mooney’s blog here, though read Bob Grumbine’s comments as well. (For those of you unfamiliar the Bob’s name, he was one of the stalwarts of the Usenet sci.environment discussions back in the ‘old’ days, along with Michael Tobis, Eli Rabett and our own William Connolley. He too has his own blog now).
All of this is really just an introduction to these questions: What is it that you feel needs more explaining? What interesting bits of the science would you like to know more about? Is there really anything new under the contrarian sun that needs addressing? Let us know in the comments and we’ll take a look. Thanks.
Alastair,
15 June 2009 at 8:29 AM
The figure you quote is total primary energy consumption, mostly in the form thermal energy released upon combustion of a fossil fuel. Renewables are always measured in electric energy. That can be used far more efficiently than thermal energy. You can not compare those two 1:1.
Try to work out how much electricity the globe needs for a US life style. Can we use electricity to warm our homes instead of NG or oil? If so, how much, using which technology? Can we use electricity to drive a car? If so, how much and using which technology?
These kind of simple calculations tend to overestimate the needed amount of renewable electricity by a factor of 4 or so.
Anne van der Bom #401
“The figure you quote is total primary energy consumption, mostly in the form thermal energy released upon combustion of a fossil fuel. Renewables are always measured in electric energy.”
Not really. It would be totally uneffective to, say, create electricity with PV and convert it through an electric heater to create thermal energy to heat your house and your water. You’d use thermal solar or geothermal heat for that. Just an example for renewable not measured in electric energy.
“These kind of simple calculations tend to overestimate the needed amount of renewable electricity by a factor of 4 or so.”
I’d really love to see a calculation for that – a rough one would suffice – but it should include not only heating for homes and hot water but also other direct thermal applications like steel and cement production and high energy density applications like airtraffic.
re 400:
“Mark #396
> “So is using the same power as the average USian a good or bad thing? It’s certainly not necessary.””
However, I throw your words back at you:
“Please put some real numbers behind that.”
Same post, even.
Tch.
re 400:
“Mark #396
> “So is using the same power as the average USian a good or bad thing? It’s certainly not necessary.”
A dangerous path to go.”
should have been the start of the last one. Sorry, but if you can edit that for me…
Ta.
PS boober, are you saying that EVERYONE ***MUST*** use a tumble dryer or we’re all lost?
Alastair why would you want everybody to be as profligate as Americans? I see from your website that you, like me, live in the UK. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
I see that per capita energy consumption in the US is double that in the UK. What is missing from our lives that every single person in the UK should double their energy consumption?
Or how about GDP per CO2 emission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions
We get almost double the GDP from our emissions, why would we want to halve that?
Barton Paul Levenson Says (15 June 2009 at 3:27 AM):
“Human power consumption right now: 1.3 x 10^13 watts.
Sunlight falling on Earth’s surface, on average, at any given time: 1.2 x 10^17 watts.
Still think it’s impossible?”
Impossible? No. Desireable? That’s a very different question. What your bare numbers leave out is the fact that most of that sunlight is already being used to run the complex web of life that is the ecosystem. Cover an area with mirrors or PV panels, and you have that much less working ecosystem.
Even leaving out issues such as quality of life, how much ecosystem can we do away with before there’s no longer supports human life? I admit I don’t know the answer, but I’m damned sure I don’t want to find out by experiment.
Anne van der Bom (cool name!) – “The figure you quote is total primary energy consumption, mostly in the form thermal energy released upon combustion of a fossil fuel. Renewables are always measured in electric energy. That can be used far more efficiently than thermal energy. You can not compare those two 1:1.”
Very good point. One must be careful though – sometimes electrical energy is given in terms of fuel equivalent, even if it was not from fuel (but that makes sense if one wants to know how much fuel usage is displaced by hydroelectric or whatever…).
Comparing tables 8.2a and 8.4a from the website below, using a sample year of 2005 (PS I did this quickly but it seems correct):
net electrical generation efficiency:
Fossil Fuels:
coal—–: 32.9 %
petroleum: 32.3 %
natur.gas: 38.8 %
other gas: 34.2 %
FossilFuel
weighted
average–: 34.2 %
Nuclear–: 32.7 %
Renewables:
Conventional
Hydroelec: 34.1 %
Solar—-: 34.1 %
Wind—–: 34.1 %
Geotherma: 16.2 %
biomass:
wood—–: 27.4 %
waste—-: 21.0 %
Renewables
weighted
average–: 31.0 %
With verification from the footnotes and Table A6 (appendix), the values for hydroelectric, wind, and solar, of the energy consumption in Table 8.4a are in terms of fuel equivalent heat content for a standard fossil fuel plant conversion efficiency.
Helpful info (some prices are also included – solar heat collectors look good):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/
Flow diagrams 2007.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_3.pdf
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec7_3.pdf
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec6_3.pdf
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec5_3.pdf
Entire report 2007:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf
—-
1 kWh = 3.6 MJ
1 Btu ~= 1055.056 J
1000 trillion Btu ~= 293.0711 billion kWh
1 W = 8.76 kWh/year (not a leap year)
1 W = 8.766 kWh/year (averaged with 1 leap year every 4 years)
Also:
1 kWh/day = 3.6 MJ/day ~= 41.66667 W
3 kWh/day = 10.8 MJ/day = 125 W
4 kWh/day = 14.4 MJ/day = 1000/6 W ~= 166.7 W
4.5 kWh/day = 16.2 MJ/day = 187.5 W
5 kWh/day = 18 MJ/day ~= 208.33 W
6 kWh/day = 21.6 MJ/day = 1000/4 W = 250 W
8 kWh/day = 28.8 MJ/day = 1000/3 W ~= 333.3 W
——–
From some solar resource maps:
Annual average for flat plate (direct+diffuse=global insolation) at latitude tilt:
Except for the *parts* of Oregon and Washington, all of the contiguous 48 states recieve an average annual insolation on latitude-tilted flat plates greater than 1000/6 ~= 166.7 W/m2. Starting in the East, the line of 187.5 W/m2 goes from roughly New Jersey down to touch the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and then runs up to North Dakota. Parts of the Southeast and most of the West (up to part of Oregon, parts of southern Montana and part of South Dakota) recieve more than 208.3 W/m2. Much of the Southwest, including southern Nevada and most of Arizona and New Mexico, get over 1000/4 = 250 W/m2.
Geometric concentrator (only direct solar radiation, no diffuse radiation), two-axis tracking, annual average insolation:
Most of Maine, most of Wisconsin and northern Michigan, and most of Kentucky and Tennessee get at least 145.8 W/m2. Within that triangle, it is at least 125 W/m2. Most of Arizona and parts of Nevada, California, and New Mexico get at or over 291.7 W/m2
Ike, one can look at statistics various ways (and statistics themselves can vary). If you’re talking of electricity production and you don’t include hydro, the US will significantly outpace China in renewable electric generation until almost 2025.
China might be currently producing 40% of PV cells as your reference says, but they are not being installed in China. PV is virtually insignificant in China passing us by 2025 as opposed to wind generation projections. China is expected to beat our pants off in coal generated power, however, generating twice as much (and growing 7x faster) as the US from coal by 2020 when they finally generate more total electricity than US.
Ike Solem Says (15 June 2009 at 10:50 AM):
“China really is outpacing the U.S. on renewable energy investment…”
China is also outpacing the US on coal energy investment and nuclear energy investment, is it not? Something that’s not surprising, when you consider that China is adding generating capacity, and increasing per-capita consumption, far faster than the US. (Which is trying, however halfheartedly, to reduce per-capita use.) This is a far cry from being an exclusive committment to renewables.
Renewables make great sense in some situations – that geothermal plant down the road from me, the solar water & space heaters that should be on most homes, rooftop PV in sunny climes, etc. It likewise makes sense (from the Chinese perspective) to seize a share of the foreign market for equipment. This is a simple egineering/business decision, not a political/religious committment to renewables.
Rod B., Large or not, that is the area we’d need for sustainable generation. Actually, we’d probably need ~10x that given inefficiencies, etc.
We need to remember that fossil fuels, nukes, etc, are all one-time energy windfalls. Ultimately, we we can’t meet our needs with what comes from the Sun, we have to decrease our needs.
Re: Carbon Capture and Storage
For the IPCC CCS report please see
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/srccs.htm
From the technical summary Table TS-10 I see that:
1)For a pulverized coal plant with geological storage: the increase in fuel requirement is 24-40% for capture , the cost of electricity increases by 43 to 91% when one includes both capture, transport and geological storage
2)For a integrated coal gasification plant with a combined cycle for power: increase in fuel is 14 to 25% for CO2 capture at the plant and the increase in cost is 21 to 78% (including capture, transport and geological storage)
As for the Battelle efforts, I find some information from their partners at Alstom and AEP quite readily available. The Vattenfall project is also quite interesting.
It is clear that price increases for CCS from coal ower are substantial, but it is yet unclear (to me) if the rise is so large as to render coal with CCS uncompetitive for baseload generation.
James, in #407 you should be directing your remarks not at BPL who just did the sums, but at bob who says that we MUST all use as much energy per capita as the US average.
You’re attacking the wrong person on that. Then again, since BPL doesn’t think nuclear a good idea to push as a replacement, maybe that is your main hope, not the energy needs being too big.
Which being the case, we can all see the hole in your arguments and why you cling so hard to them.
Mark #405
“… are you saying that EVERYONE ***MUST*** use a tumble dryer or we’re all lost?”
I’m saying that trying to judge even seemingly trivial things like tumble dryers by the question whether they’re “necessary” or not, leads absolutely nowhere. Nowhere good, that is. I don’t understand what you’ve been trying to say in #403 and #404.
411 Ray said, “Ultimately, we we can’t meet our needs with what comes from the Sun, we have to decrease our needs.”
You forget fusion. The “other” path is to use fossil and fission while waiting for fusion to come along.
Mark #413
“… bob who says that we MUST all use as much energy per capita as the US average.”
Don’t play games. If you like to argue against yourself, I’m sure you’ll find less annoyingly boring ways than this to do so.
RichardC: I, personally started eagerly awaiting fusion power about 50 years ago. I must admit the eagerness has faded. I don’t think we should bet humanity’s future on getting fusion working.
Worth a look:
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/blog/2040-review-medea-hypothesis-and-other-news-science-shelf-21042.html
Waiting for fusion is extremely risky. Unlimited fusion energy requires cracking a temperature 20x that of the sun. You cannot assume a priori that economic production with these issues is feasible. Far safer would be live on what you know you can get until you know that it is possible.
I am still puzzled how a US citizen actually gets through so much energy and I am guessing that its vehicle use. It would be interesting to see how price-sensitive energy use is.
Thanks for all your great efforts. I would like to suggest a periodic summary of the state of the science (maybe focusing on a few key topics). Nwe research is coming out all the time and even reading about it as it comes out, it can be hard for a lay person to get a grasp of where things stand overall.
1) A SIMPLE ANALYSIS OF GROUNDHOG DAY POSTING TRENDS
As people right recall, the purpose of this thread was:
“What is it that you feel needs more explaining? What interesting bits of the science would you like to know more about? Is there really anything new under the contrarian sun that needs addressing?”
Following the approach in 172 above, I’ve made a pass over the first 400 posts in this thread, placing them into rough buckets:
a: on-Topic
b: maybe
c: Off-topic [maybe be perfectly good discussion, BUT…]
by 100s:
…….a…b..a+b
100 77 10 87
200 45 16 61
300 23 06 29
400 17 02 19
I lumped a+b together, giving the benefit of the doubt. I.e., in posts 301-400, I only thought 19 of 100 seemed like actual input to Gavin.
I graphed the by-0100 percentages and cumulative percentages here.
Conclusion: most of the first 100 posts look like actual on-topic replies. About half of 101-200 are on-topic.
From 201 onward, most (70-80%) are primarily repetitions of multiple long-standing arguments.
2) IF THIS WERE SOFTWARE
This would be like a request for bug/feature enhancements. I have often been a receiver of such, and sometimes, as feedback to the suggesters, I’ve summarized the results:
– Will get covered
– Maybe sometime
– OK ideas, but not likely soon
Maybe, as feedback to all us suggestors, whenever Gavin closes this thread, he’ll favor us with some thoughts about what he got out of this?
Mark Says (15 June 2009 at 2:55 PM):
“James, in #407 you should be directing your remarks not at BPL who just did the sums, but at bob who says that we MUST all use as much energy per capita as the US average.”
No, I don’t think so. First, because the mistake was in leaving out a very significant factor from those sums. Most of the incoming solar energy goes towards powering the biosphere. Take away some of that energy by intercepting the sunlight, and you kill off the part of the biosphere that depended on it.
Nor is the “must use” necessary, except to produce a concrete example. Adjust per-person energy use however you like, even down to hunter-gatherer level, and I think you’ll find that the current population can’t be supported by renewables without doing significant harm to the biosphere.
For example, think about the other boundary condition, where all of the population lives at 3rd-world energy use levels. (I don’t want to get into the question of how you go about persuading people to accept this.) That would require abandoning mechanized agriculture, most food shipping, certainly refrigeration. Under those conditions, could the world produce enough food for everyone? I think the answer’s an obvious no. Just consider how much food is exported from agriculture-as-industry nations such as the US…
“Which being the case, we can all see the hole in your arguments and why you cling so hard to them.”
If you can see it, please show me, because I surely can’t see any such hole.
Oh dear, I think this thread is starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day itse… Wait a minute, didn’t I just say that?
Can we please stick to the climate science? The only thing this endless discussion is making clear is that people hold strong opinions on the subject of energy production. There are plenty of other sites you can go to discuss policy or call people names if you want.
I want to hear about the climate science.
Yes, the climate science – how about getting someone to write an article on the carbon cycle – an outside guest post would probably be best.
Possible titles:
“The carbon cycle, oceanic iron fertilization, and algal biomass”
“The carbon cycle, from peat to coal, from diatoms to petroleum”
“The carbon cycle, and the likelihood of a permafrost carbon burp”
“The carbon cycle, or why clean coal carbon capture is non-plausible”
For an interesting discussion of some of the above concepts:
NASA Research Could Help Policymakers Restrict Carbon Emissions Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Too bad their satellite is about to fall into the sea, with no replacement in sight – if ignorance is bliss, look for lots of happy faces at NASA.
As far as FutureGen, it actually might just be a coal-to-liquid project disguised as a clean coal project. There is a massive push for coal-to-liquid underway, including a $1 billion investment in Virginia:
The FutureGen plant, if you take off the power-generation/carbon capture unit, is just a coal-to-liquid gasoline plant minus the F-T condensation unit, which is simple to swap in. Both generate syngas; FutureGen claims to be able to separate the H2 in the syngas from the CO2 and other pollutants (partially burned hydrocarbons, mercury, arsenic, sulfur, selenium, and various other elements in different states). This claim is unlikely, however, and has never been demonstrated by any coal-burning prototype model. However, we have no shortage of coal-to-gasoline plants.
That does appear to be the central policy now – tar sand oil and coal-based gasoline as the ultimate replacements for cheap foreign oil – at least that is the plan being promoted by the federal government.
I’m pretty convinced that this is what has happened. I’d be willing to be that if FutureGen is built, within a few years it will be converted to a coal-to-gasoline plant, and any efforts at carbon capture and burial will be discarded as technologically and energetically unworkable.
One of the things I’ve looked for and haven’t been able to find is a simple experiment showing in a laboratory the greenhouse effect of CO2 in a lab environment. I know that this reflects basically nothing concerning how it functions in the real world but I’ve actually been seeing some deniers trying to cast doubt on even whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Can we please stick to the climate science? The only thing this endless discussion is making clear is that people hold strong opinions on the subject of energy production. There are plenty of other sites you can go to discuss policy or call people names if you want. I want to hear about the climate science.
AMEN!
One of the things I’ve looked for and haven’t been able to find is a simple experiment showing in a laboratory the greenhouse effect of CO2 in a lab environment. I know that this reflects basically nothing concerning how it functions in the real world but I’ve actually been seeing some deniers trying to cast doubt on even whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
You can go and read, online, Tyndall’s detailed descriptions of his experiments doing exactly that almost exactly 150 years ago. See post # 311. Note in particular the pains he went to to make sure that his results were solid and not confounded by other possible explanations.
Jim Satterfield (425), if they are that brain-dead it’s not worth wasting time on them, but if you really want to, here you go:
Model Experiment about the Greenhouse Effect
http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm
How is the family of humanity to sensibly organize to respond ably to the human folly, avarice and stupidity that is now being consciously perpetrated by those few million greedy people who possess a lion’s share of the world’s wealth and the power it purchases? After all, a tiny minority is primarily responsible for the Earth being ravaged and threatened as a fit place for habitation by our children.
When are the morally bankrupt, super-rich Masters of the Universe among us to be held to account for having disgracefully institutionalized the ‘goodness’ of their pathological arrogance, conspicuous consumption and excessive hoarding for the benefit of none others than themselves and minions? For many too many economic powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians
short-term financial gains, power accrual, economic expediency and political convenience have directed their thought and behavior.
Perhaps it is time for many ordinary people not only to deploy these words from Mohandas Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”, but also to live out this great man’s example of principled, peaceful, refusal to submit to arrogant, dishonest, avaricious and dishonorable authority that is relentlessly degrading Earth’s frangible environment and recklessly dissipating Earth’s limited resources in our time.
Perhaps honesty, more transparency, constructive personal action, accountability and necessary social change are in the offing.
Scientists have a duty to warn and to inform; leaders of the family of humanity have a responsibility to act with moral courage and a willingness to do the right thing. At least some scientists appear to be doing their duty. Except for a precious few, great human beings like President Barack Obama, the human community appears to be virtually bereft of adequate leaders.
Yes, James, I think so.
“No, I don’t think so. First, because the mistake was in leaving out a very significant factor from those sums.”
But those sums reduce if you have people running power requirements than the US average.
And how does the sums change:
“Human power consumption right now: 1.3 x 10^13 watts.
Sunlight falling on Earth’s surface, on average, at any given time: 1.2 x 10^17 watts.
Still think it’s impossible?”
?
Solar constant is correct. No missing figure.
Earth requirements is about right, but dependent on where you get the data from, not the sun. And since S>>E, getting all our needs from the sun is not impossible. That would only be true if E>~S.
So the sums really DO say that it isn’t impossible. Unless it’s impossible to use more than .1% of the sunlight and impossible to use anything other than sunlight.
Which isn’t in the response you gave.
And, likewise, those sums only require the earth goes to average power needs, not that high-power-loaders like the US reduce.
So your sums are wrong too.
Going to complain to yourself on here???
“bobberger Says:
15 June 2009 at 4:18 PM
Mark #413
“… bob who says that we MUST all use as much energy per capita as the US average.”
Don’t play games.”
What games?
You don’t want us to consider using less than the US average.
If we can’t consider it, we MUST allow it.
If we MUST allow it, it will be used. As long as it’s supplied. If it weren’t used, then the price would go down until it DOES get used up. Supply/demand.
I’m not playing games with myself. I’m playing games with your arrogance.
Just because YOU like to use an arbitrary power level, doesn’t mean you should.
Richard,
I was not advocating that everyone should be as profligate as Americans. I was saying that it is physically impossible for us all to be like that. In fact it is impossible for everyone to be as profligate as we are in the UK. That would result in global power consumption increasing by a factor of ten! It would also mean that the standard of living of US citizens would be halved. Will they accept that?
Of course we in the UK should not be so smug. If there was a fair global system then we Brits would have to cut our standard of living to a tenth of what it is now, and that would entail no global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
In other words, if we are going to tackle global warming then we must accept that we will become poorer. This is the issue that Gavin et al. have not dealt with. Judging by the most recent posts on this thread, if they had then the blog would not have been as popular as it is.
People do not want to discuss this issue :-(
Cheers, Alastair.
bobberger
15 June 2009 at 1:00 PM
You’re right about the solar water heater not being measured in electric kWh’s. I was more referring to the general discussion about wind and solar.
I can ignore your aviation and steel production examples. These are relatively small fossil energy consumers. The three big, roughly equal, chunks of primary energy consumption are: space heating, road transport and electricity generation. See this overview of the energy flows in the UK. (The relative flows will be roughly the same for the US and other western countries).
Chunk 1: road transport. Internal combustion engines have an average efficiency of 10-25%. We all know that electric motors are far more efficient than that. This has been discussed before, I’m not gonna do it again. A gain in efficiency of 5x is realistic.
Chunk 2: space heating. A modern system of low temperature floor heating by means of a ground source heat pump can easily achieve a COP factor of 5, meaning 5 kWh of heat for 1 kWh of electricity. This ORNL guide gives a ‘cost effectiveness’ example on page 3. It shows the heating requirements by normal fossils-based space heating at 1970 therms (~57000 kWh). The ground source heat pump only needs 11400 for heating, or about a fifth. If you google around you will generally find COP factors of 3 – 5. Assuming a COP of 5 for a modern system, I would say 5x better efficiency is realistic.
Chunk 3: electricity generation. The average efficiency there is around 40%. I hope you see that it is stupid to say: “We need 1 kWh of renewable electricity to replace 1 kWh of thermal energy that is used to generate 400 Wh of electricity.”
I would say that the efficiency gain can be 5x for heating, 5x for road transport and 2.5x for electricity generation. An overall ballpark figure of 4x doesn’t seem too bad an approximation.
Jim Satterfield, the problem you may be having is that the experiments are over 150 years old. See
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Talk about Groundhog’s day. These guys are still fighting battles they lost before the Civil War!
James writes:
Urban areas already take up 2% of the land surface. You’re saying we can’t use the equivalent of 5% of that to provide power without hopelessly disrupting the ecosystem?
Talk about alarmism.
James continues to point out the grave dangers of solar power:
You need, at most, about 0.1% of the solar input. How much of the world is covered with crops and rangeland and forest? Can none of that be used for biofuels? Is none of the world covered with rock, desert, ocean? Would setting up wind turbines there kill the ecosystem?
You are using a qualitative argument (sunlight is need for plants) to disguise a quantitative fallacy (getting all our power from renewables will destroy the ecosystem).
See above. Anybody with a brain and/or a calculator can see the holes in your arguments.
Jim Satterfield writes:
You need a sealed glass box with the glass transparent to infrared radiation. Put it in a dark room. Put a thermometer in the box and another outside. Shine an infrared light against one wall of the box and put an IR photometer on the other side. Calculate how much IR would fall on the photometer from the light if there were no interference. Calculate how much actually hits it. See how much the temperature of the gas in the box rises. Try air, then pure N2/O2, then pure CO2.
Subjects to look at?
How clouds are included in the modelling process?
Why the assumption has been made that global cloud cover is a constant and how much would it need to have varied to have produced percentages of the observed warming (eg 25, 50, 75 or 100%)?
[Response: No such assumption has been made. – gavin]
How the various natural cycles (ENSO, PDO, etc, etc) and their effects are accounted for in the modelling process?(Probbaly get horribly mathematical for most of us)
[Response: They are part of the model solution and analogous features are generated (with varying degrees of fidelity) in all the coupled models. – gavin]
Why there is such a huge variation in the predictions produced by climate models?
[Response: Depends what you are looking at. All models show increasing temperatures and decreasing Arctic sea ice, but they vary in projections of rainfall in the Sahel. Differences might arise because of differences in the details of the formulations, or they might just be part of the natural variability, or due to a real difference in the sensitivity as a function of base climate which is a little different in each model. The degree to which the model’s vary is a rough metric for how much you should pay attention to the result of any one model. – gavin]
How the various models have compared to observations, ie, what temperature values for 2008 did models predict in the first IPCC report, compared to measurements?
Why the various measures of global mean temperatures differ from each other and what this means for modelling purposes?
[Response: Many of these questions were discussed in the FAQ on climate modelling. – gavin]
Alistair, 431:
“In other words, if we are going to tackle global warming then we must accept that we will become poorer.”
In what way is insulating your house so you spend less on heating it making you poorer?
In what way is not using a hot-air tumble dryer making you poorer?
Are you saying that when I bought an A-class fridge I was making myself poorer than if I’d bought a F-class fridge for the same price? HOW???
Did Port Talbot Steelworks make themselves poorer when they changed the process of making steel girders to use less coal?
Another possible thing to comment on (apologies if mentioned already):
“The Obama administration’s long-awaited scientific report on the sweeping and life-altering consequences of a failure to act on global warming – Global climate change impacts in the United States – is released today.
It provides the most detailed picture to date of the impacts on the US in the worst case scenarios, when no action is taken to cut emissions.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/16/climate-change-sea-level
the report here:
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/usp/clearance-draft/USP-3rd-clearance-draft.pdf
Jim Eager (428), I was impressed with your referenced experiment. It was simple but still tried to emulate the whole process with infrared generated by a blackbody heated by visible radiation. There was one odd but major anamoly in my view that maybe you can explain. Contrary to their conclusion the pure CO2 is not heated far more than the air. It was heated 50% more the first five minutes, then virtually the same at a linear rate for the rest of time. That seems not in accordance with the theory. Is there something in the experiment setup that can explain this?
Steven Earl Salmony, Oh, stuff it! Geeezz. You make Ike sound absolutely docile ;-)
Mark, et al. The original proposition adjustment was to use power requirements like the developed West; United States was never proposed. My figures took a rough average of the US and the mid to high end of Europe’s average. In any case it is minor to the overall question.
Gavin, show me one model that generates the PDO:
“How the various natural cycles (ENSO, PDO, etc, etc) and their effects are accounted for in the modelling process?(Probbaly get horribly mathematical for most of us)
[Response: They are part of the model solution and analogous features are generated (with varying degrees of fidelity) in all the coupled models. – gavin]”
Other cycles like the AMO seem entirely made-up – just artifacts of time-series analysis (see the latest results on how water spreads out across the deep Atlantic, for example – hard to make the AMO work with that). Unlike with ENSO, the mechanisms for things like PDO and AMO are also non-existent, although they must be based in the ocean if they exist.
[Response: Having worked and published in this area, I must respectfully differ with your assessment. With regard to the AMO being a time series analysis artifact, that seems an oblique reference to arguments we made in Mann and Emanuel (2006). However, we were not arguing that the AMO itself was an artifact, simply that the way the AMO had sometimes been defined in studies linking it with hurricane activity (i.e. by a simple linear detrending of tropical Atlantic SSTs) was inappropriate, and did yield spurious conclusions, e.g. that the AMO projects strongly onto tropical Atlantic SST. More careful signal detection approaches and analyses of control simulations of coupled models which do indeed exhibit an AMO mode [see e.g. Delworth and Mann (2000) and Knight et al (2005)] show little projection of the AMO onto tropical Atlantic SSTs (the SST footprint is largely extratropical in nature). This makes it more difficult to argue that the AMO is a major driver of long-term tropical Atlantic SST variations. A more parsimonious and physically-based explanation, as argued in Mann and Emanuel (2006), is that the tropical SST trends can largely be understood in terms of low-frequency natural and anthropogenic radiative forcing. As for the argument that there is no mechanism for the AMO, that’s simply wrong. Please refer to Delworth and Mann (2000), Knight et al (2005), and the numerous references therein which describe in some detail the mechanisms by which the AMO–an oscillatory mode of multidecadal North Atlantic coupled ocean-atmosphere variability–operates (at least, in the world of the climate models). – mike]
In any case, things are hardly as well-understood as you indicate.
For more on FutureGen:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23777.html
In reality, this just shows that coal interests are in the driver’s seat in the Obama Administration. The Department of Energy is planning eight new ‘public-private partnerships’ related to energy research – for the details, see
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/10budget/start.htm
More coal and tar sand projects, if past behavior is any indication – and public-private partnerships all suffer from the same proprietary restrictions on information – and that is done just to hide the truth from the public.
The truth is that coal carbon capture and ‘clean coal’ is a nonsensical notion, and that Futurgen’s real purpose is probably to provide political cover for a massive expansion of domestic coal-to-gasoline plants (like the $1 billion version being built in Virgina). The front end of both systems is identical, and with coal-to-gasoline, you can make, rather than lose, money.
It’s the only way to explain the push for the technology, other than as a pure propaganda effort designed to halt efforts to replace coal with solar and wind.
Barton (435), 5% of what? Land surface??
RodB, #443, which original?
For some reason the Oracle doesn’t think much of the thread. He says: lannitor porkers.
If you tell a porker, what is it you’re doing?
Note to Jim Bouldin:
Quoted quote: “Can we please stick to the climate science? The only thing this endless discussion is making clear is that people hold strong opinions on the subject of energy production.”
Yes, it is unfortunate that global human energy choices have had an undesirable effect on the climate – everyone can agree with that. The problem is that burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere, primarily. Other issues matter, when it comes to global warming – deforestation and N2O emissions, for example. In addition, climate changes impact natural biodiversity and human agriculture, leading to snowballing effects.
Thus, the climate and energy issues cannot be neatly separated, anymore than a system can be separated from its surroundings – a coal-fired plant must take in coal and air and put out CO2, and a green algae takes in CO2 and water and releases oxygen.
If you agree with what climate scientists have been saying ever since the late 1970s, there really is no choice but to eliminate fossil fuel combustion as an energy source – assuming you want to stablize the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. That would be a natural conclusion of climate science, and it’s why the topic actually does include energy choices.
The climate might not even be as controllable as we hope, as the current warming might cause a largish methane/CO2 belch, essentially locking the world into an intense warming trend that will be irreversible on any plausible human timescale.
While it might be safer to stick to climate science, in the end you need to apply the same kind of rigorous scientific approach to energy science claims that has been applied to climate science claims – but here you run into the fundamental difference between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ science: one involves business interests, one does not.
Business interests do not survive via the free and open exchange of information, do they? In fact, they divide technological progress into two categories: “emerging” and “disruptive”.
All renewable energy technologies are highly disruptive to established energy cartels in the coal and oil sectors. That’s essentially the issue here – you can have a very effective energy supply with no coal or oil involved, but that would involve massive global economic shifts in power and wealth, from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela to Wall Street, and since such interests largely control politics in the United States, we see no real progress on a transition to a renewable-energy based economy.
What a bummer, huh? Think of how hard the fossil industry has fought against climate science – their fight against energy science will be (and has been) equally deceptive and dishonest. This will require scientists involved in the energy field to make choices – do you trade in integrity for profit or position, or not?
Anne van der Bom #433
Thanks. It obviously depends on how stupid the original “simple calculation” has been done. If it even includes primary energy for coal used for generating electricity, its simply junk.
Mark #431
What an extraodinarily labyrinth twist of logic leading from
“I’m saying that trying to judge even seemingly trivial things like tumble dryers by the question whether they’re “necessary” or not, leads absolutely nowhere.”
to
“You don’t want us to consider using less than the US average.”
And to answer your question: No, you don’t have to “allow” it because, fortunately, nobody has to ask you whether they may use a tumble dryer or not – nor whether you find it “necessary”.
re 447, that was because I had said that the US will use hot air tumble dryers (there’s on in the Simpsons household, there#s one in the Taylor house, one in Rosanne’s and so on…) and that this requires energy to operate. Therefore some of that US energy needs was unwarranted use of a tubmle dryer.
But you think this is a bad idea, to consider using less than the US average.
How?
How does starting to use a tumble dryer a bad thing? How does stopping use of a tumble dryer a bad thing?
And that’s only one element.
There will be thousands more.
The UK is hardly a third world country, yet it uses half the per-capita energy the average USian. Sweden is a more developed country yet (and further north, so more needing of power) yet uses half of what the UK does.
So why MUST we allow the US average to be the world average?
If we all have the same standard of living as Sweden, this is no bad thing, and results in 1/4 the power needs you think is scary to ask about reducing.
You are grasping at straws, kid.
re 424
Please inform us all which technology that does not separate H2 and/or CO2 is use in these coal-to-gasoline plants that still manages to produce the correct CO/H2 ratios for the apparently easy-to-swap-in FT unit? (There are of course many different configurations for FT, but you need to separate CO2 or H2 somewhere). Coal has too much carbon for FT, and so carbon has to be separated. If this technology exists (you suggest there in no shortage) then why couldn’t it work in, if we believe everything to write, exactly the same sort of plant for power production with carbon capture? They have many things in common but also many things that are different. Easy-swap: give me a break.
The only thing that is almost correct is that if you strip off all the equipment after the gasifier in both these technologies then they are the same, namely gasifiers. That’s like saying if we get rid of all the technology then it’s the same coal we start off with, whether for CCS or coal-to-gasoline, which basically means they are the same technology. That’s like equating tidal power generation to nuclear fusion, both using sea water as the main starting ingredient.You are wrong on so many levels in this piece of …