Archive for the 'Climate Change' Category

Ken Caldeira and Bill Gates on high wind

Published on 3/11/2010 in Climate Change and Energy Policy . 0 Comments

Bill Gates continues his study of energy policy:

Energy sources that provide power without producing CO2 are critical to addressing the challenge of global warming. The book Sustainable Energy – without the hot air prompted Bill to ask climate researcher Ken Caldeira what the prospects are for generating power from wind in the upper atmosphere.

I just finished David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air.

He talks about every renewable form of energy I know of except for high wind.

He does a really good job of looking at the potential size of contributions from different things like geothermal and others.

I wonder if he didn’t include high wind because it is viewed as so difficult and unlikely to work or if the contribution potential is so small.

I remember you mentioned some start-ups in the high wind area.

I wonder if there has been any progress in their work.

I guess it is the physics of getting the kites to stay up even in storms and low wind combined with the problem of bringing the power down that is hard.

Ken Caldeira

I have spoken with several people in several companies and they all seem to think different things are the main impediment.

My understanding is that one of the big impediments is tether mass, and there are big tradeoffs with mass of the conductor and insulation versus how high up you can go. It might be that we would require something nearly magical to make such systems really work economically.

(Everything else you mention is also a concern.)

I would say that this is one area in which the size of the investment compared to the size of potential return is tiny, especially when compared with investments such as fusion power.

We recently did a study on steadiness and availability of high altitude winds. The conclusion is that there is a huge amount of power available but that it still is too unsteady to provide base load power without continental (or global?) scale distribution systems, back-up power, or unbelievable amounts of storage.

The other thing we should recall is that if we were to meet future power demand by this source exclusively, we must intercept more than 1% of natural flows. I think when we get above a 1% change in a natural system, we need to be concerned about large scale unintended consequences. Remember, global warming is basically a 1% problem – 1% warming of our 288 K planetary temperature. (That is one reason why solar is so attractive – with solar we are talking about capturing 0.01 % of the energy that hits the ground.)

Q&A With David Victor About Climate Change

Published on 2/22/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments

Stanford’s David Victor, Director of Stanford’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, did a Q&A interview with Foreign Affairs. Excerpt:

Will Rafey: Can geoengineering ever be a reliable substitute for a transition to renewable, sustainable energy?

A: Per my reply to Lucy Berman, there is no simple substitute for controlling emissions. Renewable energy could be a large part of that effort — and surely will be — but it is not the only option. Much higher energy efficiency must play a role; nuclear power can play a major role (if, at the same time, there is attention to controlling the risk of weapons proliferation); advanced coal-fired power plants that safely store most of their pollution underground can also play a role. Geoengineering could be, at best, a Plan B. And if we don’t invest to understand it and its flaws, it won’t even be Plan B.

(…) Mark Miller: United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data — for the Northern Hemisphere, at least — demonstrates that temperatures have cycled from a Medieval Warm Period, through a Little Ice Age, and since the turn of the last century, appear to be returning to the temperatures prevalent prior to 1600. CO2 can at most absorb only eight percent of the infrared spectrum, ergo the heat, radiating back from the earth in response to incident solar radiation. Man is responsible for about three percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere. So, at most, man is responsible for 0.24 percent of heat capture from the sun. Water vapor — clouds — is responsible for most of the heat capture. Given the interchange of water between the oceans and the atmosphere without any input from man, it is obvious that man’s influence on atmospheric temperature is negligible.

So my question is: Since we cannot appreciably affect the major mechanism of global warming — nor should we wish to — why should we even consider the diversion of scarce resources to geoengineering the climate content of CO2?

A: The science is a lot more definitive and not as you summarize it. What matters is the perturbation — the effect of human activities against the background of “normal” fluctuations in climate. The IPCC report that you cite makes that clear and does not support the math you outline. In fact, humans can have a major impact on the climate and are having that impact. First, the “natural” level of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 280 parts per million — a number that fluctuates, but was the number before the industrial revolution and is a good starting point. Since the industrial revolution, that number has risen about 100 parts per million. Essentially all of that rise (not three percent) is due to humans. Essentially all other greenhouse gases have risen in concentration as well; some have skyrocketed. Most or all of those increases are also traced straight back to humans. Temperature and other aspects of climate vary a lot, but overall temperature has risen, and most of that rise appears to be due to this accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. You are right to note that CO2 is a “weak” greenhouse gas, but the volumes are so huge that even though it is weak, the overall effect on climate is huge. Water vapor is, as you note, the most important greenhouse gas, but humans (and nature) do not affect water vapor directly. Rather, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is a byproduct of how the climate system operates. Thus, what really matters when thinking about climate change is the original perturbation — the root cause that leads to changes in the whole climate system. That root cause is mainly the buildup of CO2 and other gases.

A serious discussion of BOTH adaptation and mitigation

Published on 2/22/2010 in Climate Change . 1 Comment

…Therefore we have to consider adaptation to climate change, not instead of, but parallel to mitigation of climate change.

Hans von Storch is brave enough to discuss “that which must not be discussed”:

This is chapter 6 (without footnotes) of my article On Adaptation a Secondary Concern? published in 2009 in The European Physical Journal – Special Topics, 176: 13-20 DOI 10.1140/epjst/e2009-01145-0. The manuscript was originally presented at the W.E. Heraeus Seminar: A Physics Perspective on Energy Supply and Climate Change – Prediction, Mitigation and Adaptation, 26-29 May 2008, in the Physikzentrum Bad Honnef.

In a rational world, the state of which is known or can be reliably predicted, allowing optimal planning, the right path to go would be to assess the costs of all possible options of how to deal with the future climate change. One extreme option is not to act at all; then society will develop in an unchecked manner with emission increasing freely. Such a development will be associated with costs, in terms of money, life and morale. Another extreme is to reduce emissions; also this option is associated with costs – mostly in terms of money but also in terms of life and morale. The best decision in this rational ”cost-benefit” framework would be that mix of actions that goes with least costs. The problem is that the costs are unknown; everybody determines the costs differently; the knowledge about climate sensitivity, vulnerability and counter measures is not only fragile but also unavoidably loaded with cultural or even ideological presumptions.

But nevertheless – we have to take a decision. How much effort should be directed toward reducing emissions, and how much toward adaptation? The public debate in Germany and Scandinavia favours the „protection of climate“, i.e., mitigation, reduction of emissions. Al Gore declared “we have to be careful not to siphon off political will from job one, prevention, and dissipate it with adaptation”. This decision has the advantage that it seems to be morally superior – everybody feels the obligation to protect the Creation. Another advantage is that specific questions about the implications on regional and local scales can be qualified as secondary. The response strategy is obvious: reduction of emissions as much as possible. However: anthropogenic climate change is ongoing now; it can not be stopped; all what we can do is to limit climate change. The foreseeable future will hardly see any reduction of global emissions – but merely reductions of global emission growth. If we continue with business-as-usual and if no deus-ex-machina technological fit surprisingly emerges, we may well end up with a tripling or maybe even quadrupling of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at the end of the current century. Such levels will have severe implications. Making serious attempts to reduce emissions, we may be able to limit the increase in the greenhouse gas concentrations to a doubling of pre-industrial levels. “Doubling” is to be considered an achievement; a successful limitation. But also a doubling will have serious implications.

(…) The disastrous 1953 storm surge in the Netherlands, is a good example of this sort of “normal” threats – and it is just 50 years ago. The more recent events of various river floodings in Germany (Elbe, Odra and Rhine), the disaster brought out by tropical storms at New Orleans in 2005 and to Myanmar’s coastal regions in 2008 are also in the range of normal, but rare hazards. In theses cases, society turned out to be badly prepared.

A closer inspection of these climate impacts reveals that in all cases climate plays a certain role – but that social, technological and economic factors play an equally if not more important role. (…)

[From Hans von Storch: Adaptation and Mitigation]

Hans explains succinctly why adaptation must be included in the assessment of priorities. I think that adaption will often satisfy Roger Pielke Jr’s criteria for a “no regrets policy”.

Weather is not Climate

Published on 2/13/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments

Indeed.

(…) Knowledge of climate requires long-term records — on the time scale of a decade and longer. Don’t look to the weather to learn about climate, unless you have a long time to watch. Using the weather to score cheap political points in the climate debate appears to be a tactical area of agreement among those who otherwise disagree about climate change.[From Weather is not Climate]

BBC poll shows shift in public opinion

Published on 2/8/2010 in Climate Change and Climate Science . 0 Comments

This is not good. Reiner Grundmann at Die Klimazwiebel reports on the climategate damage to public opinion.

The Guardian has a comment today. It says:

[The] closing of intellectual ranks witnessed at UEA was serious and, in the end, self-defeating.

That point is made by the briefest glance at the sort of polemical denials which instantly found their way into the mainstream media after the emails first emerged, and was underlined yesterday by a new BBC poll which showed public scepticism has increased since November. What Copenhagen did for the chances of a meaningful climate deal, East Anglia has unwittingly done for the prospects of prevailing in the battle for hearts and minds.

The BBC poll referred to here shows an increase of climate skepticism among the British public. Here are the two graphs:







[From BBC poll shows shift in public opinion]

The road from Copenhagen: the experts’ views.

Published on 2/4/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments Tags: .

Not surprisingly, the most useful comments in Nature’s The road from Copenhagen: the experts’ views came from Roger Pielke Jr.

The outcome of the Copenhagen meeting should be obvious: there is simply no way that the world is going to coordinate efforts to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through a mechanism focused on binding targets and timetables for emissions reductions. It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. [Yet] many in the climate debate seem ready to put the Copenhagen experience out of their minds and gear up for doing it all over again in Mexico City. Insane!

Perhaps we should do away with the unhelpful idea that there is a threshold that somehow separates a dangerous climate from a safe climate. Climate is already dangerous for many people. Further, regardless of the stabilization target chosen — 450 p.p.m. or 350 p.p.m. or whatever — the policy implications are largely the same, necessitating never-before-experienced improvements in efficiency and a massive expansion of low-carbon energy supply. The pace at which we will achieve those goals will be determined not by any sort of derivation from a fairly meaningless global temperature target, [but] by technology, innovation and economics.

It is time to focus much more directly on the decarbonization of the global economy. This means improving energy efficiency and expanding low-carbon energy supply. These actions will result not from treaties but from processes of innovation implemented over many, many decades in a frustrating and incremental process. These goals are largely, but not always, compatible with policies focused on improving energy security — in places as varied as the United Kingdom and Pakistan — and expanding energy access for the 1.5 billion people without reliable access to electricity. It would be interesting to see countries negotiating an upstream carbon tax and a mechanism for its proceeds to be used to support decarbonization, energy security and enhanced access to electricity. Such negotiations [would] still be very complicated and political.

If ‘dangerous’ is 2 °C, then I suspect we are toast

Published on 2/4/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments Tags: , .

So wrote David Victor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development in Nature’s The road from Copenhagen: the experts’ views.

Copenhagen was a non-event: neither a success nor a colossal failure. The biggest problem with the acrimonious end to the Copenhagen conference is that it leaves neither a clear milestone nor any strong compass for the next rounds of diplomatic efforts. Mexico City will probably come and go without a clear outcome. The next definitive milestone is the expiration of the Kyoto treaty in 2012. At a minimum, governments will scramble to find some kind of replacement treaty so that systems put into place under the Kyoto Protocol — such as the Clean Development Mechanism — do not become mired in disarray. Already, the credibility of those systems has been undermined by the inconclusive outcome in Copenhagen. It will be impossible to make much of a dent in world emissions without a central role for the private sector, and private-sector investors are a lot more skittish about the wisdom of low-carbon investments given the inability of governments to agree on a game plan in Copenhagen.

The single most important international activity after Copenhagen will be to find an acceptable path that works for the small number of countries that really matter — starting with the United States and China. [But] the fact is that the world is in for some serious warming. If ‘dangerous’ is 2 °C, then I suspect we are toast. A lot of people will lament that, but one has to wonder whether this is not a failure of governments but rather a failure of people. So far, very few people are willing to pay substantial amounts of money to avoid uncertain and distant global warming, and government policy reflects that reality. Governments, to be sure, have made this even worse through their inability to reach even basic effective agreements — as was evident in Copenhagen. But the underlying cause is a basic lack of public interest in addressing the problem.

Another scientist I respect is Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, UK. Replying to Nature’s query Mike said
It’s better to be pragmatic than to be overly aspirational — surely the lessons of the 12 years since Kyoto tell us that?

Which I think means Mike supports the Kaya direct approach:

The Copenhagen Accord is neither one thing nor the other; it’s not a document that fits easily within any understanding of UN multilateralism. So it’s moving [us] into new territory because of the way it was agreed and the formal status it has, and also because its ownership is less than ideal. This kind of agreement reflects a new political reality [where] politics and power will win out. My view is that this was a good outcome from Copenhagen. I think that people may well now see that there is more progress to be made by pursuing options outside of the formal structure of the UN.

Clearly the emerging economies have now found their voices on climate change, and one could make a strong case that the Major Economies Forum is a good place to drive this forward. But I would also like to see more radical thinking. Different climate forcing agents might be best attended to in different ways. One could have two separate treaties: one controlling short-lived agents such as black soot and methane, and one concerned solely with carbon dioxide.

I don’t hold out a great deal of optimism that market-based mechanisms — especially with [only] a proportion being auctioned — provide a strong enough downward pressure on emissions. For that reason, I wouldn’t mind too much if [the climate bill] doesn’t get through the Senate if it forces other types of thinking. I’ve come around to the view that we need to set near-term targets that are pragmatic and technology-based, and they should be achievable on the basis of credible social, technical and economic analysis, not aspirational targets driven by IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] science. It’s better to be pragmatic than to be overly aspirational; surely the lessons of the 12 years since Kyoto tell us that?

MIT prof. Ernie Moniz on Copenhagen

Published on 1/28/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments

Gail Marcus offers selected comments by MIT prof. Ernie Moniz:

(…)  Most of all, my impression was that he felt it was a positive development that agreement was finally reached by moving away from a negotiation of the entire body of over 190 countries. The final accord was struck by only 5 countries–the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa. He sees the future of the negotiations moving toward the major economies.

(…) In response to a question about what we might see by 2020, Ernie made the following “predictions”: We will be seeing more of all energy-producing technologies in the future, as well as more efficiency. However, he cautioned that several areas, including nuclear power, are not likely to grow as much and as fast as some are hoping. He specifically said that there would be sequestration, but it would be limited, and that wind power will grow, but not as robustly as some project. With respect to nuclear power, he expects to see around 5 or 6 new nuclear power plants in the US by 2020. Worldwide, he saw much higher growth, of the order of 200 GW.

(…) • In the energy area, the main goal of innovation is cost reduction. This is different than the goal of innovation in other industries.

(…) • The investment in energy R&D as a percentage of the economy is very small. Percentage-wise, he said, the dog-food industry spends more! [From One More Take on Copenhagen:]

Bingaman and Gates Back Chu on Energy R&D

Published on 1/28/2010 in Climate Change and Energy Policy . 0 Comments

More Bill Gates from Roger Pielke, Jr.

(…) And then, as if on cue, the world’s most famous billionaire, Bill Gates, announced that having taken a deep dive into the energy and climate issue — reading eminent energy expert Vaclav Smil’s books, and talking with outspoken climate and energy scientists Ken Caldeira (Stanford) and Nate Lewis (Cal-Tech) — he’s come to believe that the world has been wasting time by focusing on energy efficiency.

The key, Gates said, is technology innovation to make clean energy cheap — the goal shared by Google, which has called for Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE < C), and by the Breakthrough Institute.

In one of four audio dialogues, which he posted on his new website, Gates Notes, Gates was blunt:

I looked at Waxman Markey [cap and trade climate legislation] and the research thing was miniscule. Getting CO2 to zero — I’ve never seen something more clear that has ‘breakthrough’ all over it… This ARPA-E thing is good but is too small….To get to zero carbon it’s a question of using technologies that don’t exist today.

Gates went on to call the lack of private sector funding for R&D to be a market failure, adding that it was especially low in energy. He connected it to his Foundation’s public health investments:

You think about how to help the poorest people, if they can have cheap energy where they are, it means they can have fertilizer, transport, clean water… places to keep medicines refrigerated.
[From Bingaman and Gates Back Chu on Energy R&D]
Keep in mind that Bill Gates is a major backer of Terrapower, who is commercializing an innovative traveling wave Gen IV nuclear reactor design.

Beware the Zero Sum Game

Published on 1/28/2010 in Climate Change . 0 Comments

Cool, Roger Pielke, Jr. is also reading Bill Gates. In this post both Gates and Pielke are (quite properly) echoing The Copenhagen Consensus — let’s be sure we do the most cost-effective things first. Emphasis mine.

(…) Bill Gates appears to be getting more active in the climate debate, and from what he is writing, this looks like a good thing. In his second annual letter from the Gates Foundation (PDF) he discusses the uncomfortable implications of fungible aid commitments:

Deficits are not the only reason that aid budgets might change. Governments will also be increasing the money they spend to help reduce global warming. The final communiqué of the Copenhagen Summit, held last December, talks about mobilizing $10 billion per year in the next three years and $100 billion per year by 2020 for developing countries, which is over three quarters of all foreign aid now given by the richest countries.

I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health. If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.

Should funding for developing countries under climate policies be taken from already-existing aid? If not, should funding under climate policies be subject to a test of additionality? Obviously, 700,000 dead kids per $1 billion is a big, big number. What is climate policy worth to you in such terms?

[From Beware the Zero Sum Game]

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