2011 Diary Week 1
Global warming, climate change and weather extremes
Book Review
Part 5 of the review of Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do by Joseph J. Romm is below. Here are a few snippets: “About two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption is in the transportation sector, the only sector of the U.S. economy almost wholly reliant on oil. Oil is a finite, nonrenewable resource. Some experts believe that global oil production will peak by 2010. The vast majority of the world’s conventional-oil reserves are in unstable regions, such as the Middle East, guaranteeing extreme oil-price volatility for decades to come.” “The two wedges needed in the transportation sector are: Every car and SUV achieves an average fuel economy of 60 miles per gallon; Every car can run on electricity for short distances before converting to biofuels.” “With a straightforward improvement to current hybrids, they can be plugged in to the electric grid and run in an all-electric mode for a limited range between recharging. If the initial battery charge runs low, these plug-in hybrids can run solely on gasoline.” “Environmentally, plug in hybrids have an enormous advantage over hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles in utilizing zero-carbon electricity because of inherent inefficiency of generating hydrogen from electricity, transporting hydrogen, storing it aboard the vehicle, and then running it through the fuel cell. The overall efficiency of a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle’s ability to use renewable electricity is a meagre 20% to 25%. The efficiency of charging an onboard battery and then discharging it to run an electric motor in a plug-in hybrid is 75% to 80%.
GLOBAL WARMING – THE SOLUTION AND THE POLITICS – AND WHAT WE SHOULD DO
JOSEPH J. ROMM
WILLIAM MORROW 2007
PART V
Chapter 7: The Electrifying Solution (cont)
Nuclear power
• The licensing and construction process for nuclear plants takes many years, and it should, given that the plants are expensive, carry many safety and environmental risks, and have been given limited liability by Congress in case of an accident. An energy-efficiency strategy would be much faster.
• The nation needs to put in place mandatory carbon dioxide controls. If a significant price for carbon makes nuclear power attractive to utilities and financiers, and if the plants meet the necessary safety and environmental codes, and if the country can finally agree on a place to put the nuclear waste, then new nuclear plants may well make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in this country.
• I certainly wouldn’t shut down any nuclear plants that are running safely. Nor would I discourage other countries from pursuing nuclear power, as long as it is done under the proper international controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
• California achieves its remarkably low per capita carbon dioxide emissions from electricity while getting a lower share of its opower from nuclear enrgy than the national average.
• That’s why federal policy should focus on establishing a price for carbon dioxide, promoting energy efficiency, cogeneration, and renewable energy, and accelerating coal gasification together with carbon capture and storge.
• Those strategies can take us as far as we need to go on emissions reductions in the utility sector for the next few decades.
• We will need a similarly aggressive and intelligent set of technology polices to deal with the other major carbon dioxide-producing sector of the U.S. economy – transportation.
Chapter 8: Peak Oil, Energy Security, and the Car of the Future
• Our ever-worsening addiction to oil makes America less secure. The economic lifeblood of our country is held hostage to countries that are antidemocratic and politically unstable – and to terrorists who keep targeting the world’s oil infrastructure.
• Many fear we may be close to seeing worldwide oil production peak and then decline, which will bring an era of steadily rising oil and gasoline prices.
Transportation and oil
• About two-thirds of U.S. oil consumption is in the transportation sector, the only sector of the U.S. economy almost wholly reliant on oil.
• Oil is a finite, nonrenewable resource. Some experts believe that global oil production will peak by 2010.
• The vast majority of the world’s conventional-oil reserves are in unstable regions, such as the Middle East, guaranteeing extreme oil-price volatility for decades to come.
Peak oil and global warming
• Unfortunately, most forms of unconventional oil will make global warming worse – and some of them will make Hell and High Water all but inevitable.
• Ironically, global warming is making it easier to explore and drill for oil in the Arctic because the sea is vanishing at an ever increasing rate.
• The amount of undiscovered oil in the Arctic has been estimated at 200 to 400 million barrels – enough to supply the world for 7 to 14 years at current usage.
• We have a number of viscous oils called bitumen, heavy oil, and tar sands (or oil sands). There is more recoverable heavy oil in Venezuela than there is conventional oil in Saudi Arabia, and Canada has even more recoverable oil in its tar sands.
• The tar sands are double dirty, requiring huge amounts of energy for steam injection and refining, generating two to four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the production of conventional oil.
• On the other hand, Canada’s use of natural gas to exploit the tar sands is one reason why its exports of clean-burning natural gas to the United States are projected to shrink in the coming years.
• From a climate perspective, fully exploiting the tar-sands resource would make Canada’s climate policy as immoral as ours.
• Even more oil can be recovered from shale, a claylike rock, than from tar sands.
• Shale does not contain much energy per pound. It has one-tenth the energy of crude oil and one-fourth that of recycled phone books. Converting shale to oil requires about 1,200 megawatts of generating capacity to produce only 100,000 barrels per day.
• We would be spewing millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the air every year just to create a fuel that itself would spew more greenhouse gases into the air when burned in a car.
• It would be equally crazy to use renewable energy to make shale, when we critically need that zero-carbon power to displace coal electricity. We must leave shale in the ground.
• The recovery of conventional oil from a well can be enhanced by injecting carbon dioxide into the reservoir. Estimates for potential recovery are 300 to 600 billion barrels.
• EOR (enhanced oil recovery) is relatively expensive and has not been widely deployed.
• Coal and gas can be converted to diesel fuel using the Fischer-Tropsch process. The Chinese are launching a huge coal-liquefaction effort and plan to generate 300,000 barrels of oil a day from coal by 2020.
• The process is incredibly expensive, uses 5 gallons of water for every gallon of diesel fuel produced, and carbon dioxide emissions are high.
• Coal-to-diesel is a bad idea for the planet. If the United States or China pursues it aggressively, catastrophic climate change will be all but unavoidable.
• We are running out of time, and no longer have the luxury of grossly misallocating capital and funds. Significantly exploiting unconventional sources of liquid fossil fuel such as coal, tar sands, and shale is the road to ruin.
• That’s why the Bush administration efforts to push hydrogen fuel cell cars make so little sense.
The hype about hydrogen
• The promise of hydrogen cars as a simple techno-fix, without regulations, is a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s climate policy.
• The president didn’t tell the public that 98% of the hydrogen made in this country today must be extracted from hydrocarbons – natural gas, oil, and coal – and that process releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
• Hydrogen as a transport fuel might increase greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them.
• The only way hydrogen cars could be “pollution-free” is for the hydrogen to be made from pollution-free sources of energy, like wind power.
• We should build renewable-power plants to avoid the need to build new coal plants and save four times as much carbon dioxide at less than one-tenth the cost of using that same renewable power to make hydrogen to run a car.
• A 2004 MIT study concluded that hydrogen-fuel-cell cars would be unlikely to achieve significant market success until the year 2060, far too late to help.
The win-win oil policy
• The last chapter looked at the five wedges needed to reduce emissions from electricity, buildings, and heavy industry. The two wedges needed in the transportation sector are: Every car and SUV achieves an average fuel economy of 60 miles per gallon; Every car can run on electricity for short distances before converting to biofuels.
The car and fuel of the future
• With a straightforward improvement to current hybrids, they can be plugged in to the electric grid and run in an all-electric mode for a limited range between recharging. If the initial battery charge runs low, these plug-in hybrids can run solely on gasoline.
The car of the future is climate-friendly
• Environmentally, plug in hybrids have an enormous advantage over hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles in utilizing zero-carbon electricity because of inherent inefficiency of generating hydrogen from electricity, transporting hydrogen, storing it aboard the vehicle, and then running it through the fuel cell.
• The overall efficiency of a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle’s ability to use renewable electricity is a meagre 20% to 25%.
• The efficiency of charging an onboard battery and then discharging it to run an electric motor in a plug-in hybrid is 75% to 80%.
Cellulosic ethanol
• Biomass can be used to make a zero-carbon transportation fuel, such as ethanol, which is now used as a gasoline blend.
• Today, the major U.S. biofuel is ethanol made from corn, which yields only about 25% more energy than was consumed to grow the corn and make the ethanol.
• If ethanol is to represent a major transportation fuel in the coming decades, then U.S. vehicles will need to become far more fuel-efficient.
• A fleet of 60-mpg cars would substantially reduce the biomass acreage requirements. Putting cellulosic ethanol blends into plug-in hybrids would further reduce acreage requirements, especially since there are plausible strategies for cogeneration of biofuels and biomass electricity.
• In the long term, biomass-to-energy production could be extremely efficient with “biorefineries” that produce multiple products.
Energy security as a side benefit
• Because of the abundance of unconventional oil and low-cost alternative fuels, peak oil is not the major energy problem that threatens the American way of life.
• If we don’t aggressively pursue fuel-efficiency and low-carbon alternative fuels now, the nation certainly faces oil price shocks and steadily increasing prices over the next quarter-century.
• If we fail to pursue those crucial strategies, then Planetary Purgatory and 20-foot sea-level rise becomes all but inevitable, and we face the multidecade struggle to avoid the worst of Hell and High Water.
• Global warming is the energy problem that threatens the American way of life. Over the next few decades, we need to triple the efficiency of our cars and SUVs, and have them also be flexible-fuel plug-in hybrids that run mostly on zero-carbon electricity and cellulosic ethanol.
• The only reason Brazil has been so successful in replacing gasoline with ethanol is that the government required minimum levels of ethanol blends and then required all gasoline stations to have at least one ethanol pump. We need such sensible policies in the United States.
Chapter 9: The U.S.-China Suicide pact on Climate
• From 1995 to 2004, China’s annual oil imports grew by 2.8 million barrels a day. Ours grew 3.9 million. China now sucks up about 6% of all global oil exports. We demand 25%, even though China has a billion more consumers.
• While China’s annual CO2 emissions may well exceed ours by 2025, its cumulative emissions might not surpass ours until after 2050.
• Not only are we the richest nation in the world, but for many decades to come we will be the one most responsible for global warming.
• No wonder the Chinese and Indians and others in the developing world expect us to take action first, just as we did to save the ozone layer.
• That said, China’s emissions are growing at an alarming rate. For the past few years, it has been building one major dirty-coal plant almost every week.
• The climate problem cannot be solved if China and other rapidly developing countries do not take steps to restrain their emissions growth. But if the United States maintains its position that we will not take strong action until China does, neither country is likely to act in time.
• This chapter explores how the United States and China might avoid destroying the climate and, with it, our way of life.
Chapter 10: Missing the Story of the Century
The story of the century: Be very worried
• Most of the media do not get global warming – yet. One publication, however, has consistently delivered timely and powerful stories on global warming, – Time magazine.
• In April 2006, Time published a powerful special report on global warming with a warning on the cover in huge letters, “BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. Climate change isn’t some vague future problem – it’s already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.”
• In a fascinating example of intramedia “balance,” Time’s rival, Newsweek, also published an article on global warming that week. Unlike Time, Newsweek devoted almost half of its article to quoting various Denyers and Delayers, claiming, “to be fair, neither side has a monopoly on hot air in this debate,” falsely equating one or two mild statements by advocates of action on global warming with major campaigns to deny the science entirely and delay action indefinitely.
• If we don’t get a lot more stories, and a lot better stories, on the threat and how to stop it, global warming will be the only story that matters to the next fifty generations of Americans.
Conclusion: The End of Politics
• Global warming will change American life forever and end politics as we know it, probably within your life time. How might this play out?
• In the best case, we immediately start changing how we use energy in order to preserve the health and well-being – the security – of the next 50 generations.
• The nation and the world embrace an aggressive multidecade, government-led effort to use existing and near-term clean-energy technologies.
• The enabling strategy is energy efficiency. For utilities, we need a California-style energy-efficiency effort nation-wide.
• For cars and light trucks, we need serious federal standards for high-mileage hybrids than can be plugged in to the electric grid.
• The goal of all these efforts: keeping global emissions at or below 29 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide for the next several decades – and keeping concentrations well below 550 ppm (a doubling of preindustrial levels) this century.
• The political success of global warming Delayers must be acknowledged. No proposal to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has ever achieved a majority vote in either chamber of Congress.
The reckoning
• Soils, tundra, tropical forests, and oceans currently serve as sinks that absorb nearly half the carbon we are spewing into the atmosphere. The tundra by itself today contains about as much carbon as the atmosphere, much of it in the form of methane, which is more than 20 times as potent at trapping heat as carbon dioxide.
• At 550 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, a doubling of preindustrial levels, we are likely to lose most of the tundra and most of the Amazon rain forest, and with them any hope of avoiding a tripling, which would ruin this planet for the next 50 generations.
• Barring the Two Political Miracles, global emissions will hit 37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide a year in the early 2020s, while global concentrations hit about 430 ppm, rising 3 ppm a year.
• We will have vastly overshot a safe level of carbon emissions, and misallocated trillions of dollars in capital constructing conventional coal plants, producing unconventional oil, and manufacturing inefficient vehicles.
• What happens if the nation and the world fail to take serious action in the 2020s? In the 2030s, record-breaking heat waves and searing droughts will be the norm. Relentless super-hurricane seasons, coupled with the reality of accelerating sea-levels rise, will change the landscape of the Gulf Coast and the eastern seaboard.
• We will simply stop rebuilding most coastal cities destroyed by hurricanes. In this Planetary Purgatory, everyone will realize that the world has but one great task – stopping Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from melting, avoiding runaway growth in greenhouse gas concentrations.
• Politics as we know it will end. Nonessential efforts, such as the manned space program, will be shut down as politicians direct most of the nation’s vast resources toward dealing with the climate.
• The problem with waiting until the 2030s is that carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to be over 450 ppm and climbing more than 3 ppm a year.
• At that point, our fate will be largely out of our hands and in the hands of the vicious carbon cycles.
• Most likely we will be headed irrevocably toward Hell and High Water – a tripling of concentrations or worse, warming of the inland United States of 10°F or worse, sea-level rise exceeding 1 foot a decade, widespread eco-system collapse, and mass extinctions.
• The suffering that my brother and his family and the hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina experienced will be magnified a thousandfold in a world with half a billion environmental refugees, water and food shortages affecting a billion or more people, and worldwide civil strife.
• We must pay any price and bear any burden to avoid this fate.
• What would happen in the next decade to create the political will to transform the entire country into a carbon-reducing factory? I see two possibilities.
• The first requires that a major climatic event or series of events occur. A portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could disintegrate rapidly, raising sea levels 20 inches.
• Or the country could be hit by the kind of murderous heat wave that overwhelmed Europe in 2003. Or we could experience several more hurricane seasons like 2005.
• Or, more likely, all of those, since the national and global heat wave of 2006 does not appear to be changing U.S. climate politics.
• Second, the public – you – could simply demand change. This is vastly preferable to waiting for multiple disasters. Global warming is the gravest threat to our long-term security. More and more people are coming to this realization every day.
• When people ask me what they should do, I reply, “Get informed, get outraged, and then get political.”
• Take steps to reduce your own greenhouse gas emissions, purchasing a hybrid vehicle, buying Energy Star home appliances, buying renewable power, encouraging your workplace to take action – mainly so that you can see that taking action is not that hard.
• You must become a climate champion, a single-issue voter. You must take whatever action you can. You must use whatever influence you have wherever it would make a difference, even if it is only to educate the people around you.
• I do believe that if we fail to act in time, it will be the single biggest regret any of us has at the end of our lives.
• So you can see why my hair is on fire. I hope yours is, too.