Climate Change

[ewmayer]

Interesting Alternative to carbon sequestration being explored by a silicon valley clean-tech startup:

Silicon Valley tech leaders are reinventing themselves for a cleantech revolution

Brent Constantz's last startup, Skeletal Kinetics, created a bone-fracture cement that costs $200 per gram and helps orthopedic surgeons heal their patients.

His new startup aims to churn out billions of tons of market-price construction cement that Constantz says can help heal planet Earth by embedding billions of tons of greenhouse gases into concrete. And it will deliver desalinated water as a byproduct.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Interesting Alternative to carbon sequestration being explored by a silicon valley clean-tech startup:

:-) ... and it's just what you've been waiting for since 2008:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Neat - I'd been contemplating building a concrete house at some point in the near future, but finding out about the energy-intensiveness of making the stuff soured me on it. Might be interesting to contact the company in question, to see how close they are to commercial viability - Los Gatos is only a few miles south of me. [Reading a few articles on the co., it seems they're pretty early in venture-startup mode].

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

For one thing because if you give me a *known* past climate record I can do oodles of runs with my favorite GCM and twiddle the various fudge-factor parameters until I get a "match"

So, what method would you use to tune a GCM so that it adequately predicts future climate? Would you just ignore known climate data from the past?

If you ignore past climate data, doesn't that run the considerable risk of having a model which doesn't adequately predict the future?

If you don't ignore past climate data, wouldn't you be just twiddling the various fudge-factor parameters until you got a "match"?

[cheesehead]

Response to something else I overlooked earlier:

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Residence time? For H20? WTF?

Of course the water vapor RT matters! It's just that it's so much shorter (than CO₂'s) that one tends to not to think of it in the context of daily weather.

Originally Posted by ewmayer

RT is important for CO2 because of the "If we stopped all man-made CO2 emissions today, how long would it take for CO2 levels to fall back to preindustrial levels?" issue,

Correct. The processes that take CO₂ out of the atmosphere take many years to ramp up sufficiently to counteract the surge of anthropogenic CO₂ that we're putting into the air. Their ramp-up time is too slow to prevent global atmospheric CO₂ content from significantly rising on decadal time scales. So a surge of CO₂ past an equilibrium average value takes decades to settle down to a new equilibrium average. (Is my restatement okay with you?)

In contrast, the processes that take H₂O out of the atmosphere ramp up quite quickly -- on the order of days. So, unlike the case of CO₂, global atmospheric H₂O content does not significantly build up on scales longer than days, just because some process pumps more H₂O into the air. Any increase in atmospheric H₂O tends to quickly be countered by a precipitation increase that lowers the atmospheric H₂O on a time scale of days.

Note: there is a temperature effect for H₂O -- as atmosphere warms, on average, it can hold more H₂O. But this is a separate relationship from the simple pumping of H₂O into the air! Also, global (average) atmospheric warming takes place on longer timescales than days.

but it's completely *irrelevant* for water vapor because of the hydrological cycle:

No, it's not irrelevant -- it's short! Water vapor has such a short RT that you think of it as just an ordinary part of weather, without recognizing the significance of the difference between CO₂ and H₂O in this regard.

All that matters for H20 is whether the net average amount in the atmosphere is increasing, decreasing, or staying the same,

... because the residence time is so short that you treat it as just part of daily weather. Fluctuations about the average quickly damp out, in days! It doesn't build up, long-term, if all else stays the same. But CO₂ does build up on longer-than-daily/weekly/yearly-term scales!

and that of course depends crucially on ocean temps, land use changes and aerosol/cloud interactions.

Yes. The equilibrium atmospheric CO₂ level also depends on certain (different) factors (e.g. susceptibility of CO₂ to dissociation by sunlight -- it's low; but what if it were high?) -- if those were to change, then those changes would also be "crucial".

Whether your average H2O molecule stays in the air for a few hours, days, weeks or years matters not one bit,

If it were years, then a surge in evaporation (say, clearer skies over oceans for a week) would raise global average humidity for years before it settled back to equilibrium.

Alternatively: whether your average CO₂ molecule stays in the air for a few hours, days, weeks or years would matter not one bit, either -- _if_ the processes scrubbing _it_ from the air operated on the same timescales as the scrubbing processes for H₂O.

since so much is continually cycling in and out.

"continually", meaning "with residence time on the order of days instead of decades".

[cheesehead]

"Fighting Global Warming - A Small Price for a Large Benefit"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/bu...my/21view.html

(with my emphasis in boldface -- cheesehead)

Originally Posted by Robert H. Frank

FORECASTS involving climate change are highly uncertain, denialists assert — a point that climate researchers themselves readily concede. The denialists view the uncertainty as strengthening their case for inaction, yet a careful weighing of the relevant costs and benefits supports taking exactly the opposite course.

. . .

The numbers — and there are many to choose from — paint a grim picture. According to recent estimates from the Integrated Global Systems Model at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the median forecast is for a climb of 9 degrees Fahrenheit by century’s end, in the absence of effective countermeasures.

That forecast, however, may underestimate the increase. According to the same M.I.T. model, there is a 10 percent chance that the average global temperature will rise more than 12.4 degrees by 2100, and a 3 percent chance it will climb more than 14.4 degrees. Warming on that scale would be truly catastrophic.

Scientists say that even the 3.6-degree increase would spell widespread loss of life, so it’s hardly alarmist to view the risk of inaction as frightening.

In contrast, the risk of taking action should frighten no one. Essentially, the risk is that if current estimates turn out to be wildly pessimistic, the money spent to curb greenhouse gases wouldn’t have been needed to save the planet. And yet that money would still have prevented substantial damage. (The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100.)

. . .

The real problem with the estimates is that the outcome may be worse than expected. And that’s the strongest possible argument for taking action. In a rational world, that should be an easy choice, but in this case we appear to be headed in the wrong direction.

. . .

WE don’t know how much hotter the planet will become by 2100. But the fact that we face “only” a 10 percent chance of a catastrophic 12-degree climb surely does not argue for inaction. It calls for immediate, decisive steps.

. . .

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

"Fighting Global Warming - A Small Price for a Large Benefit"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/bu...my/21view.html

The problem is that while Frank only briefly mentions one of the lowest-cost "let's just use less" options for reducing CO2 emissions, many of the mechanisms proposed by the powers that be for (allegedly) mitigating CO2 emissions would in fact be hugely expensive, and provide little if any real benefit, other than funneling $trillions in new "carbon taxes" to private interests who have rigged the (proposed) systems in classic Enron style. Why do you think major Wall Street ScamHouses like Goldman and JPMorgan are so interested in the carbon-credits exchanges? It again gets down to the classic political issue of "while the intentions may be laudable, the devil is in the details."

Frank's second massive error of omission is to ignore the importance of getting the major emerging-market economies on board,and not just in word (which by itself is already proving a formidable hurdle), but in deed. He says some interesting things about "the remarkable flexibility" of the human brain, but after mentioning the resulting short-term nature of our thinking, neglects to address the remarkable capacity of humankind for greed and venality. His article is about as relevant to the real politics and economics of emissions reduction as an academic economist's treatise on efficient markets is to how capital markets really work.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

The problem is that while Frank only briefly mentions one of the lowest-cost "let's just use less" options for reducing CO2 emissions, many of the mechanisms proposed by the powers that be for (allegedly) mitigating CO2 emissions would in fact be hugely expensive, and provide little if any real benefit, other than funneling $trillions in new "carbon taxes" to private interests who have rigged the (proposed) systems in classic Enron style.

So? You aren't using that to justify denying AGW like some folks do, so why are you bringing that up in a post which appears structured to be some response to Frank's article?

There are always schemes in every field; the only difference here is that global warming mitigation is relatively new. Just because some folks propose something scammy doesn't mean there's no way to prevent it from happening.

Why do you think major Wall Street ScamHouses like Goldman and JPMorgan are so interested in the carbon-credits exchanges? It again gets down to the classic political issue of "while the intentions may be laudable, the devil is in the details."

Yes, it is, just as it is elsewhere.

Frank's second massive error of omission is to ignore the importance of getting the major emerging-market economies on board,and not just in word (which by itself is already proving a formidable hurdle), but in deed.

So, if someone chooses a particular aspect to write about, and simply sticks to that topic, he's committing massive errors of omission?

Straw-man.

How about commenting on Frank's topic, instead of berating him for not writing about what you want him to write about?

He says some interesting things about "the remarkable flexibility" of the human brain, but after mentioning the resulting short-term nature of our thinking, neglects to address the remarkable capacity of humankind for greed and venality.

So, where did he ever claim that he intended to survey all possible human frailties?

His topic is simply about refuting the particular denialist argument that the uncertainty strengthens their case for inaction. All your gripes are about things that aren't on that topic.

The problem is that

... you apparently can't find fault with what he actually does write about, and you're so bound and determined to find fault with him, for some reason (what?), that you fault Frank for what he doesn't write, doesn't claim to have written, and isn't part of his stated topic!

Your preceding post has almost nothing to do with Frank's article.

What's your real beef, Ernst?

[ewmayer]

Frank's article claims (already in its title),"A Small Price". My entire post was essentially calling bullshit on that "small price" claim ... oh wait, sorry, my second point about the emerging economies was by way of calling bullshit on the "large benefit" part of Frank's titular claim - my bad. But, how is that not addressing the topic of the article?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Frank's article claims (already in its title),"A Small Price".

So it depends on whether the topic is stated in the title?

Hmmm...

After reexamining the article with that in mind, I find that it blends comment on its title elements with comment on the topic paragraph, so I withdraw my challenge about your response.

[ewmayer]

3 Key senators planning to nix Cap and Trade:

Key senators would nix `cap and trade`: Three key senators are writing a new climate bill without a broad "cap-and-trade" approach to reducing carbon pollution, leaving behind what has been the central feature in the debate over climate legislation for years, The Washington Post reported Friday night.

Cap and trade, in which overall pollution reduction targets are met by allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits, has become so politically unpopular that its Senate passage is viewed as unlikely.

So Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are planning an alternative to be introduced next month, the Post reported on its Web site. The bill would apply different carbon controls to different sectors of the economy instead of taking a national approach.

According to participants, Graham told environmental leaders in a meeting Wednesday that "cap-and-trade is dead," the Post said.

The new bill by Kerry, Graham and Lieberman, who have taken lead roles in the climate debate, would apply different approaches to three major emission sources: electric utilities, transportation and industry, the Post said, attributing the details to unidentified people familiar with the process.

Utilities would have to meet an overall emissions cap that would grow stricter over time. A carbon tax could be levied on motor fuel. And industrial facilities would be exempted from an emissions cap for several years, before it would be phased in.

My Comment: Cap and Trade is one of those ideas that looks great on paper, but real markets aren't run on paper - in the real world, this kind of artificial-commodity-trading scheme is simply much too prone to Enron-style gaming of the system (and there is clear evidence that multiple Big-Finance players have been busily gearing up to do just that), and the 3 senators above (each of whom is from a different part of the political spectrum) recognize, too broad-brushed in terms of treating various carbon-intensive subsectors of the economy equally.

[cheesehead]

"Arctic permafrost leaking methane at record levels, figures show"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...afrost-methane

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.

(But, of course, some folks prefer to wait until we actually pass the tipping point, instead of taking action now about a foreseeable occurrence.)

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

How much change will it take to convince the head-in-the-sanders?

Sadly, history's lesson is that people almost always wait until after a catastrophe occurs, to take action defending against future occurrences.

A Scientific American article a few years ago (one of their September specials) explained just how we could bring the carbon problem under control using existing and near-existing feasible technology. Changes in our living styles do not have to equate to lower standards of living ... unless one insists that doing as one pleases in all matters without considering the consequences is a prerequisite for fine living.

The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

This has been a foreseeable consequence for a long time. We could have started taking serious actions a decade ago.

Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: "High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions."

. . .

"This study does not show the Arctic has passed a tipping point, but it should open people's eyes. It shows there is a positive feedback and that higher temperatures bring higher emissions and faster warming."

. . .

About two-thirds of global methane comes from man-made sources, and levels have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.

Unlike carbon dioxide, methane lasts only a decade or so in the atmosphere, which has led some experts to call for greater attention to curbs on its production. Reductions in methane emissions could bring faster results in the fight against climate change, they say.