Climate Milestones

It has been a surprising week, and not in the ways that I expected (see below). There has been at least one story each day in our local papers about the steps being taken by our local utility, Xcel, in planning the future of their electricity generating assets. While the pace of change in their planning is glacial by startup business standards, for a regulated monopoly utility it is lightning fast. 800 MW of new wind energy will be brought online over the next 10 years, and potentially 200 MW of new solar power. I am suspicious about the latter claim due to some confused and confusing statements by their spokespeople, but nonetheless their heart seems to be in it. Between planning to remove some coal plants and to increase their renewable energy sources, Xcel seems about as progressive as the very best regulated utilities in the nation. This gives me hope that institutional change is possible. These changes will result in a decrease in the percentage of power that Xcel generates here from dirty coal from 64% to 61% over 10 years. The rate is slow enough that we will lose all of our coral reefs and the northern ice cap within the coming decades, but at least it points in the right direction. I take heart that some of the ship’s crew have quit rearranging deckchairs, and are discussing whether that big white mass looming dead ahead might be a problem.

I intended to write this installment of Climate Milestones when oil hit $100/barrel, which seems right around the corner. But the release of the synthesis report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out yesterday, and in spite of several US attempts to water down the language, the consensus report is worth writing about. (I’ll spare you the note when oil hits $100/barrel, since the King of Saudi Arabia and T. Boone Pickens both agree it will be here in the short term.) The IPCC, you may remember, is the group of scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize this year for its tireless work towards assembling and analyzing the best data we have on climate change. It does complete assessments about every 6 years, represents consensus conclusions from 130 countries including the US, and has completed its most recent cycle last week. Full reports are here, and well worth a read. Important conclusions:

• Climate change is occurring rapidly
• Without human-caused climate drivers, the world would be cooling slightly
• If we cannot stabilize atmospheric CO2 in the next 10-20 years, sudden nonlinear climate changes are increasingly likely
• While the developing world will pay the biggest price, all countries will see major impacts
• 20%-30% of the world’s species will be in danger of rapid extinction without CO2 stabilization in the near term
• The rate of sea level rise, rate of temperature increase, and amount CO2 produced per unit of energy generated have all increased since the last IPCC report
• Sea acidification rates are rising, with a projected acidity increase of 25% to 100% over the next 50 - 100 years
• Mitigating these changes through energy efficiency and renewable technologies will cost a world GDP growth slowdown of 0.12% or 1/8^th of 1%

To personalize the numbers: I enjoy diving on coral reefs, soaking in the vibrancy and colors of the swaying sea fans and their darting colorful fish. The peace and wonder of visiting these temples of the seas are an experience we owe to future generations. If we do not change our habits, we will not deliver the world’s children the same options we were given. The reefs of the world are dying from a combination of warming seas and reduced carbonate ion due to acidification. My nephews may delight to see clownfish playing in the anemones, but their children probably will not. The shallow corals of our coasts are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

The coming loss of world corals is a tragedy, a slow-moving crime. The coal power plants and Hummers must go the way of the dinosaurs, or the coral reefs will. Without radically increased efficiency practices and radically cleaner power, we are at risk of both scarcity and tragedy. Human tendency is to avoid bad news, but responsible behavior is to assess consequences. Leadership requires hard choices, and the most powerful leadership is by example. If we are to answer the call of service to our country and our humanity, we must respond personally.

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” – Edward Abbey

The false choice offered by many commentators, from Bjorn Lomborg to Rush Limbaugh, is that we will have to ruin our economy to address climate change today. This dichotomy is an illusion: there is no either/or choice at work here. We have a car that is overheating – the radiator needs repair. Should we repair it today, tomorrow, or never? What repairs will be effective? Earlier repairs are cheaper, and we can potentially blow the engine if we are not careful. There is no used-planet lot nearby that I can see, so we probably have to keep the one we have running smoothly, or suffer. Delayed maintenance and repairs kill cars – I know this through painful personal experience. The same is now true for our home that we will bequeath to our kids.

The American view of increased efficiency seems to be a mental picture of ‘freezing in the dark’ when nothing could be further from the truth. I have replaced about half of the light bulbs in my home with compact fluorescents, and as part of a kitchen remodel I purchased new but relatively inexpensive appliances. Not only has my quality of life been improved, my electricity usage has dropped by 15%. I made these changes for other reasons, but a notable benefit has been reduced bills. Efficiency improvements such as increased insulation and efficient light bulbs pay off in reduced costs within a few years, and there is less freezing and less dark involved.

To move ahead to a cleaner tomorrow means having a focused will and putting our money where our mouths are. Our current Congress is preparing to pass an energy bill that declines to extend or increase subsidies for renewable energy in order to keep in place supports for oil, gas, and coal. Under intense lobbying pressure and partisan opposition, Reid and Pelosi are preparing to abandon the attempts to stimulate further development of renewable energy resources in order to preserve feeble changes in the auto mileage standards that are still far less than we need. This is another false dichotomy – a fool’s choice. Coupled with the Bush administration promise to veto any energy changes except for increased subsidies for ethanol and nuclear, our federal representatives are still taking a pass on being responsible stewards of our policy. Details on how to express your opinion on this bill are found at the Solar Energy Industries Association website.

I realize this has been a longer note than usual, with fewer links and pictures. The time continues to shorten for action, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and in the oceans for thousands, and new data only increases my conviction that this slow-moving emergency is of the same magnitude as nuclear proliferation. I will leave you with a graph of how the US has funded energy research over the past few decades. Most of this has not been for renewable sources, by the way. For perspective, keep in mind that the war in Iraq will run between $500 billion and a trillion dollars by its conclusion. I need your help in raising a cry for governmental and private focus on climate change and clean energy development. Most of the positive changes being made by Xcel and others will come too little and too late without additional encouragement from you and me. The rapidly melting iceberg lies ahead.

For some folks, there is no bad news.

As the northern polar ice cap recedes further and further each summer, to dimensions smaller than modern humans have ever experienced (see below), some petro-engineers believe they can make lemonade from the increasing Arctic lemons. In an astounding display of behavior normally attributed to addicts, members of various nations propose to respond to the symptoms of our fossil-fuel induced warming problem with a mind-boggling solution – find more fossil fuels where there used to be ice. The Russians started this latest news-cycle flurry by claiming the North Pole seabed as theirs for oil prospecting (more here), but theirs are not the only leaders drinking too much vodka. The US, Denmark, Canada and 5 additional countries are in a Law-of-the-Sea tiff over the possibility that there might be oil under all that melting Arctic ice. The very concept that more of the same behavior that is causing the ice caps to disappear won’t lead to further undesirable changes is addled and bizarre. It’s the kind of stuff you could never make up. These folks would probably endorse increased cigarette smoking for a patient with lung cancer, as long as they get to sell the cigarettes.

And now for that ice cap re-cap I promised – the winter freeze has begun after a season that saw astounding and unprecedented meltoff. This situation is hard to over-state, because to those of us who worry about non-linear responses, tipping points, and cascading effects, this summer looks frighteningly close to the beginning of a non-linearity in sea ice. This is important because when white reflective sea ice is replace with dark blue, absorptive sea water, even more of the incoming sunlight is trapped to warm the ocean, leading to yet more melting ice, and more heat to be trapped with the increasing levels of greenhouse gases. How bad was it? Check it out:

Ways to comprehend the graph: the summer ice extent is below the 30-year average by the area of 10 Great Britain’s (or California’s), and the scientists have revised their prediction of ice disappearance from as soon as 2080 to as soon as 2030. In our lifetimes we may see the Arctic Ocean free of sea ice. Half-full glass of oil, anyone? Full details here.

Does any of this sound like a resource war in the making? Many have criticized the Nobel Prize Committee for awarding a Peace Prize to Al Gore, from both the right and the left. Many on the right deny the severity of the climate change problem, and some on the far left don’t think a ‘peace’ prize should go to someone not campaigning directly for conflict resolution. But Gore is taking an even bigger-picture stance – if we as planetary citizens do not adjust our consumption patterns and energy sources to mitigate against climate change and resource depletion, violence will grow on a global scale. I remember predictions in the 1980’s of oil wars in the Middle East early in the 21^st century as domestic supplies dwindled. At the time, I dismissed such predictions as the ranting of paranoid Malthusians. In retrospect, it was simply math, with a little understanding of world politics. Resource depletion and increasing populations often lead to wars. That is why Gore deserves the Nobel: he’s trying to warn us about the looming threat to world peace.

I’m not sure enough of us are listening.

If you want to help, there is a very important action you can take: visit the SolarWorld webpage, enter your ZIP code, and follow the directions to support renewable energy policies in the current energy bill. There is no more important action that you can take to move our country towards a cleaner future. Please visit today, especially if you are in a conservative-leaning state. Please, please, please make a phone call as well to your US Representative and US Senator and tell them to support renewable energy in the current energy bill. The future awaiting your kids and grandkids depends on the choices we make today.

Peace.

Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Step Back - We have another interesting first in this hurricane season – the Little Hurricane That Could named Humberto that hit the Gulf Coast Thursday was the fastest storm to make it from tropical depression to named hurricane hitting land in the records that record that stuff (soup to nuts in 16 hours). I had not even noticed that there was a storm brewing, when the headlines announced landfall. Seems like the high sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean and Gulf might have an effect on storm strength after all. Watch the developing storm Ingrid to see – she seems to be heading right for the warmest part of the North Atlantic.

Step Forward - For the good news of the week, the right of states to control vehicle emissions more strictly than the Feds has been affirmed. Several states (up to 16 I believe) have passed or are considering restricting CO2 emissions from tailpipes by insisting on higher auto mileage than the US federal CAFE standards, the weakest of any First World national mileage standards. A Vermont judge affirmed that the states (led by California) can set their own standards. This is not unexpected since California was successful at requiring the catalytic converter before the Feds, but there are some ironies. Toyota, maker of the selling-like-hotcakes hybrid Prius, joined with the other automakers in opposing these state laws. Maybe Toyota is a bigger fan of green on bills than green in policy. Or maybe it takes time to break the puppy from peeing in the corner. Full details at Jim Hansen’s website (he testified for Vermont), or the New York Times.

I was lucky enough to see two very stimulating talks this week – one by a Caltech professor that once tried to explain semiconductor physics to me as an overwhelmed freshman, and one by a Danish statistician and economist. I have to say the Caltech engineer thinks more clearly than the Danish practitioner of the ‘dismal science’.

Step Forward - The talk by Dr. David Rutledge of Caltech predicts 90% world oil/gas depletion by around 2080, and 90% world coal depletion by around 2090. I have never seen a fossil fuels analysis quite like his, applying statistical fits to historical production data to predict ultimate resource production. Rutledge’s time-series analysis of many depleted (or nearly depleted) fossil resources (British coal, Pennsylvania coal, US oil, etc) demonstrates extremely convincingly that societies and regions have consistently over-estimated their remaining resources by factors of 2 or 3 or more, and that production rates are excellent predictors of ultimate production. Why don’t resource professionals see these overestimates clearly, you might ask (he did)? My answer: people shoot the messenger, and career bureaucrats hate to be shot. If you were working at (say) the USGS, and all of your predecessors had enjoyed nice careers using an outdated resource methodology, and you suspected that the end of coal might be 80 years away instead of 1000, what would be your motivation to say so? There ain’t gonna be no promotion in the Bush administration for that news! It will be someone else’s problem long after your career is over. Full and fascinating details of this groundbreaking analysis here. The good news about earlier-than-expected fossil fuel scarcity? It means that even without world collaborative action to reduce fossil fuels consumption rates, atmospheric CO2 concentrations might not become ridiculously dangerous, just very dangerous.

Step Back – I saw a talk by Bjorn Lomborg a few hours after previous talk, and there was a world of difference in clarity of thought. The controversial Lomborg is very famous for his massive book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which he delivers as a (supposedly) environmentally concerned citizen and earnest supply-side economist mired in a world of fuzzy-headed but well-meaning tree-huggers. He uses lots (2000+) of scattershot citations for heft to make up for the lack of solidity in the field of economics as applied to environmental science. In his new book Cool It, he makes the case that we should de-emphasize climate change issues in our current set of global priorities. Whereas Rutledge attempted to use data to predict the future, Lomborg assumed future climate change outcomes, and proffered the blunt tool of predictive economics to make decisions today about how to prepare for these ‘certain’ tomorrows. Willfully ignored (and not weighted at all) are the likely non-linear feedbacks lurking in the ecosystem. Think rapidly melting ice in the hotter world, species extinctions, etc., and the changes those might bring. Lomborg stuck me as a well-meaning, earnest, fuzzy-headed supply-side economist whose only figure of merit for the future was expected gross domestic product (GDP). Even his preferred causes of HIV prevention, malaria eradication, and clean water were all measured in terms of expected future GDP for the people, as if that single dimension captured all of the major aspect of resource prioritization. Some of the happiest people I have ever met live in Fiji, where the annual per capita income is $4000, and the life expectancy is 78 years, and the smile ratio is high. It’s not paradise exactly, but GDP per capita is not the only way those folks measure their lives. When asked about the potential extinction of polar bears, Lomborg pointed out that it was hard to decide what the right number of those to have around might be, but if we really wanted them in a warming world, we could just feed them ourselves. I presumed that the money to buy that Polar Bear Chow would be available from all the piles we’d have lying about by ignoring global warming. Clever, clever.

Thanks for listening. Here’s to that cleaner tomorrow.

This is the second in the series of occasional posts I started last month. Yesterday provided another reason to write, another climate milestone – the landfalls of Hurricanes Felix and Henriette. There were two firsts yesterday – the first time since recordkeeping began in the 1800’s that two Category 5 hurricanes ever made landfall in a single hurricane season, and the first time that an Atlantic and a Pacific hurricane made landfall in North America at the same time. Of the 31 recorded Category 5 hurricanes since the 1800s, 8 have occurred in the last 5 seasons. There is good reason to believe that hurricane intensity follows sea-surface temperature, which has been increasing over the last 30 years. The last period of intense hurricane activity was in the 1940’s, the last local maximum in sea surface temperatures was in the 1940’s. The charts below let you judge for yourself whether there might be a correlation between temperature and storm activity.

On another subject, I want to briefly address a very important point, and I will pass along a link to a much smarter guy than I that make a similar point:

COAL IS VERY BAD!

Here are the major problems: highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions of any fossil fuel, denuded land, dead and diseased miners, and mercury emissions. All the gains from the increased fuel economy and efficiency improvements that environmentalists strive to make, and which are very important, will be wiped out by building more coal plants for electricity generation. We MUST stop building coal-fired plants, right now. Concentrating solar thermal electricity generation, wind power, other renewables, and possibly nuclear are the only type of power plants that we should be discussing. To change the outcome for the coming generations, action must begin today, both at a personal level and a policy level. The details are important, but I don’t have that much of your time.

But don’t just take my word for it:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_stewardship_70802.pdf

And the Arctic melting continues – every day this month will bring a new record low for the extent of the Arctic summer sea ice. The Northwest Passage (Atlantic to Pacific over the Arctic) has melted out and become the most navigable in human memory, and the Northeast Passage may open up this season:

http://www.nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html

Thanks for listening.

I am starting a blog update for milestones in our accelerating climate change experience. Since I spend most of every day focused on this subject, I come across frequent news on renewable energy and climate change. I will only post what I consider to be exceptional events or information to this blog, so there will be perhaps 2 updates per month.

First Milestone: This weekend, the area of Arctic sea ice cover reached the minimum ever recorded, and there are still 4-6 weeks worth of melting remaining in this summer season. At this rate, by the year 2030, there may be no sea ice covering the North Pole in the summer. The latest IPCC report (2007 FAR) did not consider any dynamic ice melting effects in their prediction of future sea level rise. While the melting of the Artic ice cap will not directly raise sea level (much), the attendant northern warming and melting of the northern land-based glaciers WILL raise sea level faster than predicted in the IPCC FAR.

More here: http://www.nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html

Just the facts, ma’am…