Sunday 16 November 2014

A look at a low carbon future

I've been asked to describe my vision of a low carbon future - it's a bit like putting a drunk in charge of a pub - "what me? - but of course" - so here goes the utopian version - at the moment I fear the dystopian vision is far more probable - but we have to have hope!.

The Neo-liberal beast must be slain


Any  realistic vision of a low carbon future has to assume neoliberal philosophy will have been defeated. The developed world's dominant ideology underlies so many of the world's ills, and somewhere in the story of the development of decarbonisation it will have been fought head on. 

Leaving aside all the other evils this philosophy of greed brings to the world, it's guiding principle, maximising profit, is inherently incompatible with a low carbon world. The aggressive policies, to privatise and monetise all natural resources and active promotion of anti-sustainability, denialist  and illiberal ideologies flowing from neo-liberalism are inimical to decarbonisation. Even worse, all the evidence suggests the corporate propaganda machine is getting stronger and has the power to block a sustainable future, at least until it is too late to rescue a stable climate.

If black propaganda was the most powerful weapon neo-liberalism could offer it wouldn't present such an obstacle, but the extraction industries are the prime drivers of global money flows, energy is the absolute key to developed world economy. It's easy to forget the extent to which fossil fuel is embedded in everything we use, and the volume of money flow it creates. 

It's true that the energy embedded in fossil fuels could be substituted with energy from low carbon sources, but extracted hydrocarbon is a perfect way of transferring wealth upwards. It's not just the energy industry that has an interest in maintaining the status quo, the entire world capital market hinges on fossil fuel and that means a threat to the carbon economy is a threat to the world's most powerful individuals and corporate interests. 

In my view the battle with neo-liberal corporatism needs to take on the same populist cachet as the battle fought by the working classes to extract basic rights and decent treatment from the capitalist industrialists of the late 19th century. In terms of a sustainable future the current status quo is about the equivalent of 7 year old kids sweeping under working machinery, 16 hour working days, poverty wages company stores and rotten boroughs. At some point in the not so very distant future carbon tax, heavy taxes on wealth and excessive profit, a re-regulation of the press to cut cross media ownership, re-nationalisation of services providing social essentials, transport, water, electricity, health care and education and the removal of subsidies on broadscale agro business crops are the minimum measures to seize initiative from corporate ecocide.

Assuming somehow we manage to win that battle where do we go?


It's fairly easy to see one sure path – energy can and must be decarbonised. (go to page four of the linked report). We don't need to use fossil fuel to produce meet our energy needs – but greens need to be  realistic about how this can happen. The notion that the UK could meet even it's current energy needs from renewables is one of the great green myths  - and to divert briefly from future visions to pathways we might take - I'd like to propose a rule - "don't even bother talking about green futures until you've read David MacKay". What he says in essence is "we are rich in renewable energy fluxes – but we use massive amounts of energy" – and even with a heavy focus on efficiency, a shift away from fossil fuels will increase demand for electricity. As a ball park -we use roughly the same amount of energy in the home as we do in transport – so a full conversion of transport to electricity will double demand – and while domestic demand would fall with rigorous efficiency measures, savings would be outstripped by the switch from fossil fuel domestic heating by electrically driven heat pumps. 

There will be wind farms and roof top solar everywhere, there will be some wave energy, and hopefully more tidal stream energy, and no big tidal barrage schemes – they are an environmental disaster! There will also have to be a base load of nuclear power – it presents risks, but the possibility of nuclear accident have to be balanced against the certainty of environmental catastrophe – and I would hope that along with the defeat of neo-liberalism we have had a global programme to solve to technical issues dogging thorium reactors (though the Chinese are running ahead of the game at the moment)  and seriously considered fast breeder technology, both to manage existing nuclear waste and accelerate decarbonisation.

I'd also hope that nuclear technology will be seen as an intermediate solution – and that with the creation of a practical high temperature superconducter a pan european/north african supergrid is in the final stage of construction allowing the northern economies to access the Mediterranean basin solar powerhouse. 

the gemsolar thermal solar plant in Spain -
producing electricity 24 hours a day in optiml sun conditions 
A supergrid would offer so much more than solar energy from the south, allowing a more rational balancing of both daily and seasonal peak demands, open access to potential pumped energy stores in mountainous regions and geothermal resources in volcanically active areas and ultimately a phasing out of nuclear power.

The Mediterranean solar powerhouse will have been in full swing long before the completion of the supergrid. There will be a successful bio-engineered algae that can convert atmospheric CO2 into usable hydrocarbon feedstock and that will create an industry producing new generation of plastics, produce low carbon fuel for transport demands that can't be met by electricity and also provide agricultural fertilisers and other high energy demand basic materials. The plastics industry will be an effective form of carbon capture as we will live in a world where durability rather than disposability is a guiding principle. 

This won't be a plastics industry aimed at producing and shipping poor products – but one that produced as very specific range of products with high reusability, solar and thermal stability and will be exported in pelletised form – often being deployable locally – to be processed in small, localised thermal moulding and 3d printing workshops to manufacture of a new generation of durable, repairable products, a process that will reduce transport intensity of goods and re-localise employment.

There will be plastics that will make superb high thermal value, lightweight building components capable of being constructed by individuals and collectives to enable the development of a new style of housing to replace extensive, energy inefficient, human unfriendly transport dependent housing stock of the 20th and early 21st century. They will, of course, embed solar and rainwater collectors, passive solar heating and will be energy neutral in construction and use. But they will also be designed and built by communities and reflect their needs. Processing of waste will be incorporated into local service plans. That could be high tech with bio-digesters or low tech with compost collection – as long as all nutrients are fully recycled and methane emissions are close to zero – the method doesn't matter. This construction model will release land, allow communities to be actively engaged in their own construction and development and be tailored to meeting the individual needs of it's occupants.

It's about changing the way we think about what makes us well off



Tim Jackson wrote a book called “Prosperity without Growth” It was an effort to summarise the thinking of the Sustainable Development Commission and its conceit was that “prosperity” - "flourishing, well being," is value rather than money dependent, that's to say, it flows from a sense of worth, purpose and belonging rather than a bank balance. There's a thought that if individuals re-engage in reformatting the built environment the alienation and isolation that dominates today's hydrocarbon intensive world will decline and stronger direct non-monetary cooperation will increase, resocialising services that are currently monitised like elderly care and child minding.


I see a real blend of regressive and futuristic technologies at work in a low carbon word. There's lots of room for an alternative to the urban vision. There's good evidence to suggest that more human intensive agriculture can be less chemical and carbon intensive and moreproductive than agro-industrial models – certainly for the production of the farm products we consume directly – meat, veg, dairy (I suspect cereals and other staple crops would still be best produced broad scale) and the humans who want to do that have every opportunity to build low carbon vernacular structures – be it clay lump, stone, wood or straw bale. As well as supplying locally sourced produce they will be active in collecting from the composting toilets in urban areas – they might use a horse and cart to do the rounds – and the animal components of their farms will provide a good deal of nutrient – I'd imagine a LEISA system rather than ideologically organic farming – anyone who's ever been serious about growing their own food ( I mean actually providing most of it – not just a few veg and a bit of salad it he summer) will acknowledge that there are times when a little agro-chemical input can save the day.

Transport is a huge issue. Of course, carbon powered cars will be replaced by electric vehicles, but I  hope we will have reflected on the extent to which the transformation of the human race to a wheeled species has harmed us. Our transport intensive economy has destroyed indigenous community, isolated families, destroyed local businesses and is a key mechanism in taking resources from local economies. It's less obvious that our wheeled society also provides an indirect subsidy to employers and businesses, who have progressively removed branches and local production facilitates as an economy measure, one that is effectively subsidised by their clients and employees need to travel – sometimes many miles, to access services and jobs.

For me, a low carbon future demands a mix of far wider international political cooperation and far more localism – and finding mechanisms to bring economic activity and its full benefits back into the local community is essential, a big rethink on attitudes to transport are a key issue. Electric cars have their uses – but I'm not convinced that battery technology will ever create high enough energy densities to make them as versatile as cars.

With more locally wholesome and complete local environments perhaps the demand for personal transport will decrease – there will obviously be lots of public transport and hopefully, as much for health and happiness as a dainty carbon footprint, people will walk and cycle more and routinely use vehicles for school, work and shopping far less. One thing I really dislike about current green thinking is that it tends to be very puritanical. On transport I truly hope is that while design can reduce demand for transport as a routine option, we still have good pathways for optional travel. I'm probably completely at loggerheads with the whole green movement in saying I don't see air travel as a problem. it's currently responsible for 5% of emissions globally, it's an easy rather than an essential target, especially as algae based solar produced bio-fuels are effectively carbon neutral. I have a hunch that extensive international travel has done a lot to build friendship networks across the world and that these have really helped us to resist state inspired xenophobia and its one use of high energy fuel that I see as justified. I'd hope there would be less freight transport but it won't go away – and it's probably not going to work on roads with electricity – so another reason for solar produced bio-fuel.

Carbon capture is almost certainly going to be an issue – we have probably already exceeded the global carrying capacity for current climate balance – I'm not a believer in geological storage of carbon – but I feel that as well as the conversion of atmospheric CO2 to stable plastics I already outlined I would imagine an exploration of practical ways of bio-fixing carbon. Re-planting forests has obvious multiple benefits – my plastic houses need thoroughly human friendly wooden interiors – and well preserved wood will stabilise it's carbon content for centuries. There's also been some great work developing large wooden structures  (worth remembering that concrete is responsible for 5% of current global carbon emissions) - I have no numbers but I would guess that timber planting is a relative drop in the ocean – but these are the kind of carbon capture and storage paths that can be explored with creativity and imagination.

On global scale modern day developing nations could well be far further along a sustainable path than developed world industrial economies – they haven't got a 200 year old infrastructure to fix – Africa in particular will have shot ahead as it's recognised that centralisation of economies are a function of the development of 18th and 19th century industrialisation – not an essential to a post carbon economy.

In general life will be less money based with everyone working fewer hours for cash and being far more involved in direct working relationships within their communities – Education will have returned to the development of individual potential and knowledge rather than a triage process for the corporate industrial machine, children will be re-wilded,space will automatically be created for nature.  perhaps most of all, our human need for connectedness and belonging, a psychological essential for us primates that, in our carbon alienated society is mostly met by consumerist junk, will perhaps be satisfied by a less mobile, richer more grounded life.

Saturday 22 February 2014

new york times investigation into fracking

Fracked gas is a boom industry, seen as an environmentally friendly substitute for coal - but there are questions about it's long term financial viability - with some experts suggesting shale gas may become another "toxic asset".


Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a boom industry. It's a method of extracting gas not accessible by conventional drilling and has been hailed as one of the energy sources of the future, especially in the USA. The technology is controversial, has caused serious environmental damage in some areas and may be releasing enough methane to make it more carbon unfriendly than coal.

Now, a "must read" major investigation by the New York Times raises serious concerns about the financial viability of shale gas production. Over the last 6 months NYT journalists have reviewed hundreds of e-mails from industry insiders, independent geologists, market analysts and energy executives questioning oil industry predictions about the ease of extracting gas from shale.

Powerful independent financial analysts have likened trading in fracked gas fields to “the dot-com boom” and a “ponzi-scheme”, with some commentators suggesting that oil companies may be “intentionally or even illegally overstating the productivity of wells and the size of their reserves”.

Independent geologists dispute predictions of production over a 20 to 60 year span. Many wells show a year on year decline in gas output from year one and some believe projections have been made on the output of the very best wells in an area rather than overall output.

Whilst gas and oil companies present a bullish view of shale gas prospects other commentators are more pessimistic. One geologist said “no well is really economic right now”... … “they are all losing a little bit of money or only making a little bit of money”. There are concerns that a fall in gas prices could cause financial havoc – the 2008 collapse in gas prices has already had serious economic fall out for landowners in the Fort Worth area of Texas.

If they prove to be true, the issues raised by the NYT, investors hoping to reap big dividends from GAG (golden age of gas) won't be amused - but it could be good news for low carbon energy. There are real fears that a gas bonanza will affect the drive for investment in low carbon technology - a collapse of confidence in fracked gas could be a boost for wind and solar.




Wednesday 19 February 2014

Signs of change - It ain't half hot mum - all the polar bears are turning brown... ... and so's the sea!

Changes to the Cryosphere


It's becoming increasingly clear that global warming is starting to affect eco-systems. One of the features that distinguishes greenhouse warming from warming due to increased solar radiation is that greenhouse warming makes polar regions warm faster than regions closer to the equator. Over the last 30 years there has been disproportionate warming in high latitudes and it is having dramatic effects on the Arctic environment and, quite possibly, on weather in northern Europe and the USA.

Ice loss from the ice cap


In order to understand ice loss and it's impacts it's necessary to distinguish between sea ice and ice that is moving off the land from the ice caps.

Sea Ice is frozen salt water, changes to sea ice cover don't impact on sea levels. While the volume of water increases on freezing, the amount of water it displaces is unchanged.

It's ice from the massive ice sheets, accumulated snow lying several kilometers thick over Greenland and the Antarctic that cause sea level rises. Ice from the ice cap is made of fresh water and it affects sea levels in two ways.

One is calving icebergs. When glaciers reach the shore they push ice on to the surface of the water that eventually breaks up into icebergs. An easy way of seeing the difference between sea ice and glacial ice is is to make a Gin and Tonic with an ice cube in it representing the sea ice. Mark the level of the liquid then let the ice cube melt -levels will remain the same. Now add a few more ice cubes - that's a glacier calving.

The delicious cocktail will have been displaced up the glass - a fair analogy of the impact of calving icebergs. Always remember to drink the G&T as soon as the experiment is concluded or the melting ice will spoil the drink. It is important to replicate experiments in science so this is a really useful way of expanding knowledge and having a fun evening.

The other is melt water runoff. If summer melt and winter rain are in equilibrium this process will not affect sea levels - but if summer melt exceeds precipitation there will be an overall decrease in ice mass and an increase in sea levels.

Summer meltwater cascading into a sink hole
The rapid warming at polar regions is having an impact on the stability of Greenland ice cap. Factors that may have increased ice flows include: a  retreat of sea ice, reducing physical resistance to outward ice flows, an increase in lubrication due to meltwater reaching the base of the ice and a softening of ice. As yet the process of ice loss is by no means fully understood - for example - recent research suggest the lubricant effects of melt water may not be as great as feared, and there are different views on the best methods for calculating projected sea level rises.

There are some interesting images of the retreat of glacial outlets on the Polar Portal web site, showing images from the 1980's and today.

Their data shows that the total loss of mass from the ice sheet since 1840 equates to a 25 mm addition to global sea level . It also shows mass loss has accelerated over the last few decades - with the largest ice loss rates since 1840 occurred in the most recent decade and the mass loss in 2012 setting a new record.

Satellite measurements showing chilling figures for ice mass loss in Greenland:

  • in the period 1992-2000 the ice sheet lost 51 Gigatonnes per year, adding 1.4 mm to global sea level per decade
  • From 2005-2010  263 Gigatonnes per year  were lost - equivalent to 0.73 mm per year of sea level rise 
  • From 2008-2012 the average annual mass loss has increased to 367 Gt (1.0 mm sea level rise per year).
A increase in sea level rises from 1.4 mms in a decade to 10 mms in a decade is alarming - but there are fears that under certain conditions both the Greenland and the West Arctic Ice sheet could destabilise even more rapidly. If a tipping point were reached the West Antarctic Ice Sheet it could add over 3 metres to sea levels in the course of a couple of centuries.

The diagram offers an explanation of how ice sheets may destabilise more rapidly than expected


























Ice loss from the sea


The loss of sea ice presents a separate set of issues. Summer cover has declined dramatically over the last 30 years. This US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration video shows record breaking ice loss in the year 2012


The loss of sea ice is probably having a far more immediate impact than the loss of ice cap mass. It directly affects both native wildlife and human Arctic populations, which are also subject to other impacts from climate change, described in detail in the newly published Arctic Biodiversity Assessment.

It's retreat is reducing albedo, creating positive warming feedbacks as the darker exposed seas absorb heat and it's highly probable that loss of sea ice is impacting on our climate. Even worse - recent studies indicate that the impact of sea ice loss on warming may be far more severe than previously feared, with the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting warming by as much as 13oC if CO2 is not mitigated

This Jeff Masters Blog goes into detail about the way sea ice loss contributes to increased warming in the polar regions, which in turn can displace the jet stream - driving Atlantic lows and very cold Arctic air masses further south than in the past. This 15/02/2014 news report from the BBC explains how these changes could be contributing to the recent severe weather being experienced in Europe and in the USA.

Ice loss in the mountains


The cyrosphere embraces high altitudes as well as high latitudes and another indication of climate change is the loss of mountain glaciers. Stunning images in the Himalayas show the mountains today shot from the same positions as their earliest known images - some going back as far as the 19th C. At first glance it would seem the retreat of mountain glaciers, though another indicator of warming, is less of a concern than loss of sea ice and mass from ice caps - but glaciers form an important source of water for some of the world's great rivers - including rivers flowing into the Indian subcontinent that provide water for over a billion people.

The Everest Glaciers have shrunk by 13% in the last 50 years - and while some argue that reduced glacial water flow would be replaced by increased monsoonal rain - the melt water guarantees all year round water in a country that has little infrastructure to store and use water efficiently. In India the hottest driest weather is in March, April and May, immediately before the monsoons.


There are similar concerns in the USA where the Rockies have seen a 20% loss of ice cover in the last 3 decades - Runoff from the Rocky Mountain snows accounts for 60 to 80% of the annual water supply for more than 70 million people in the western US. The timing of snowmelt affects the levels of water available for crop irrigation and hydro-electric power (reported in countercurrents blog)

It seems that although, rising sea levels, the "traditional" fears of polar warming, are happening, it will be some time before the impacts really begin to be felt. The loss of sea ice appears to be having a mre immediate disruptive effect on our climate and may well be the underlying cause of the severe weather experienced in the UK this year, while ice loss from the mountains has the potential to affect the water supply of billions of people.

As if this isn't bad enough, warming at the poles raises the spectre of another amplifying feedback being set in motion, Permafrost holds a vast store of carbon locked into semi decomposed vegetation and deposits of methane clathrates lie on the sea bed in cold Arctic waters. As the polar regions warm methane - a 30 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 - will be released in as yet unknown quantities.

Marine Acidification

"Oceans cover 70% of the planet's surface, because they're deep, they actually contain 99% of the living space for animals on our planet. So they contain a large proportion of global biodiversity"

(Dr Ceri Lewis- Futurelearn video)

I've been aware of the issue for a while but hadn't quite appreciated the fact that it represented so much of the world's inhabitable space, and it makes the story of rising acidity in the sea, the "hidden side" of carbon pollution, even more daunting.

The sea is the main reasons why atmospheric CO2 concentrations have not risen proportionately to emissions. Carbon Dioxide is soluble in water, forming Carbonic Acid - and around about a third of all anthropogenic emissions have been absorbed by the sea. In terms of ppm of CO2 this is a good thing - but the increased acidity of the sea has potentially profound implications for the future of 250,000 plus marine species.

I'm not going to go into the detail of the chemistry - there's a really good account of this in the Ocean Acidification Wiki. It's enough to know that dissolved CO2 has caused an increase in the sea's acidity of around 30%  since 1750.

This is a serious cause for concern as many marine species form calcium carbonate shells that can become soluble in acid conditions. There's a quick guide to some of the ramifications of rising acidity from the Marine conservation and Biology Institute here. Effects include the obvious like coral bleaching and dieback, but it's perhaps the effects at the tiniest level that are most worrying.

Rockpool in Brittany - 10 different large marine species in this image
The majority of marine life reproduce by releasing eggs and sperm into the water - to form embryonic versions of their parents. These are incredibly sensitive to acidity - and as part of their development, many need to form lime shells or skeletal structure. Clearly an acid environment compromises their development. The effects on plankton are an even greater worry . Plankton are at the base of the marine food chain and help produce a third of the world's oxygen supply.



A quick trawl through google asking the question, "effects of marine acidification on phytoplankton?" comes up with a host of links" - none of them very positive. These examplesgive a flavour of the kind of issues acidification will create:




I want to share this link too - it's a great resource for teachers and the site goes into detail on many other climate change issues too

Reflections


I was very stimulated by the discussion thread this week. I've really noticed that most comments tend to interpret the problems of climate change in human terms.

I tend think in terms of "catastrophic loss of biodiversity - we are part of a system and, in biological terms , not a particularly important part at that, just numerous. I'm inclined to feel marine acidification is a far greater threat to the complex system that maintains our current biosphere than rising sea levels - which will just make life difficult for humans.

Acidity is rising most rapidly in the polar regions nutrient rich seas. The phytoplankton that bloom in these waters each year are at the base of the marine food chain - with hundreds of larger life forms depending on them for survival. Phytoplankton's are also a major contributor to the third of the world's oxygen that comes from our oceans. Phytoplankton is potentially very vulnerable to rapid pH changes. Potentially, this could pose huge problems for the entire marine ecosystem. It's too soon to say exactly how marine acidification will affect the sea but it's highly probably it will be a big big problem, because, in terms of pH,  the damage has already been done, and can't be stopped.

A number of people were saying "it will be OK" or offering opinion along the line of, "well - marine organisms can migrate to less acid, more suitable areas". I try not to let it happen, but the phrase "is it me" occassionally springs to mind unbidden. Anyone following that line of reasoning might just reflect that a lot of marine life is sessile and exist in specific depth ranges, so can't cross deep oceans. A lot of species can only survive in specific temperature ranges and many mobile species depend on a community of non-mobile organisms to provide a suitable habitat. Oh - and eventually sea water mixes - so higher acidity will be universal.

We were asked this week - what did we think posed a bigger threat to humanity, sea level rise or marine acidification - personally I find marine acidification far scarier than global warming in it's entirety. Sea Level rises we can survive - but acidification is utterly unquantifiable. I try and avoid Armageddon scenarios - but at it's worse - if acidification causes massive disruption to the marine eco-system, I believe we could be looking at such profound changes to the earth's global environment, that life as we know it could be largely wiped out. I've stared climate change in the face for 30 odd years and always tried to remain positive - marine acidification terrifies me.


Tuesday 11 February 2014

The Climate Change Denial story - propaganda in action

I've been looking at "the climate sceptic" phenomenon for a few years now - in fact the main reason I'm doing the course is to make sure my self-taught understanding of climate science is accurate.

One of the things I've learnt is that it's really important to understand where the sceptical arguments come from. They are not scientific arguments - though many pose as being so. They are almost all ultimately funded by the US energy industry - who are following on from the lead of the US tobacco industry.

Their reaction, when faced with overwhelming evidence of the health risks of their products, was to embark on a campaign of "muddying the waters " - creating smokescreens and fake science to bamboozle the public and politicians that successfully delayed action on tobacco for 30 years. The energy industry very consciously adopted the same tactics - and took them far further. It may seem a arrogant to dismiss such well publicised doubts about such a crucial issue - but there is a wealth of evidence that say the "climate denial case" is an utter fabrication.

When is "science" science?

Science needs well researched data, proper analysis of evidence and publication and peer review - that's to say - it has to be accessible to other scientist working in the same fields complete with a description of the techniques used to run the experiment, the data, the methods used to analyse etc. If it's not published and critiqued in this way it's not science!

Desmog,  a blog dedicated to "clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science" has viewed peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals published between Nov. 12, 2012 through December 31, 2013. Of  2,258 articles, written by a total of 9,136 authors only one, by a single author in the Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, rejected man-made global warming  records  - so the degree of scientific consensus on climate change is effectively absolute. The problem with the "other side" is that virtually none of the papers are peer reviewed or meet the criteria for being proper science. 

Denial tends to be largely based on opinion - so much so that Reddit recently banned denial posts -  Nathen Allan - a Reddit moderator and PhD chemist, writing about the ban, said,

(the deniers) "had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong. They were completely enamoured by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News".

So who are the deniers? This Skeptical Science blog presents a typical example of the kind of "science" used by the denial machine. On first glance is sounds highly credible. "49 former NASA employees call on NASA administrator to muzzle NASA climate scientists".

It's the kind of headline the Daily Mail just love - especially as the group includes,

" renowned space scientists with formal educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of these scientists have Ph.Ds"

though notably - no climate scientists... ...and it is just a letter - an opinion - with no peer review and decidedly not a qualified opinion. But that doesn't stop the headlines - another smokescreen deployed - it doesn't matter that it's fiction - most people only read the headlines - so the damage is done.

He who pays the piper...

But why would quite eminent former NASA employees go to all this trouble? Well - it seems like the leader of the group is a former oil executive who runs a blog known to be funded by the fossil energy industry. How he put together this particular group is an open question - but Skeptical Science summarises the end product perfectly,

"This story can be summed up very simply: a group of retired NASA scientists with no climate science research experience listened to a few climate scientists and a few fossil fuel-funded contrarian scientists, read a few climate blogs, asked a few relatively simple questions, decided that those questions cannot be answered (though we will answer them in this post), put together a very rudimentary report, and now expect people to listen to them because they used to work at NASA.  It's purely an appeal to authority, except that the participants have no authority or expertise in climate science".

In other words, no research, no peer review, no evidence - no science.

... calls the tune

This is just one tiny example of the widespread network of false front think tanks and lobbying machines funded by the energy industry.

The scale of the denial machine in the USA defies belief. Research published last year by Drexel University details the spending by energy companies on "denier vehicles" - and how recently, overt funding from the likes of Koch and Exxon has disappeared from public view, and is being channelled via anonymous funding organisations.

It's seem inconceivable to liberal Europeans that anyone would fly in the face of overwhelming evidence of the dangers of climate change - but money has always attracted the ruthless and there's no doubt that the likes of the Koch brothers,  owners of the world's biggest private energy business are among the most ruthless of all, and are determined to scrape and pump every last drop of oil they can.

While there's not a scrap of evidence to support the denial case (and in a delightfully ironic bit of serendipity,   a meta analysis of climate change evidence funded by Koch in an attempt to disprove mainstream climate science, conducted by a sceptical climate scientist actually found that climate change was real, warming would be on the high end of predictions and that it was all due to carbon pollution) the political impacts of this campaign have been spectacular.

In a way it's hardly surprising that the USA should be the powerhouse of faith based denial. While stories like hugely influential right wing "Shock Jock" Ross Limbaugh saying: 'If You Believe In God, Then Intellectually You Cannot Believe In Manmade Global Warming' seem laughable in Europe, in the States, Limbaugh can make or break political careers.

It's one possible explanation why in the last US election not a single Republican presidential primary candidate would admit to climate change being "real" - though Emilee Pierce's blog outlines forces at work far murkier than a brash loudmouthed DJ.

The energy industry drive to suppress climate action goes beyond propaganda. A recent attempt to introduce an amendment stating that climate change conclusively exists in a bill being heard by the House Energy and Commerce Committee was voted down by 24 republican votes. They were cast by members who have collectively received over 9 million dollars in career contributions from the energy sector.

The denial movement is strongly associated with libertarian and ultra-right wing neo-conservative politics. Moves towards sustainability are seen as "backdoor socialism" - the latest example is Ohio State Senator Bill Seitz likening renewable energy to "Stalinism"

The power of the denial network is not restricted to the USA - the new Australian PM and the PM of Canada both openly scoff at climate change - both lead countries with massive hydrocarbon reserves - and the scepticism spins over into our own government with increasingly climate sceptic noises coming from a number of ministers, including the chancellor.

So next time the BBC give equal air time to a dissenting voice when climate change is discussed or James Delingpole launches one of his famous rants - be very clear - they are not arguing science - they are representing a slick propaganda campaign funded and motivated by the fossil energy industry.

* Greenpeace have produced a report (downloadable as a PDF) called "Dealing in doubt" detailing the way fake science and the denial story have been driven by the energy industry.

Monday 10 February 2014

predicting the climate future

predicting the future - climate modelling 


Peter Cox presented what may have been one of the best videos to come out of the course so far, taking us on a tour of the Met Offices forecasting centre and explaining the massive amounts of computing power needed to develop climate models. The long term climate models use similar techniques to near future weather forecasting - but factor many more variables into the fantastically complex equations used to make projections of how our climate might change

The acid test for climate models is to run the parameters used for predicting future climate change through the system and see how well results correspond to the historic record. Interestingly, the model works very well up until the 1970's at which point observed warming increases far more rapidly than the model predicts - results for this period only correspond to the climate record when anthropogenic carbon is factored into the equation.

Given the close match between observation and modelling of past climate it's reasonable to suggest that the climate models predictions about future climate will be accurate. There are some unpredictable variables, including how much we are able to reduce emissions, and the ability of the bio-sphere and the world's oceans to absorb emissions that leave questions about exact outcomes.

The problem is can be overcome by creating a range of projections using different scenarios seen in this NASA Earth Observatory chart




The 5th assessment ignored other important variables like the carbon feedback from thawing permafrost, and methane clathrates  ("frozen" methane on the sea bed) that could be triggered by a warming climate - the US Blog Climate Progress regards the omission of carbon feedbacks from the IPCC 5th Assessment as "jaw dropping news" .

It's ironic that perhaps the biggest questions surrounding the IPCC 5th Assessment , who use the kind of modelling Peter Cox describes to produce their reports, is not that it exaggerates the scale of warming but that it is too conservative.

Some critics of the IPCC believe that it is under too much political pressure to tone down statements.

US educational science education site SPARK give the background to the way the IPCC develops it's reports,, saying:

"all language included in the reports (needs) support of all representatives before (inclusion)... ...Some participants feel that the reports are somewhat "watered down"... ... any claim even remotely contentious in the eyes of any participant was vetoed, and hence some important and largely agreed-upon aspects of the science were left out."

Former IPCC panelist Professor Michael Mann explains the political difficulties for the IPCC. Mann characterises the process of "hashing out the report with the input of world political leaders" as “a pretty tense negotiation at times". For example, he says,

"in 1995, during the second assessment report, when the IPCC first went on record stating that the impact of humans on climate had been detected, there was a three-day-long debate about what word should be used to describe the level of certainty about civilization’s role in climate change.

Several governments, including the government of Saudi Arabia, objected to the strength of the language that was being used and demanded essentially that it be watered down"


technology to the rescue???





Having established that it's almost certain human carbon emissions are affecting climate and gained a clear idea of what those effects will be the second topic was the possibility of using technology to mitigate the effects of climate change or to remove CO2, either by removing carbon dioxide from the system or by increasing the earth's surface albedo to reflect a proportion of solar radiation.




In theory, "removal" of carbon can be achieved by several methods.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) extracts carbon dioxide  from exhausts of large plants like power stations and liquefy and store it in suitable geological strata. It's limitations are that it is very energy intensive process, driving up energy cost between 25 and 40%, and the risk of stored gas finding it's way back into the atmosphere. As yet there have been no successful demonstration of CCS in the UK and there are major concerns about liability and risks, described in this British Geological Survey report, which identifies geological instabilities, difficulties in monitoring and difficulties in finding commercial organisations prepared to develop the technology without government guarantees in the event of major failures. It's also interesting that  much of the lobbying effort for CCS appears to come from the fossil energy industry.

Mineralisation of Carbon Dioxide, although an energy intensive process (it would take three tons of crushed rock to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere) offers is a possible technique. Mineralisation is the main natural route to carbon sequestration and the end product, carbonate rock, has none of the critical risks of storing liquid CO2. In this article, the work of Cambridge Carbon Capture is described - expanding mineralisation into industrial processes and using it to create commercially viable end products and giving an insight into the ways new technologies and ideas could help to provide climate solutions. As always with new thinking there are questions as to how much of a difference the ideas described would really make and how quickly, if ever, they will cross the bridge from theory to functional large scale plant.

Converting CO2 into fuel feedstocks - there's no such thing as a free lunch but carbon dioxide can be persuaded to form carbon monoxide that can in turn be used as a fuel - for example the University of Delaware has developed a nano-catalyst 3000 times more effective than conventional catalysts - while it doesn't remove CO2 it is a potential way of reducing new emissions. Another obvious way of recycling CO2 is via fuel crops. Bio-fuel and bio-mass are established technologies that use CO2 from the existing carbon cycle - but they have limited value - in the case of extensive palm oil plantations for example, because the fuel crops are grown at the expense of natural rain forest and in the west fuel crops competing for land with food crops - help drive up food prices and also deliver very poor overall energy returns on energy invested (EROEI).

There's also the possibility of sequestering CO2 in biomass and converting this into biochar which can be incorporated into soil, where it not only remains in a relatively stable form but also has good soil enhancement properties. Jim Haywood's presentation also suggested combining bio-mass power generation with CCS as the most "economically viable technique". Theoretically this is a good way of sequestering carbon but I'm not sure I agree with this view. I've already touched on the difficulties associated with this technology and in a country the size of the UK there are also serious questions about the quantity of bio-mass we can produce - David McKay writes in "Sustainability Without the Hot Air" that a minimum of 30% of biomass energy would be lost along the processing route - and that even with absurdly generous estimates of the land that could be made available for biomass it would make only a small contribution to overall energy demands - adding in a 25-40% increased energy cost for CCS would render biomass virtually worthless as a fuel.

Overall none of these technologies are entirely free from side effects and none would make really significant inroads into the huge amounts of new CO2 coming from fossil fuels each year.

The other path - reflecting incoming solar radiation is highly controversial for a number of reasons. Studies of the effects of high altitude particles from volcanoes and the smoke stack trails from shipping have shown that introducing materials into the atmosphere can cut temperatures.The technology involves techniques like seeding clouds to make them more reflective or creating "solar mirrors" in earth orbit to create overall global cooling - but it's a technology fraught with risk. It's known that it can reduce overall warming but no one knows how widespread use might affect specific weather systems - so, for example, if it forced a northward migration of wet zones the Amazon basin could dry out - putting one of the worlds biggest bio-carbon fixers at risk and turning it into a carbon emitter in the event of it dying. There are even greater risks associated with the technology - if it's use suddenly became impracticable the earth's temperature would rise very quickly with catastrophic effects on eco-systems.

Matthew Watson, writing in the Guardian suggest that despite the many controversies surrounding the technologies it would be foolhardy not to develop and understanding of how they could be used as a last resort. JackStilgoe takes the view that the IPCC is offering a ray hope to policy makers by even including a largely critical reference to the technology in it's report

In my view, there is a real danger to even pushing the door slightly ajar to climate engineering - it gives the "extract every drop" mob another propaganda get-out route. The stupidity of this technology is that we don't need to switch to a low carbon/renewable energy economy simply because of climate change. Continued investment in a technology and infrastructural model that depends on a finite resource is taking us up an economic dead end - a point well made in the 2010 UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES) report "The Oil Crunch".

There is more than enough energy and existing technologies to accelerate the decarbonisation of electricity generation right now. Given the weaknesses of geo-engineering and CCS it's by far the safest and most cost effective path - Caroline Lucas is one of many calling for the fight against climate change to be put on a war footing - though it's ironic that Greens continue to reject Nuclear Power - one of the lowest carbon energy options available to us.




Tuesday 4 February 2014

We are Changing the Climate

Indicators of climate change can be found by careful analysis of climate records.  With the development of far more widespread monitoring on both land and sea and new technologies ranging from weather balloons to satellites these records have become increasingly rich during the 20th century
Using this 170 year old set of records - making careful adjustments for ways in which different techniques for measurement and localised effects like urbanisation - climate analysts have built a picture of how climate has changed.
The data establishes key indicators 
  • Global mean temperature over sea and land has increased significantly over the 20th century
  • There's been a steady rise in sea levels due to both thermal expansion and ice melt from glaciers and ice caps
  • temperatures in the high northern latitudes have risen significantly 
  • there has been a significant increase in the number of extreme weather events


The Met Office have a page of climate maps showing anomalies compared to the 1961-1990 average. In a very unscientific attempt to look at changing climate I looked at the intensity of the colour red on the maps (more red = hotter). It's easy to see that in the 71 years from 1919 to 1990 - taking 1911 as the bottom end of hotness - there's been 7 really hot summers - from 1991 to date there's been 11 significantly hot summers. So significantly hotter than average years one year in ten up until 1990 and more or less one in two since then. 22 years of records is getting close to that 30 year period when we can start to talk about climate rather than weather!


James Hanson predicted that extreme weather events would be a feature of climate change as long ago as 1990. There's a useful Climate Progress piece on extreme weather discussing the drought in the SW of the USA and the mechanisms that drive it. There's now evidence to show the frequency of climate extremes and global warming are linked as this National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration report on Mediterranean Droughts demonstrates. There are numerous links to papers supporting the view that extreme weather events are increasing in this link to the Skeptical Science web site. John Vidal writing in the Guardian catalogues events through 2013 in "2013, a year of increasing extreme weather events" - where, in a catalogue of dangerously high temperatures  he describes temperatures in Australia getting so high that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add another colour band to it's temperature charts.
The US Geological Society  climate visualisation map clearly shows the increases in temperature and clearly shows that the greatest increases are in the far north - but it also shows smaller increases in many areas where human existence is already marginal, including the Mediterranean basin, the Russian Steppes, the US Mid and S. West and Australia. These increases are a major cause for concern as they could tip the balance into an environment that could no longer support agriculture. One illustration of this is that high food prices over the last few years were partially due poor harvests caused by drought and the Russian Steppes - a long term increase in drought intensity in a major world grain supply area would compromise food supplies globally.
Concern about the impacts of climate change is growing in the scientific community - as reflected in this release by the American Geophysical Union - first drafted in 2007 but reaffirmed in 2013 which says

"Impacts harmful to society, including increased extremes of heat, precipitation, and coastal high water are currently being experienced, and are projected to increase. Other projected outcomes involve threats to public health, water availability, agricultural productivity (particularly in low‐latitude developing countries), and coastal infrastructure, though some benefits may be seen at some times and places. Biodiversity loss is expected to accelerate due to both climate change and acidification of the oceans, which is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels."

and calls for urgent action to reduce anthropogenic carbon emissions.




Video showing spectacular change to CO2 over the last 500 million years



watch the timescale of the left hand graph change as CO2 levels rise 


On first glance the increase in carbon emissions seems tiny in the context of global carbon cycles - but while the flows of carbon and carbon stored in the world's oceans and the biosphere are vast they are in a long term equilibrium - it's true that they may change gradually over many thousands of years - but the carbon from human activity has increased concentrations of free carbon dioxide very very quickly - almost doubling in the last 100 years - and it's this rapid increase that represents a major cause for concern.

Looking at global emissions on this World Bank interactive emissions graph it's clear there is a huge disparity between emissions in the developed and the developing world and while, for example, India's emissions are rising rapidly per capita emissions a tiny fraction of the average European, who in turn create less than half the CO2 of the average US Citizen. 

China is the big new boy on the carbon block - and has outstripped even the USA - becoming the world's largest carbon produced in 2005 with total emissions now racing ahead of the rest of the world. It looks like China has taken over from the USA as the world's carbon bogyman - but the underlying realities tell a different story. The Worldwatch Institute say that a third of China's emissions are driven by exports to the west - so the west's claims for a reduced carbon emissions are not as clear cut as we claim. George Monbiot writes - 

"When the impact of the goods we buy from other nations is counted, our total greenhouse gases did not fall by 19% between 1990 and 2008. They rose by 20%. This is despite the replacement during that period of many of our coal-fired power stations with natural gas, which produces roughly half as much carbon dioxide for every unit of electricity. When our “consumption emissions”, rather than territorial emissions, are taken into account, our proud record turns into a story of dismal failure"

The story of China - who's per capita carbon is way below all but the most economic developed nation illustrates both the stranglehold the west has on resources and the huge impact our consumer based economy has on carbon emissions and thus our climate.


Monday 27 January 2014

past climates

this weeks lessons!


This week has been a journey through time, back to the earth's origins almost 4.5 billion years ago, to examine the way the earth's climate has changed on a geological timescale, and  the techniques used to identify the processes that brought those changes about. Geological specimens can give clues about early climate - sediments as old as 3.8 billion years have been found.

In the early history of the earth the sun was weaker - delivering 25% to 30% less energy than today. Paradoxically, the geological record shows a climate suitable for the evolution of life at a time when the planet should have been frozen. In fact it was probably warmer than today - almost certainly because CO2 concentrations were far higher than those found in our atmosphere now.

Carbon pools in the major reservoirs on earth.[2]
PoolQuantity (gigatons)
Atmosphere720
Oceans (total)38,400
Total inorganic37,400
Total organic1,000
Surface layer670
Deep layer36,730
Lithosphere
Sedimentary carbonates> 60,000,000
Kerogens15,000,000
Terrestrial biosphere (total)2,000
Living biomass600 - 1,000
Dead biomass1,200
Aquatic biosphere1 - 2
Fossil fuels (total)4,130
Coal3,510
Oil230
Gas140
Other (peat)250
The geological record has allowed insights in natural cyclical changes to the earth's climate. There's a great slow carbon cycle in which carbon dioxide, highly soluble in water,  forms carbonic acid - which reacts with exposed rocks to leach out soluble bi-carbonates.

These eventually find their way to the sea and are used by marine animals as a building-block for their shells - made of insoluble calcium carbonate. Eventually they settled to the sea floor, and, over millennia, gradually lockaway free CO2 into the lithosphere - reducing atmospheric concentrations and cooling the atmosphere.

This process of fixing carbon has removed vast quantities of carbon from the active carbon cycle - If I've interpreted the table correctly, all the carbon in the atmosphere, dissolved in the oceans, stored in the biosphere and, amazingly, in the worlds fossil fuel reserves, is only a tiny fraction of the carbon accumulated in the lithosphere, around 1/20,000.

We learned that at one point so much CO2 was locked away that the earth cooled to a point where an irreversible feedback mechanism tipped the climate into a prolonged frozen phase.

This "snowball earth" may have arisen from a combination of decreased greenhouse gas, leading to more extensive ice cover and higher albedo, and perhaps one of the cyclical variations in the earths's orbit, known as the Milankovitch cycles or an event that increased dust content in the atmosphere, reducing the energy arriving at the earth's surface to a point where so much ice formed that its high albedo triggered an irreversible spiral of cooling.

the process led to "20 million year winters", with global temperatures as low as those of modern Antarctica. In the frozen state all the natural carbon sequestration was halted - there was no liquid water to form carbonic acid and probably little exposed rock. The icy conditions did not stop vulcanism and gradually CO2 levels reached a level where warming restarted a new phase of warming and cooling.

As we came closer to "modern times" we looked at the way climatologists are able to use a range of techniques to work out climatic change in fine detail - using:
  •  dendrochronology (study of tree rings)  - involves gathering many cores of trees and relating growth patterns to current and historic weather records. This data can then be compared with tree ring samples from older living trees and also from trees preserved in buildings and in fossils to build a picture of historic weather patterns
  • Ice core samples - As snow falls it traps air - year on year new snow falls - compressing earlier layers - eventually turning them into ice - trapping the air permanently. By drilling through deep ice in the places like the Antarctic and  Greenland air samples from ice as old as 800,000 years have been obtained - allowing air samples to be analysed for greenhouse gasses,  and also yielding other variables that can affect climate like ash and dust and other climate indicators like pollen.
  • Core samples of sediments - which yield samples of fossil micro flora, pollen etc that can be used as proxies to deduce climatic conditions in the past - the most spectacular example of this is work done was at Lake El'gygytgyn - Known as Lake E, in eastern Siberia, which give an unbroken sediment record of over 3 million years.
This evidence has allowed climatologists and geologists to build a more detailed picture of the cyclical reduction of CO2 levels and periods of glaciation known as ice ages over the last 4 million years. We are technically in a warm "interglacial" at the moment - with ice retreating from the far north of Britain only 12 thousand years ago 

From these very accurate tools we know that the pre industrial CO2 concentrations of around 220 parts per million (ppm)  have been the norm for a  very long time - and that since the late 19th century, levels have risen to 400 ppm due to human activities, mainly burning coal and oil and deforestation. This a CO2 concentration, according to the Lake E results,  not seen for 3.5 million years, and one that lead to Arctic temperatures 8oC warmer than today.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the extra energy high levels of greenhouse gasses pump into the world's climate systems cause more frequent and more severe weather events, reducing sea ice cover, and will lead to sea level rises, that could threaten many of the world's major cities and population centres. 

Learning experiences

I didn't find anything especially difficult this week - probably the hardest thing for me was watching the "Snowball Earth" Video - which I found over-dramatic and a poor way of absorbing information - and sorry course leaders - also populist science 13 years out of date.

It was good to get a more structured view of the tools used to research past climates but the thing I found most interesting was the number of students who were a tad sceptical about climate change - I'm no scientist, but I've been delving deeply into the political context of climate change denial, in particular in the USA, for the last 4 years. There were a lot of people on the course who felt we needed to listen to "the other side of the story" - not realising the "other side" is not an alternate scientific view but  a propaganda exercise. If I have the time I plan to blog about this at some point through the week.

I've been researching and using other web sites through the week - I've linked to a few of them in this and my previous post  - but there are a few links that ~I've found invaluable.

Skeptical Science is a denial myths debunk site but also carries a wealth of info.Science Daily have e-mail a daily bulletin of all environmental stories that report new developments in climate research as they are published and Carbon Brief issue a weekly e-mail bulletin on political and technological developments, news etc.