Cascajun

Robert Bryce writes an excellent essay on the global warming debate in which he disregards the scientific and political arguments over the issue and simply asks, “If more CO2 is bad…then what?”

That is, if political leaders agree with Gore and others who believe too much carbon dioxide is bad, then what are we going to do? Fossil fuels now provide about 85% of the world’s total energy needs. Even more important is this corollary: Increasing energy consumption equals higher living standards. Always. Everywhere. Given that fact, how can we expect the people of the world–all 6.6 billion of them–to use less energy? The short answer: we can’t.

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I no longer care about the left-right/liberal-conservative distinction. I’m tired of the political correctness game. When it comes to energy issues, I’m a liberal who’s been mugged by the laws of thermodynamics. And those laws have turned me into a realist about energy issues. For years, I ignored the immutable laws of thermodynamics. But in the course of writing my upcoming book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence,” I had to pay attention. And in doing so, I was forced to accept the fact that there are no silver bullets, no easy answers, when it comes to energy.

Thus, when it comes to global warming and energy consumption, there are three main issues to be addressed: technology, morality, and the scale of global energy use.

Bryce then goes on to detailed discussion of those three issues.

Technology – (1) we can’t simply rely on energy efficiency, as the Jevons Paradox states, “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuels is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” This paradox is illustrated by recent energy-consumption trends in the U.S. Since 1950, the amount of gross domestic product produced per unit of energy consumed has doubled–and yet during that same time span, energy consumption in the U.S. has risen threefold. (2) Alternative fuels will not be a vialble candidate to meet global energy demands in the foreseeable future. Additionally, biofuels like corn-ethanol and biodiesel may be more harmful for the environment than fossil fuels.

Morality – Today, 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity in their homes. Some 2.5 billion people use wood, dung, or other biomass to meet their cooking energy needs. According to the World Health Organization, about 1.3 million people per year, most of them women and children, die because of the pollution caused by indoor biomass stoves. Only HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and lack of clean drinking water and sanitation are greater health threats than the problems of polluted indoor air. What the energy-poor need most are common fuels like kerosene, propane, and gasoline. And just like us, they want reliable electricity. The people in the industrialized countries have a moral obligation to help the energy-poor get cheap, reliable energy. And it is undeniable that the cheapest and most reliable forms of energy, for now, and for the foreseeable future, are fossil fuels.

The Scale of Global Energy Use - Energy consumption in China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan (the Big Five, in terms of the worlds most populous contries) is soaring and will double over the next decade or two. The belief that the world can drastically cut global carbon-dioxide emissions at a time when about half of the people on the planet are still living in relative energy poverty borders on fantasy. Moreover, the industrialized countries in general, and the U.S. in particular, have no moral standing from which to tell the developing countries that they should slow the growth of their energy consumption.

Back to Robert’s question, ““If more CO2 is bad…then what?” Humans must adapt.

Bringing hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty–and, thus, into higher standards of living–means providing them with access to cheap, plentiful energy. Like it or not, that largely means fossil fuels, and increased use of fossil fuels will mean further increases in carbon-dioxide emissions. And the hard truth is that the people of the world are going to have to adapt to whatever happens next with regard to the world’s climate–regardless of the causes of those changes.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an article about two studies recently published in Science:

Greenhouse Affect

The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill’s latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Then again, Washington’s energy neuroses are more political than practical, so it’s easy for the Solons and greens to ignore what would usually be called evidence.

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The researchers break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error: Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks. About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of “carbon sinks” that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use.

So, incredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol “pays back” the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it’s not easy being green.

I’m not strictly opposed to biofuels, however it is becoming increasingly apparent that they are not the panacea that environmentalists or ‘green-thinking’ people make them out to be. We do need to reduce our dependency on imported petroleum. Burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment. However, we need to recognize the true costs of alternatives that, according to this research, may actually be worse than fossil fuels.

Recently published research in Science states that, by displacing corn and soybeans grown for food, biofuels are doing more harm than good.

Converting corn to ethanol in Iowa not only leads to clearing more of the Amazonian rainforest, researchers report in a pair of new studies in Science, but also would do little to slow global warming—and often make it worse.

I’ve suspected as much. While biofuels may reduce our dependence on imported oil, they have many negative externalities their proponents don’t acknowledge.

I’ve written about the doubts surrounding biofuels before. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published this story: Ethanol Craze Cools As Doubts Multiply

In the span of one growing season, ethanol has gone from panacea to pariah in the eyes of some. The critics, which include industries hurt when the price of corn rises, blame ethanol for pushing up food prices, question its environmental bona fides and dispute how much it really helps reduce the need for oil.

A recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded that biofuels “offer a cure [for oil dependence] that is worse than the disease.” A National Academy of Sciences study said corn-based ethanol could strain water supplies. The American Lung Association expressed concern about a form of air pollution from burning ethanol in gasoline. Political cartoonists have taken to skewering the fuel for raising the price of food to the world’s poor.

What’s driving the continuing production? Big agribusiness corporations who fund the political campaigns of both parties whose politicians, once elected, write the regulations mandating more biofuel consumption and production.

From Bloomberg.com: Hurricane Scientists Flubbed Forecasts for Two Years (Update1)

Sept. 10 (Bloomberg) — Hurricane researchers, who forecast seven more storms this season, have flubbed the past two annual estimates because of unusual El Nino and La Nina weather phenomena in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The predictions reflect variables that make this kind of weather forecasting “more art than science,” said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Two of the nine Atlantic hurricanes predicted already have occurred for the season that ends Nov 30. Last year, five storms emerged after nine were anticipated.

More art than science? I thought “the science was settled” when it came to climate models. Weren’t we told after Katrina that hurricanes were only going to get stronger and more frequent due to global warming? As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, if we can’t accurately model hurricane seasons in the Atlantic Basin 12-months in advance, how accurate are the models predicting the global climate decades in the future?

Gasoline prices are back over $3 and are expected to “hold those gains for a while.”

So, what about the greatest source of energy known to man? The NY Times has an article on the current state of solar power.”

But for all the enthusiasm about harvesting sunlight, some of the most ardent experts and investors say that moving this energy source from niche to mainstream — last year it provided less than 0.01 percent of the country’s electricity supply — is unlikely without significant technological breakthroughs. And given the current scale of research in private and government laboratories, that is not expected to happen anytime soon.

Even a quarter century from now, says the Energy Department official in charge of renewable energy, solar power might account for, at best, 2 or 3 percent of the grid electricity in the United States.

What about the oil companies? Surely they must be investing in some alternative. Isn’t petroleum a finite resource? BP is investing in natural gas. This is their new source of energy?

In the meantime, coal-burning power plants, the main source of smokestack emissions linked to global warming, are being built around the world at a rate of more than one a week.

What of the cleanest, cheapest source of energy available given mankind’s current level of technological advancement?

Recently a taboo against mentioning nuclear energy has developed among scientists - especially those specializing in energy. None of the articles in the recent special issue of Science devoted to energy mentioned nuclear energy - pro or con - even though nuclear energy provides 17 percent of American electricity. Perhaps energy scientists feel that mentioning nuclear energy will have an adverse effect on their grants. Perhaps there is some other reason. To some extent “hydrogen” in the energy literature is a code word for nuclear energy, since many articles promoting hydrogen don’t say how else it can be generated economically in the quantities required to run an economy. Recent waves of ideology are strongly involved.

As the NYT article points out, there is a lack of basic R&D funding for solar energy. Most money for solar is being directed at subsidising usage of and conversion to solar, rather than improving the technology or solving the storage problems.

More alternative energy research dollars should be directed at solar energy and the associated storage problems. That’s our long term energy solution. We already have a viable short term solution, its nuclear energy. If the developed world want’s to improve the global environment and foster sustanable development, we should be promoting and subsidizing the use of nuclear power in developing nations.

“The ban on DDT, says Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, “may have killed 20 million children.”

But, it’s not all bad. Bald eagles are off the endangered species list.

In today’s Financial Post:

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.

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Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

I thought climate science was settled and mankind’s CO2 emissions were the driving force behind global climate change. Apparently the sun has some influence…go figure!