FutureGen “Clean Coal” Project Bites the Dust

Citing rising costs, the US Energy Department cancelled a project called FutureGen which was supposed to demonstrate how carbon dioxide released by burning coal could be captured and stored. With the price of the project, which was supposed to be built in Mattoon, Illinois, reaching $1.8 billion and seemingly still going up the Energy Department called it quits. According to a report in The New York Times the Deputy Secretary of Energy, Clay Sell, said that the project would be revamped. The chief executive of the FutureGen Alliance said that canceling the project would probably result in a 4-year delay.

So, where does this leave us. With a leading climate scientist James Hansen calling for a moratorium on new coal-burning power plants which can not capture and store carbon dioxide to keep carbon dioxide from increasing to atmospheric levels that will cause catastrophic climate change this decision clearly leaves us in a bad spot. Efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy simply do not seem to going fast enough to provide enough electricity if new coal plants are entirely out of the picture. However, if more new coal plants are built without the capture and storage capability carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will almost surely overshoot the target of 450 ppm which is supposed to limit warming to 2C above preindustrial levels.

The cancellation of the FutureGen project should be a wake-up call. Maybe capturing and storing carbon dioxide from coal plants is just pie in the sky, either technologically impossible or so expensive that coal could not economically compete as a fuel. Maybe instead of holding on to the coal option, we should start gradually dismantling coal plants and go all out to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. Do we really have any other good choice?

Asian Growth Blamed for Record Carbon Dioxide Levels

Reports from a Norwegian station in the Arctic show that carbon dioxide measurements have reached a new record of about 394 parts per million (these measurements are higher than the most quoted measurements obtained in Hawaii). An article in the Internet Edition of China Post says that Kim Holman, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, attributes the increase in carbon dioxide emissions to growing Asian economies. Holman says this growth is connected to a recent reduction in industrial efficiency as more carbon is being emitted per dollar of economic output, a trend which is opposite to that which took place over many preceding years. Holman is quoted in the article as saying that “the affluent world wants to buy cheap stuff and we buy it…from the inefficient old-fashioned technology that we have got rid of.” As long as people think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens they will prefer the “cheap stuff” to what makes sense in terms of protecting the environment, furthering human rights, etc. American political scientist Benjamin Barber addresses this problem in his 2007 book Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. He puts the blame not those buying products but on the manufacturers who are selling products.

Texas Listed as One of the World’s Top Ten Greenhouse Gas Polluters

The state of Texas is known for doing things in a big way and polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases is no exception. The Telegraph reports that the US Energy Information Administration says that in 2003 Texas emitted 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide which would make it the seventh largest polluter in the world. The Telegraph article notes that in contrast to states that are attempting to reduce travel by automobile, in Texas, the governor, Rick Perry, is pushing to get a swath of highway built across his state that in some places would be as wide as one quarter of a mile. The article also notes that in a poll last spring fewer than 4% of Texans said that the environment as one of the country’s most pressing issues.

Although at the Republican-dominated state level anti-environmentalism appears to hold sway, at the local level things look more green. At least 19 mayors of Texas cities, including the mayors of Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio, have signed the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. This document includes a nonbinding pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in communities to 7% below 1990 levels by 2012. Whether political pressure from below will be enough to get state leaders to come to their senses remains to be seen. Clearly the US can’t reduce its greenhouse gas emissions enough to fight global warming if Texas doesn’t join in.

Big Name Reporters Ask Presidential Candidates Little About Global Warming

It is no secret that the so-called “corporate media” has been criticized for years about lack of coverage on global warming. Although there has been some recent improvement on this score, probably largely thanks to having dramatic pictures of melting ice to hold the attention of viewers, this new attention to global warming apparently hasn’t gravitated to the coverage of the presidential election. Evidence that the top reporters are ignoring global warming when they interview candidates has been circulated by the Sierra Club with a petition.
According to the Sierra Club, Tim Russert asked 755 questions on Meet the Press and never mentioned global warming, Wolf Blitzer asked 329 questions on the Situation Room and mentioned global warming once, George Stephanopoulus asked 726 questions on This Week and never mentioned global warming, Chris Wallace asked 436 questions on Fox News and mentioned global warming twice, and Bob Schieffer asked 238 questions on Face the Nation and never mentioned global warming. There seems to be a pattern here.
It seems unlikely global warming will get much more attention as the campaigns move forward because the media has never really conveyed the urgency of the situation. If a candidate without a real global warming policy such as Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney wins the presidency we will know that the corporate media should receive much of the blame. Unfortunately of course it will be too late for the Earth.

The Nano Dilemma in the Fight Against Global Warming

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Anne Applebaum points out a disturbing issue raised by the marketing of the Tata Nano, the $2,500 car that has just been introduced in India. She states that:

There must be a way to reconcile mass car ownership with global warming, but, at the moment, we haven't found it. There is no profound reason that good environmental policies have to come into conflict with economic growth, but they often do. In many countries, the desire not to be poor is stronger than the desire to breathe clean air.

It is hard to ignore that the fight against global warming seems to be on a collision course with efforts to provide masses of poor people in developing countries with better lives. Or as Applebaum states it:

What happens when the laudable, currently fashionable movement to improve the environment comes directly into conflict with the equally laudable, equally fashionable movement to improve the lives of the poor?

Right now there do not seem to be any good answers. China is said to building the equivalent of one coal-burning power plant a week. That certainly will improve the lives of tens of millions who lack electricity but pretty much negates efforts around the world to reduce carbon emissions. India seems to following the same course but at a slower rate. The situation appears even more hopeless when you consider the situation in the United States where everyone has electricity but about 150 coal-burning power plants are in the planning stage to meet projected increased electricity demand presumably because of such reasons that people are no longer satisfied with watching a 30-inch cathode ray tube television but want an energy gobbling 60-inch plasma screen instead. In the US more energy is needed to lift tens of millions of people out of a materially great life to an even more fantastic life. The world leaders who will be working the next two years to create an agreement to limit global warming may need something close to a miracle to succeed.

Fears Mount that $2,500 Car Will Drive Up Global Temperatures

What if someone could create a car that was so cheap that hundreds of millions of people in developing countries could afford to drive a car instead of a bicyle, motor scooter, or motorcycle. Meet Ratan Tata, the head of the Tata Group in India. As reported in The Washington Post, Tata just introduced his new supercheap car called the Nano at the Delhi Auto Expo. Although the car is no gas guzzler, averaging about 50 miles per gallon, traveling in one of these things will put out a lot more carbon dioxide than a scooter or motorcycle. According to Tata for there is only 1 car for every 1,000 Indians whereas there are 750 cars for every 1,000 Americans. Clearly we Americans are in a difficult position trying to put a negative spin on the Tata Nano. With our three-car garages remaining stuffed with SUVs and performance sedans while climate scientists are screaming that we have to reduce carbon emissions or face catastophe we are in no position to expect the Indians or Chinese to listen to us proclaim the advantages of the bicycle over the automobile.

Dems Debate Cap-and-Trade Versus Carbon Tax

Watching the Republicans and Democrats who are running for president debate last night it looked like once again the critical issue of global warming would be all but ignored, but near the end of the debate by the Democrats the issue of cap-and-trade versus carbon tax actually was debated. As reported by Reuters both New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Illinois Senator Barack Obama said they favored the cap-and-trade system over the carbon tax. Richardson claimed that only the carbon tax would cost American citizens money but Obama then correctly pointed out that costs of the cap-and-trade system would be passed along to consumers.

In the Republican debate Arizona Senator John McCain raised the issue of global warming but not surprisingly none of the other candidates really addressed the issue at all. The Republicans, except for McCain, seem to be operating in a post 9-11 world but a pre-An Inconvenient Truth World as if they are hoping people wouldn’t notice that the Al Gore film on global warming had ever been shown or that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had ever issued their fourth report stating that if greenhouse gas emissions do not peak globally by 2015 catastrophic climate change probably can not be avoided. Hopefully enough people have noticed and will make this know at the ballot box in November.

Explanation for End of Last Severe Global Warming Episode

The last time there was a severe global warming the episode, which was 55 million years ago, it may have been terminated by an increase in ocean plant life. The Discovery Channel news site reports that a team of scientists led by Adina Payton from the University of California at Santa Cruz arrived at this conclusion as a result of finding increased accumulations of barite (barium sulfate) in the ocean sediment. Barite forms when barium, which is in animal tissues, combines with sulfur. This reaction occurs when the barium saturates water, and therefore, when large amounts of dead plants have accumulated on the ocean bottom. The scientists published their findings in the journal Geology. The Discovery article quotes climate expert James Zachos, who was not a member of the research team, as saying that “this process is slow and thus lags the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere." Slow is right. According to Payton, the process of barium accumulation lasted for about 170,000 years. Nevertheless, the findings of this study might give a boost to proponents of schemes to sequester carbon dioxide by spurring the growth of algae or seaweed. Such schemes should even seem more attractive in the future if global efforts to reduce carbon emissions come up empty.

Positive Feedback Releasing Methane Drove Global Warming 55 Million Years Ago

When climate scientists say that global warming will become unstoppable if we fail to soon reduce greenhouse emissions what they mean is that positive feedback mechanisms will kick in which will make our future actions to limit emissions basically irrelevant. Science Daily reports that there is now evidence from a warming period 55 million years that warming was amplified by a release of methane from icy methane hydrates in sediments below the sea. A team of researchers reported in a letter published in Nature that evidence of such an event was found in sediments in the ocean floor off New Jersey. During this global warming period of the past global temperatures rose 6 C (almost 11 F). This research seems to provide yet more evidence that unless measures are quickly adopted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally we are headed for a catastrophic future.

2007 on Course for Fifth Warmest Year

According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2007 will wind up as the fifth warmest year since recordings of global temperatures began. If this prediction is accurate 2007 will edge out 2006 for a spot in the top five. The NCDC says that the temperatures so far this year rank it as the fourth warmest on record but La Niña conditions will prevent it from staying ahead of 2003. Seven of the eight warmest years, counting this year, have occurred since 2001 suggesting an ominous trend. The NCDC says that global temperatures are increasing by about 0.15 C (0.27 F) per decade which is three times as fast as the average increase in global temperature last century. It is projected that if greenhouse gases from human sources continue to increase that the the global temperature will keep increasing by about 0.15 C per decade throughout the rest of the century well into the range where predictions of catastrophic climate change would occur.

Sea Level Rise May Be Double Previous Predictions

The greater than predicted melting of ice from increasing temperatures that has been observed recently has made it very difficult for scientists to predict with confidence how high sea levels will rise during the rest of this century. According to an article in Reuters scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change have suggested that the increase in sea level would be about 32 inches at most. This figure has now been challenged by a report published in Nature Geoscience which predicts a potential rise of as high as 64 inches. The research team, led by Eelco Rohling of National Oceanography Centre in Britain, made the estimate based on studies of the interglacial of about 124,000 to 119,000 years ago. During this period sea level reached about 20 feet above the present level. The researchers, who found that each century during this period there was an average sea level rise of 64 inches, contend that their study is the first to provide really good documentation of how quickly sea level can rise.
This report seems to continue a trend of mostly bad scientific news. It was just reported a few days ago that the Arctic may be free of ice during the summer in as little as 5 years. This time frame has quickly shrunk from a 100 years to 35 years to about 60 months. It is logical that these types of reports would spur leaders to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible but this does not appear to be the case.

Bali Summit Leaves Lots of Unanswered Questions in Its Wake

It appears that US did not succeed in completely wrecking the UN Summit in Bali on global warming that just ended. According to a report in The Guardian, after opposition to the refusal of the US to cooperate grew so intense it finally conceded a point and agreed to stop opposing technological and financial assistance to the poorer counties. But the US did succeed in removing from the final document all references to specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which probably was its main objective. So while the process moves forward, perhaps concluding with a final agreement by the end of 2009, it remains unclear where the process is headed. The science says that at a minimum greenhouse gas emissions must be stabilized by 2015 and reductions of about 80% from 1990 levels must occur by 2050. There is nothing in the final Bali document to acknowledge these goals which are aimed at preventing catastrophic climate change.

Politically, it appears that to have any hope of avoiding this impending catastrophe three things have to happen in the US elections next November: the Democrats retain control of the House, the Democrats win the Senate by several seats, and a Democrat or John McCain is elected president. Unless those three things fall into place there doesn’t seem to be any reason to continue to hold out hope. Even if those three things happen there still is no reason for any optimism. At the moment, the problem of limiting climate change seems overwhelming.

IPPC Leader Says Developing Countries Need Increase in Carbon Emissions

Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ICPCC) recently said when the IPCC released its fourth report of the year that "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." It is hard to but it better than that. However, it appears the “we” which Pachauri refers to includes only the developed countries because in a statement made at the world conference on climate change being held in Bali, Indonesia he said that to get millions people out of poverty developing nations need to boost carbon emissions. In an AFP article Pachauri is quoted as saying that “If you have the case of India, a half billion people who do not even have electricity, what mitigation (of carbon emissions) can you carry out?”

Pachauri’s view is opposite to the conclusion from a report by the Center for Global Development (CGD) which I described yesterday. That report said that an increase in carbon emissions by developing counties to get large populations out of poverty would result in catastrophic climate change regardless of what developed countries did. Perhaps the president of the CGD, Nancy Birdsall, has the answer to this dilemma when she says as reported in DailyIndia that “To avoid a shared global disaster, we in the rich countries need to cut our own emissions quickly and do much more to help developing countries shift to a low-carbon future while at the same time meeting the just aspirations of their people for a better life.” The latter task is likely to be a tough sell in the developed countries but it may be our best hope.

Report Says Developing Countries Need to Curtail Carbon Emissions

The idea that severe climate change can be prevented by developed countries sharply cutting back on carbon emissions while developing countries continue to increase emissions to lift their populations out of poverty has been dealt a blow by a report from the Center for Global Development which concluded that the developing countries too must back and soon. According to DailyIndia.com, the report, which has the long title of “Another Inconvenient Truth: A Carbon-Intensive South Faces Environmental Disaster, No Matter What the North Does,” found that even if emissions from the North suddenly dropped to zero emissions from the South alone would drive atmospheric carbon dioxide levels past 450 ppm by 2060, generally regarded as the point where climate change has catastrophic consequences. The lead author, David Wheeler, is quoted as saying that “Our results reveal the dangerous fallacy in the notion that the South can utilize carbon-intensive growth to dramatically increase incomes--a kind of last-minute, fossil-fueled development push--before the onset of catastrophic climate change.” To make matters worse, Wheeler claims that the conclusions of the report are on the conservative side because it only included carbon dioxide emissions, leaving out other greenhouse gases and the effects of positive feedbacks. All in all, it is a grim picture that emerges as the meeting about what do to after the Kyoto Protocol ends takes place in Bali, Indonesia.

Malaysia Leads the World in Greenhouse Gas Emission Growth Rate

It is hard to believe that any country can outdo China in increasing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions with the Chinese building new coal-fired power plants at the rate of about one a week but it looks like Malaysia has done just that. According to the recently released United Nations Development Report, during the period of 1990 to 2004 emissions of carbon dioxide increased in Malaysia by 221%. This growth rate is tops among the 30 biggest greenhouse gas emitters. According to the Associated Press, this rapid growth in emissions has occurred even though Malaysia ratified the Kyoto Protocol and “has taken several initiatives to use renewable energy as well as ways to cut emissions.” Overall, this country of 27 million people ranks as the 26th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Based on its growth rate of emissions it appears likely to move up the list quickly. In the fight against global warming Malaysia seems to be a country that needs to be closely watched.

Black Friday a Dark Day for a Green Future

Once again another holiday season has rolled around and as reported by Reuters “Eager shoppers stormed malls and stores across the country on Friday to snap up the early-bird specials that mark ‘Black Friday,’ the first official day of the U.S. holiday shopping season.” This shopping madness might be good for the bottom line of major retailers but for the natural systems that we all depend on this consumerism frenzy is bad news. Bill McKibben has written an excellent essay on Gristmill blog called “The Problem with Christmas” about finding the antidote for this annual self-destructive ritual. McKibben argues that “our environmental problem, at root, isn't that the stuff we're buying uses too much energy or too much plastic, or that its paint has lead in it, or that it's been shipped too far. Our environmental problem is that we consume way too much because we've agreed to try and meet basic human needs -- status, respect, affection -- with material ends.” Something to think about while reading all those ads about what is on sale at the mall this holiday season.

Will the US Budge on Global Warming at Bali?

With the time window closing rapidly on taking effective action against global warming what happens next month at the world conference in Bali, Indonesia has taken on great importance. In the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon speaking about the upcoming Bali meeting at yesterday’s release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, "The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice. I expect the world's policy-makers to do the same.” According to the Associated Press, the report, which was basically a compilation of the three previous IPCC reports this year, stated that “carbon emissions, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and then drop. At best, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere...Even if factories were shut today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level would reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period, or about 1850.”

Getting carbon emissions to stabilize by 2015 will not be easy since they are increasing globally by about 3% to 4% annually with almost half of the increase attributable to China. For any success the process for reducing emissions must start very soon, for example, in Bali. However, George W. Bush continues to reject a mandatory cap on emissions. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that an administration that has accepted large sums of money from the fossil fuel industries for campaigning, has a political base that includes Rush Limbaugh ditto heads and the global warming denying religious right, and is ideologically opposed to government regulation of business is about to change course any time soon. Bali seems likely to be one more world conference on global warming where little if anything gets accomplished.

Ships Are Outpolluting Planes

The was a large global warming protest recently at London’s Heathrow Airport but so far there has been no such protests at any shipping port. Maybe there should be. A shipping industry group called Intertanko has released a report which says that carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are now almost double that from aviation. In an article on the report from ABC News in Australia it says that Intertanko attributes the growth in carbon dioxide emissions from shipping to an increase in global trade and the use of more fuel to speed up the delivery of goods.

Concerns about shipping in this country have largely focused on terrorism. In the US critics of the government’s security measures have complained that a large percentage of shipping containers that arrive in this country are never checked. There has been little concern over the amount of carbon dioxide released getting the containers over here. This report should finally place shipping under the global warming microscope.

Is Preserving the American Lifestyle while Fighting Global Warming Incompatible?

Energy efficiency expert Joe Romm from the Center for American Progress says in a recent post on Gristmill blog that “The deniers and delayers want people to believe that environmentalists are hyping climate change to achieve a hidden agenda of government limits on their consumption,” He also points out that he doesn’t "know any major environmentalist or environmental group that has promoted such a message.” Nevertheless, there are environmentalists (perhaps not considered major environmentalists by Romm) who do have that message and are keeping the debate alive within the environmental community. The position for need to reduce consumption is well articulated by Glenn Barry in a post on his Climate Change blog on his website Climate Ark. Barry states that “The crazily consumptive, super size, sexily scintillating, over the top American lifestyle is precisely the reason global climate is changing and the Earth's ecosystems collapsing.” He goes on to say that “Climate policy can only be effective if based upon ecological truths. And one such truth is that going green DOES mean sacrificing the American lifestyle. And it is deeply wasteful of time and resources necessary to solve global ecological crises to suggest otherwise.”

If we are going to successfully fight global warming we better hope that Barry is wrong. It his highly unlikely that people in large enough numbers will give up the American lifestyle. If we can’t work around that problem then we probably will not solve the problem of climate change.

Biofuels May Be Fueling Global Warming

The main knock against using food like corn for fuel is that because of the high price of gasoline which it can replace as ethanol it drives up the price of food which makes the problems of world hunger even more acute than they already are. Until now at least, those in favor of biofuels could at least argue that by replacing gasoline with ethanol from crops like corn, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. But even that argument is now in jeopardy as a result of paper by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and colleagues who found that the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow crops such as corn results in greater amounts of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide being produced by microbes than was previously thought. In fact, so much nitrous oxide results that it is calculated that by using corn for fuel the contribution to global warming can be as high as 1.5 times as burning fossil fuels. According to an article on SciDev.Net sugar is the only biofuel crop that is exempt from this problem because it requires less fertilizer. However, growing sugar in places like Brazil results in deforestation which also increases global warming.

Considering the effect on food prices alone, the rush to turn corn into ethanol hasn’t made much sense. If the results of this new study are confirmed this transformation from food to fuel will make even less sense.