Will Greener Planes Bring Meaner Conditions Around Airports?

Generally reducing greenhouse gas emissions is associated with providing other environmental benefits but in a Washington Post article the director of research and technology at Rolls-Royce, Richard J. Parker, says that focusing on reducing carbon dioxide emissions by engineers might result in new engines that are noisier or produce more of the environmentally troublesome nitrogen oxides than present engines. In the words of Parker:

"Will people living near airports win out, or will the planet as a whole win out?"

Not a great choice. Of course, there is always the option of flying less but this also has negative consequences, particularly for people in less developed areas who depend on hoards of tourists booking their hotels to survive economically. It seems that choices have to be made and everyone can’t win.

Al Gore: a Help or Hindrance?

It is almost taken for granted that Al Gore has made an immeasurable contribution to the cause of fighting global warming, nearly single-handedly it sometimes seems moving the issue from the green edges of society into the mainstream. Yet, on Earth Meanders blog Glen Barry strongly criticizes Gore’s strategy when he says:

I am concerned with the direction Al Gore, as the self-appointed climate movement leader, is taking -- emphasizing celebrity and inadequate small personal responses, to the detriment of grassroots inspired major cultural change necessary to save the Earth.

Perhaps a bigger problem of Gore leading the charge is that he is a polarizing figure. Millions of conservatives don’t like him, Bill, or Hillary. Although he says this should not be a partisan issue it is hard to see how it can not be if he is the one out in front. There must be many people who won’t listen to his recommendations simply because he is Al Gore.

Despite all the problems with the second half of the Clinton-Gore ticket being seen at the leader in the fight to stop global warming and all the celebrities he has enlisted in the cause it still must be acknowledged that he is capable of reaching people in the mainstream with his message that grassroots environmentalists have no way of reaching. These are probably people who tend to closely follow the world of celebrities in television, film, music, sports, etc but do not pay much attention to “serious” political issues. Gore has somehow bridged the gap. But I guess it is Barry’s point that in doing so there is a trade off in that the suggested changes can not be too radical, even it that is what it takes to deal with the problem which Barry and many others have concluded.

Southern Utilities Cling to Coal Burning

We know historically that the South has been extremely slow to change and in fact has been so slow that it has been forced to change when it came to slavery and segregation. It appears that this pattern of resisting change is continuing when it comes to switching from coal burning to renewable energy sources. According to an article from the Associated Press, whereas nearly half of the states now have adopted mandates requiring electric utilities to produce a specific percentage of electricity from renewables, Texas is the only state in the South with such a mandate. Moreover, half of the votes in the Senate to defeat federal legislation to require 15% of electricity to come from renewables were cast by senators from southern states.

A good appreciation of the coal-burning situation in the South can be gained by watching the film Kilowatt Ours. The film shows how burning coal in the South has resulted in the Great Smokey Mountain National Park often being filled with haze instead of usually offering crystal clear views of distant mountains as in the past and how the need for coal in the South, which uses more coal than the national average for generating electricity, leads to the disgraceful practice of mountaintop mining in West Virginia.

The AP article says that the US Environmental Protection Agency ranks three southern utilities—Southern Co., Duke Energy, and the Tennessee Valley Authority—among the top four greenhouse gas emitting utilities in the US. The number one emitter, Southern Co., doesn’t even appear to admit that emissions of carbon dioxide are related to global warming based on statements such as the following by senior executive Chris Hobson who was quoted in the article as saying:

"If we are irrational about it and we cripple our economy or cripple our industry and we realize carbon dioxide wasn't the source of the problem, then we'll be real regretful."

Maybe someone at Southern Co. should read the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If they did they would learn that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from human sources are the source of the problem. Scientists will never say they are 100% sure of a conclusion but this statement was about as close as they will ever get. The Old South may be mostly gone but the New South needs to transform into the Green South.

More Energy Efficient Light Bulbs but not TVs

The gains in energy efficiency being made by replacing the familiar incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents that use much less electricity are probably being wiped out and then some by replacement of cathode ray TVs with large screen plasma or LCD TVs which use far more electricity. Add in all the new gizmos with rechargeable batteries and it is hard to see how we can carry out Al Gore’s pledge item 3 “To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO2” without leaving ourselves in the dark. Since it is very expensive to trap CO2 and the technology for storing it safely is not yet proven and may never be the pledge may really mean no new coal plants period. All the more reason to stress energy efficiency.

The British seem to be more worried about this problem than we are here in the US. A recent article in the Guardian on report by the Energy Saving Trust (EST) said the following:

The proliferation of home entertainment equipment such as flat screen TVs, digital radios and laptops in homes means that by 2020 this type of technology will account for 45% of domestic electricity use.

The running cost of today's plasma and LCD screen TVs can be as much as three times that of traditional cathode ray tube sets. The largest domestic plasma TV on the market - with a massive 103 in screen - has a power rating of 1.5kw, which means watching it uses as much energy as leaving 25 light bulbs on.

This means 14 power stations will be required just to power equipment used for communication and entertainment, the EST said in its report the Ampere Strikes Back.

Al Gore has done a great job in educating the public about the threat of global warming but he has yet to make the same impact with regard to educating us about energy efficiency. Should he tell us to stop buying all these large screen TVs? So far I don’t think he has. Where is the US version of the Ampere Strikes Back? All we seem to have in America is millions of people buying giant TVs to watch the Empire Strikes Back, etc. At the rate we are going what we are going to have is the climate striking back.

The Carbon Dioxide Emissions Per Capita Problem

If there is any issue that appears to be an insurmountable obstacle to reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally it appears to be the issue surrounding per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. Spokesmen for China, which has recently been crowned as the number one greenhouse gas polluter in the world, displacing the long-time reigning champion the United States of America, are quick to point out that on a per capita basis their emissions are far below those of the US, which is correct since each of us in America on average is responsible for more than four times the amount of emissions than those who live in China.

If global emissions of carbon dioxide are now about 30 billion tons a year, then on average the 6.5 billion inhabitants of our planet are responsible for about 4.5 tons each. With the average American responsible for emitting about 20 tons annually we are way above the average. The climate scientists say that to have a decent chance of avoiding the most serious consequences of global warming we have to reduce our emissions globally by about 80% by 2050. So the 30 billion tons a year would have to fall to roughly 6 billion tons a year. It is predicted that there will be 9 billion people on Earth by 2050 so on average they would have to be responsible for emitting only about 0.7 tons of carbon dioxide a year. Hopefully the math here is wrong (it probably is) because that seems like a very difficult goal to achieve, particularly in face the demands for equality in emissions per capita between the developed countries and developing countries.

Live Earth in Retrospect

It is hard to know what to make of the Live Earth concerts on Saturday. It seemed like an odd mixture of environmental activism, hedonism, and consumerism. Can this type of strange brew really lead to radical change? How ironic was it that the webcast of the concerts was sponsored by General Motors, the same company that has been leading the fight against higher fuel efficiency standards for cars over more than a decade. Before you could watch the concerts online you had to see a Chevy commercial. At least the webcast wasn’t sponsored by ExxonMobil, the leading financial backers of misinformation about global warming. But is GM really that far behind in being one of the global warming bad boys? Then there is the issue of pop and rock stars who unfairly or not could be considered as icons for consumerism. Private jets, yachts, numerous homes, etc. When it comes to making carbon footprints many of them are Godzillas. Add to that their international tours and they are responsible for pumping out a heck of a lot of carbon.

There didn’t seem to any songs that compared to the 60s classics such as Blowin’ in the Wind, The Times They Are a-Changin’, I Ain’t Marching Anymore, etc. I agree with Al Gore that music can reach people in ways that are unique but the music at the concerts came up short with regard to delivering any message.

It was hard to understand why there was no concert in India. The big three who are not going along in trying cut greenhouse gas emissions are the US, China, and India. All three will have undertake all out efforts to cut emissions if there is any hope of limiting global warming before climate change reaches catastrophic proportions based on what the leading climatologists are saying.

Of course Live Earth is only one small part of the overall efforts to address climate change. Most of what is happening does not make headlines. Perhaps the real hope for change lies in the less glitzy stuff that is going on.

Dem Debaters Don’t Dwell on Global Warming

Nobody expected global warming to be a main topic at the recent debate by Democratic presidential candidates held at Howard University but in retrospect it seems surprising that so little was said about it. Major problems such as the war in Iraq, an inadequate health care system, inequalities in education were, and discrimination against blacks were addressed in depth but global warming was not. It is particularly surprising that none of the debaters mentioned global warming when the topic turned to helping Africa. The reports on climate change indicate that the adverse consequences will be felt most severely in Africa and Asia, particularly among the poor with Africa seemingly in line to take the hardest hit. Not even, Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska, who seemed to stray quite far from the more conventional views did not say anything about how global warming needs to be addressed to prevent catastrophe in Africa. If Al Gore had been one of the debaters it is hard to imagine that global warming would have gotten so little attention. At least next Saturday at the Live Earth concerts he will have his chance to tell everyone about the need to fight global warming to save Africa and all of the other continents.

China Zips Past the US as Number One Carbon Dioxide Emitter

After all the speculation about when China would pass the US in emissions of carbon dioxide, this year, or in 2008, or later, it turns out that China has already attained the dubious distinction as the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide according to an article in the Guardian. It was the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which came up with this surprising finding. The calculations show that China actually outdid the US in carbon dioxide emissions last year by a whopping 8%. A scientist from the agency in the Netherlands said that the difference in carbon dioxide emissions between China and the US was so great in 2006 that almost surely China also took the lead as the number one greenhouse gas emitter. There it is, we have a new champ. Of course on a per capita basis China isn’t close to the US in pumping out greenhouse gases. The US quadruples China. No contest. Now that the China has passed the US in carbon dioxide emissions the prognosticators can turn their attention to India. In what year will India pass the US? Let the guessing begin.

Carbon Offsets Are Offsetting More Guilt than Carbon

An investigative report in the Guardian continues to strip away the claims about the benefis that have been touted for carbon offsets. According to the report very little carbon has actually been offset for two reasons:

“First, these schemes are unregulated and wide open to fraud.”

“Second…even the most well-intentioned schemes suffer from basic weaknesses in the idea of carbon offsetting - an idea which flows not from environmentalists and climate scientists trying to design a way to reverse global warming but from politicians and business executives trying to meet the demands for action while preserving the commercial status quo.”

It seems likely that no matter how little is actually accomplished by carbon offsets people will continue to buy offsets because it makes one feel like one is doing something about global warming. The main contribution of carbon offsets might be to make money for both those who are honest and have the best intentions and those who are ethically challenged and simply out to make a quick buck. There are of course many other methods available to fight global warming but whether they will be employed in time on a wide enough basis seems at the moment very uncertain.

China and India Say No Thank You to G8 Climate Deal

According to an article on the Telegraph.co.uk website both China and India have rejected the G8 climate change deal in which it was inferred that when negotiations on specifics of greenhouse gas reductions take place developing countries would be included. Responses from leaders in China and India imply that these two highly populated countries expect to work more in tandem on climate change and want the developed countries to go first. The developed countries should have already gone first. The potential threat of global warming was well understood in the 1980s and became more clear in the early 1990s with the first report was issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The US should have taken the lead back then, but instead did nothing. So here we are in 2007 with China and India, now with booming economies that are churning out greenhouse gases at an alarming rate, saying that the developed countries should take the lead and the developed countries saying that the developing countries must be included. Basically we seem to have a circle of statements going nowhere.

Validity of Kyoto Carbon Savings Questioned

A report in the Guardian says that “The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world….” The CDM is one of the main ways being used by countries trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reach the targets set under the Kyoto Protocol. According to the Guardian report UN paperwork indicated the following:

Most of the concern is around the crucial CDM test of "additionality" - proof that a project is delivering cuts in greenhouse gases that would not otherwise have happened. In an unpublished report, one of the CDM board's expert advisers, Axel Michaelowa, examined all 52 Indian projects which had been registered up to May 2006 and found that a third of them failed this additionality test.

Mr Michaelowa found evidence of projects supplying false information which was then accepted by the companies who were supposed to check it. In one case cited in the report, he accuses an Indian company of making statements which were "blatantly false". Despite his protests, that scheme was approved.

There are enough obstacles to achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions on a scale sufficient to prevent catastrophic climate change without integrity being a major problem. Add concerns about integrity of the process and hopes for success grow that much dimmer. Maybe the first step in solving the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions should be figuring out a way to reduce human greed. Bring on the psychologists.

US Fails to Embrace G8 Global Warming Proposals

The Washington Post reports that the environmental organization Greenpeace has leaked a document showing that the US is fundamentally opposed to proposals made by Germany to combat global warming which would involve timetables and targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals by Germany are being made to secure an agreement at the G8 summit which will be held on June 6 to 8 in Heiligendamm, Germany. The US opposition is hardly surprising. The Bush administration has almost always seemed more interested in following its extreme conservative ideology than in solving problems. Ideological triumph appears to be its ultimate objective. The disasters of Iraq and Katrina and the looming disaster of climate change do not seem to matter. What does matter is gutting government regulations and spreading unfettered capitalism. It seems clear that we will have to wait for 2009 until any real action is taken on the international level to fight global warming, however, with the window of opportunity rapidly closing based on the latest scientific findings even that might be too late.

Has a Key Global Warming Tipping Point Already Been Passed?

An explanation by climate scientists of why carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have recently been spiking suggests that global warming is now reducing the ability of the environment to absorb carbon dioxide from human sources. An article in The Sydney Morning Herald says that scientists have been fearing that increasing temperatures could reduce carbon absorption by the environment. If this tipping point has in fact been reached, then even the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said that reduction of carbon emissions must begin globally no later than 2015 to avoid catastrophic climate change (see previous post) may need to be revised to an even more pessimistic conclusion. The research team, which published their findings in Geophysical Research Letters, studied the spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during 2002 to 2003. The scientists found that the only explanation for the spike was that because of unusual conditions of heat and dryness plants took up less carbon dioxide that they normally do. So, is unstoppable global warming already here? Perhaps that might be the next inconvenient truth.

Only About Three Thousand Days Left to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that time is quickly running out to take effective action against global warming. According to the Guardian, “The report said global emissions must peak by 2015 for the world to have any chance of limiting the expected temperature rise to 2 C, which would still leave billions of people short of water by 2050.” That’s eight years or about 100 months or approximately 3000 days. The consequences of global warming are expected to be catastrophic if the 2 C limit is exceeded. Not much time to go from annual global increases of greenhouse gas emissions to annual reductions. Perhaps naming a specific year by which the U turn must occur will help. Nothing like a tight deadline to get people’s attention. Nevertheless, most factors point to continued increases of greenhouse gas emissions globally for decades to come: increasing populations; spreading affluence in the developing world; reluctance of the US, China, and India to agree to any mandatory cap on emissions; the abundance of coal as a cheap source of energy; the ability of large oil and coal companies to protect their profits regardless of the environmental consequences; the energy inefficiency that has been built into the way of life in the US; etc. It may still be too early to throw in the towel. The political dynamics could be changed by next US election in November of 2008. Perhaps when the election results become clear it will be time to head for the linen closet.

Step It Up to 95% Reduction in Carbon Emissions

The photos of Step It Up events from last Saturday showing banners calling for Congress to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 may not have reached individual members of Congress yet and already the 80% figure appears to be too low. According to a report in Reuters two scientists from the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway are saying that to hold global warming to a 2 C increase from preindustrial levels (anything beyond that level of warming is considered to be extremely dangerous) the wealthy countries such as the United States would have to reduce emissions by 95% from 2000 levels by 2050. Overall global emissions would have to be reduced by 80%, the Step It Up figure, but since developing countries such as China and India would not be expected to reduce their emissions by that much the wealthy countries would have to make up the difference. Al Gore actually called for a 90% reduction when he spoke before the congressional committees a few weeks ago so he was closer to the mark. The scientists, who will be publishing their paper in the journal Climatic Change, also made this depressing statement: “Any delay in implementing emissions reductions will make the 2 degree target practically unreachable.” Do we have until 2009 at least? Seems unlikely much will happen before then given the present occupant of the White House.

StepItUp WrapUp

The StepItUp events of last Saturday are now over and we will probably have to wait awhile to really assess how successful they were. Clearly with respect to number of people participating they fell far short of the larger civil rights and anti-war protests but I think it is fair to say that StepItUp was the largest photo-op event in the history of US protest movements. It was photo-ops from sea to shining sea. Can great photos take the place of mass demonstrations and nonviolent civil disobedience to accomplish political goals? Maybe that is what will work, a thousand “Kodak moments” only these days the photos are all digital.

I participated in an event on a farm in Bedford Hills, New York, which is about 40 miles north of New York City. This type of event never could have occurred before Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth,” and before Katrina devastated New Orleans. Politicians and other speakers warned us about the dangers of global warming and how we must take action quickly. The photo shows Congressman John Hall addressing the crowd.

The results of StepItUp seemed to both signify hope but also disappointment. The fact that tens of thousands of people actually went to global warming protest rallies is a hopeful sign. Some sort of threshold was crossed. It was disappointing, however, because in many states last Saturday was just business as usual with only a few scattered events held in those states. If as Thomas Friedman says “green is the new red, white, and blue,” the word sure hasn’t gotten out in large swaths of America.

Carbon Offset Tree Planting Can Spur Global Warming

More evidence that using carbon offsets to plant trees is a bad idea has been presented by scientists from Stanford University and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists. According to a report in the Guardian the scientists found that tree planting increases warming unless it occurs within a thin strip of tropical land at the equator. The problem with planting trees elsewhere is that whereas grassy areas and snow reflect a lot of sunlight back out of the atmosphere, trees, being dark in color, absorb most of the suns rays. This soaking up of the heat overwhelms the cooling effect of absorbing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. In areas near the equator trees promote the formation of convective clouds which produce cooling and the overall effect of adding trees in such tropical areas is cooling.

Although it appears that planting trees outside of the tropics increases global warming the scientists by no means advocate chopping down trees in nontropical regions to combat global warming since trees have many important functions such as providing habitat for various animals and plants, protecting watersheds, etc. It therefore appears that outside of the tropics that the main goal should be to preserve the forests that we already have.

The IPCC Predicts a Real Gloomy Future

Earlier today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its summary report for policymakers on the effects of global warming and nobody can accuse these scientists of being optimists. There were a few good news things but as whole the report spelled out mostly a future of gloom and doom. The most gloomy prospects were for the poor, particularly for those poverty-stricken people living in Africa and Southeast Asia. No continent escaped the pessimistic forecast. The report added many details on why pumping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide can be viewed as a foolish experiment on a global scale which will lead to dire consequences almost everywhere. We have pretty much known this for the last 20 years. But the level of certainty has increased.

The main good news, if you can call it that, is that it is believed that there still is time to avoid the worst. The next report from the IPCC which will be issued on May 7 will explain how to do it. Whether right wing politicians in the United States will continue to attack the science or finally concede the obvious that these scientists with all their sophisticated equipment and methods for studying nature really know what they are talking about remains perhaps the biggest question.

Carbon Trading Schemes Fail to Live Up to Hype

If we have to rely to “carbon cap and trade” schemes to save us from global warming our goose will be cooked as the saying goes if Michael Dorsey from Dartmouth College is right. Writing in today’s Los Angeles Times, Dorsey cities an economic think tank in Europe called Researchers at Open Europe in stating the following about the much-heralded European Union carbon trading scheme:

They concluded that the EU Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme represents "botched central planning rather than a real market." As a result, the report said, carbon trading has not resulted in an overall decline of the EU's carbon dioxide emissions.

Worse, the early evidence suggested that the trading scheme financially rewarded companies — mainly petroleum, natural gas and electricity generators — that disproportionately emit carbon dioxide. The pollution credits given to the companies by their respective governments were booked as assets to be valued at market prices. After the EU carbon market collapsed, accusations of profiteering were widespread. In fall 2006, a Citigroup report concluded that the continent's biggest polluters had been the winners, with consumers the losers.

If citizens and politicians keep believing the carbon cap and trade hype it is obvious that we could easily come to believe that we are confronting the global warming problem when in fact we are spinning our wheels and dishing out even more profits to the polluters. A straightforward reduction of greenhouse gas emissions seems like the our only real hope of averting climate change catastrophe.

Forget About Using Nuclear Power to Stop Global Warming

This blog began last September with a post titled “Nuclear Power Not Answer.” It was about the views of antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott who wrote a book in which she gave many reasons why nuclear power can not be used to solve the problem of global warming. A new report by the Oxford Research Group titled “Secure Energy, Civil Nuclear Power, security and Global Warming” also tosses cold water on the idea that building more nuclear power plants should be a key strategy for combating global warming. An article in Reuters said the report points out that a major problem with building the thousands of nuclear power plants that would be needed is that the amount of uranium needed to run the plants is in limited supply and therefore, the only feasible way to do it would be to reprocess the spent fuel in order to obtain plutonium as a fuel. This would create many opportunities for terrorists and criminals to obtain material for making nuclear weapons. Also, as Helen Caldicott emphasized, although the nuclear plants don’t release greenhouse gases the entire process from mining the uranium to building the plants requires lots of energy and therefore large amounts of greenhouse gases would be released anyway.

Despite the drawbacks of using nuclear power to fight global warming many conservatives are embracing the idea and an explanation for this has been offered by Jonathan Chait in the Los Angeles Times. Chait says the following:

You can tell that some conservatives who want to fight global warming understand how the psychology works and are trying to turn it in their favor. Their response is to emphasize nuclear power as an integral element of the solution. Sen. John McCain, who supports action on global warming, did this in a recent National Review interview. The technique seems to be surprisingly effective. When framed as a case for more nuclear plants, conservatives seem to let down their guard.

In reality, nuclear plants may be a small part of the answer, but you couldn't build enough to make a major dent. But the psychology is perfect. Conservatives know that lefties hate nuclear power. So, yeah, Rush Limbaugh listeners, let's fight global warming and stick it to those hippies!