Ice Shelf Loses Much More Ice in Northern Canada

Another sign that a great melting period is underway in the Arctic region was detected as a satellite photo revealed that an 8-square-mile chunk of ice had broken away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf on the northern coast of Canada. An article from BBC News reports that research scientists think the end is quite near for the entire Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which is 170 square miles and 130 feet thick, as evidence grows that its stability has been lost. One member of the research team, Derek Mueller, from Trent University, Ontario, noted that for awhile ice appeared to be reforming but in more recent years this new ice broke up. Dr. Mueller believes the ice shelves in this region can no longer regenerate. This may be good news for corporations seeking to exploit any resources in this region but loss of ice, which reflects solar radiation, suggests that global warming could be accelerated in the near future as the dark ice-free water absorbs solar radiation. This is the positive feedback circuit of warming melting more ice and more melting ice resulting in increased warming and so on. Nations rushing to drill for oil or gas in the Arctic now that everything is melting seem oblivious to all this scientific stuff about positive feedback mechanisms since if their efforts are successful it will all simply result in burning more fossil fuel and therefore releasing more greenhouse gases which will further increase the warming. How dumb can you get?

Gore Says We Need Electricity without Fossil Fuels within 10 Years

In one short speech Al Gore compressed the time frame for generating all electricity without the use of fossil fuels from perhaps 40 years to only 10 years. He believes that 10 years is the maximum for the country to set a goal and that a massive effort should be undertaken to increase the use of renewable energy such as solar, wind, and geothermal. Considering that only a tiny fraction of our electricity now comes from solar, wind, and geothermal his challenge appears to be a tall order to say the least. According to The New York Times Gore said that the “goal is achievable, affordable and transformative.” Everyone would probably agree that it is transformative. Far fewer would agree that it is achievable and affordable. As do many people, Gore seems to emphasize the wonders of technological innovation as a key element in solving the global warming problem as well as the energy dependence problem. However, it appears that existing technology can take us pretty far.

Realistically, it seems that the only way fossil fuels can be phased out as a source of electricity in the near future is for the demand for electricity to sharply decrease. Initiatives such as The 30% Solution and The 2030 Challenge are aimed at doing just that as well a reducing the use of fossil fuels (oil and natural gas) for heating buildings. These initiatives are based on the use of stricter building energy codes. More efficient building can be built without the need to develop new technologies. Extremely energy efficient buildings are already being built. What we need is all new buildings to be built in this manner. Many buildings are also being renovated to make them far more energy efficient. Again, what we need is all new significant renovations to be done in this way.

Gore’s call for a phase out of fossil fuels for electricity within 10 years will probably just cause more apathy because it seems impossible and probably is. The trick is to call for changes that really are achievable but are still drastic enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to solve the climate crisis. It appears that Gore has yet to find the right formula.

G8 Countries Fight Climate Change with Vagueness

As the effects of global warming become more and more evident with fires from extreme dryness raging on the US West Coast, 500-year storms hitting the Midwest two straight decades, prediction from scientists that the North Pole may be free of ice this summer, and so forth, the Group of 8 wealthy nations meeting in Japan agreed on a global warming statement that was short on adequate commitment and long on ambiguity. They did agree to reduce carbon emissions 50% by 2050, however, this was far short of the 80% to 90% reductions called for by leading climate scientists and the usual baseline year of 1990 was not mentioned. They also did not set any short term goals, such as a specific target to reach by 2020. As reported in The New York Times, emerging economic powers such as China and India supported the 50% reduction target, which is the first time these countries have committed to any reduction target, but they refused to take action until wealthy countries took aggressive action. Given the urgency of the global warming problem and what would be required to take effective steps, the G8 did little more than put their toe in the water.

One way to comprehend the feebleness of the G8 global warming statement is to compare it with The 2030 Challenge from the nonprofit organization Architecture 2030. This challenge calls for the global architecture and building community to immediately reduce the fossil fuel greenhouse emissions of all new buildings, developments, and major renovations by 50% and then by increments of 10% every five years beginning with 2010 so that by all 2030 all new buildings and major renovations are carbon neutral. This would permit an immediate moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a phase out of such plants by 2030. It wouldn’t completely solve the problem but it would be a very significant step. The action could begin at once and no new technology is needed. Of course the coal industry would take a big hit and that is not something the G8 leaders are eager to confront. Maybe we need new G8 leaders. Perhaps the only hope is that we will be getting a new leader of the United States very soon.

Biofuels Blamed for 75% of Food Price Increase

More trouble for biofuels as an energy solution appears to be on the horizon. The Guardian is reporting that leaked information from a report by the World Bank which is not yet published says that 75% of the increase in global food prices is attributable to biofuels. According to the Guardian the US government has said that biofuels from plant sources are to blame for less than 3% of the rise in food prices. Quite a difference in opinion. The Guardian also says that the World Bank estimates that so far 100 million people have fallen below the poverty line because of rising food prices.

Only last year biofuels seemed to be a savior for both fighting global warming and achieving energy independence. There has been so much enthusiasm over biofuels that about one third of the US corn crop now goes to producing ethanol. And the US Congress was so enthralled with this replacement for gasoline that last year it mandated that billions of gallons of biofuel be produced in the coming years. But this year has been a different story entirely. Not only have there been concerns about the link to increasing food prices but scientists have argued that clearing land to grow crops for biofuels actually would result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions compared with using gasoline. The emerging problems associated with biofuels were outlined a few months ago by Michael Grunwald in an article in Time magazine titled The Clean Energy Scam.

The big question that this negative information raises in the US is whether Congress will roll back their mandate for biofuel production. Based on the science and concerns about humanity it is hard to see how the mandate can remain intact. Yet, because of political considerations predicting what Congress will do isn’t a given. It has to be hoped that the mad rush to biofuels will be replaced by a cautious approach based on an assessment of the facts. We don’t want to plant ourselves into oblivion.

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Even Faster than in 2007

Earlier this year a Norwegian scientist predicted that the Arctic sea ice might completely disappear as early as this summer. With the Arctic covering a larger area this winter compared with the previous winter this prediction didn’t look too good but a recent report that the Arctic ice is melting faster this year than last year suggests that prediction may yet have a chance of being on the money. The BBC reports that scientists from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado have found that even though there was a greater area of ice this year the area is now down to where it was last year when records for sea ice loss were broken indicating that it is melting faster. A scientist from the NSIDC predicted that all the ice would be gone within a decade. Whether all the ice disappears this year, by 2012, or by even by 2018 this seems to spell big trouble. The article quotes Ian Willis from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England.

This is a positive feedback process. Sea ice has a higher albedo (reflectivity) than ocean water; so as the ice melts, the water absorbs more of the Sun's energy and warms up more, and that in turn warms the atmosphere more - including the atmosphere over the Greenland ice sheet.

Not only would the Greenland ice sheet affected, which if completely melted would raise sea levels over 20 feet, but as was described in my previous post, the vast permafrost in the Arctic region would be affected which could release enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas methane and thereby set off another positive feedback process. It doesn’t seem to take too much imagination to realize how this whole global warming thing can get completely out of hand.

Melting Arctic Ice a Threat to Melt Permafrost

The vast stretches of permafrost in the northern hemisphere could start to melt at three times the anticipated rate because of increased warming due to the shrinking amount of ice in the Arctic which results in a reduction in reflected light from the sun and increased absorption of heat. This possibility was discovered from computer models run by scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. A member of the research team, David Lawrence, told The Independent that about 30% of all carbon stored in soils is stored in soils in the Arctic region. Melting of the permafrost could release huge amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from the soils which could have a drastic effect on climate.

Since many scientists believe that all of the Arctic ice will melt in the summer within the next few decades if not sooner no matter what actions are taken to stop global warming this looks like a situation where we just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best. However, it is not comforting that computer models seem to often underestimate the effects of warming rather than overestimate the effects. In fact, the speed at which the Arctic ice is melting had been a great surprise. As has been the speed that glaciers are melting. All in all this has so far been a bad century for global warming optimists and the worst might still be ahead.

Carbon Dioxide Scrubbers Proposed as the Answer to Global Warming

With efforts to reduce the burning of fossil fuels floundering the recent announcement of a technology breakthrough for proposed devices that would pull carbon dioxide out the atmosphere provides some hope that catastrophic climate change can be avoided. The breakthrough involves a way to drastically reduce the amount of energy needed to remove the gas from the material, or sorbent, used to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to an article in the Guardian the US patent application shows that the reduction in energy needed to remove carbon dioxide from the sorbent involves changes in humidity.

Before anyone thinks the global warming problem is solved and stops trying to prevent the building of coal-fired power plants it should be noted that some serious problems would remain even if a prototype device, which should be functioning within 2 years, meets all expectations. One of the problems is what to do with the captured carbon dioxide. The storage problem remains to be solved. The article says that the research team, led by Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner, is working on a solution. Another problem might be cost. Although each device is expected to initially cost only a couple hundred thousand dollars there will be a need for millions of the devices to be operating. A total cost of over a trillion dollars seems possible.

This proposal may turn out to be a dead end in the effort to limit global warming but then again perhaps not. At this point it seems a better bet than the world leaders agreeing on how greenhouse gas emissions can be meaningfully reduced. That effort appears to be going nowhere.

Europe Joins Coal Binge

Climate activists have been hammering the US and China for their propensity to make plans for more coal plants while the need to halt building such plants in order to combat global warming has become clear. In contrast, Europe has been seen as almost a model for preventing climate change as the Europeans have turned to wind, solar, and geothermal energy. So it is very surprising to read in an article in the Los Angeles Times that the Europeans are planning 40 new coal plants over the next 5 years and Germany alone is planning 27 new coal plants by 2020. Clearly the Americans and Chinese are not alone when it comes to ensuring a future climate catastrophe.

It is particularly surprising that Germany is planning so many new coal plants when that country has such a successful solar power program. The success of this program was evident in a documentary film shown on the PBS show NOVA. That film makes it feel that burning coal for fuel in Germany is on the way to becoming a thing of the past. Apparently not so.

The momentum to consume more and more energy in developed countries and in developing countries appears unstoppable. If renewables are to replace fossil fuels for generating electricity in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions somehow the demand for energy has to be drastically reduced. To accomplish that energy efficiency measures need to be quickly implemented on a vast scale. The last thing this planet needs is more coal-burning power plants.

Methane Levels on the Rise Again

After being fairly stable for almost 10 years methane levels in the atmosphere went up in 2007. This gloomy news was reported yesterday by the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). How gloomy this news really is depends on why methane levels are increasing again. The gloomiest reason would be that thawing permafrost in Arctic areas are releasing methane, a positive feedback from rising global temperature. Such a release of methane has been reported by researchers but according to scientist Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory the most probable reasons for the recent increase in methane are rapidly growing industrialization in Asia and rising wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics. Dlugokencky also said that ”We’re on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost. It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.” As almost a side note, the NOAA scientists found that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continue to surge upward, with the annual rate of increase again exceeding 2 parts per million (the increase was 2.4 ppm) which has been a disturbing trend that began after the year 2000. The level of carbon dioxide is now 385 ppm. That’s 35 ppm above the level that climate scientist James Hansen now says we should be aiming for. Needless to say, things don’t look good.

Methane Being Released from Arctic Sea Floor in Siberia

Here is some potentially catastrophic climate news. According to an article at Spiegel Online, Russian scientists are reporting that methane stored as frozen methane hydrates under the Arctic Ocean is being released into the atmosphere because of thawing that is taking place in Siberia. This is one of the positive feedbacks that climate scientists dread the most because of the enormous volume of methane that is stored as frozen hydrates. Although methane doesn’t last in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide does each molecule of methane traps much more heat. The scientists found that the permafrost had become porous on a shelf below the sea off the Siberian coast. They also found that the seawater in the area was oversaturated with methane and higher methane levels were detected in the air as high as about one mile above the site.

During the last several years it has been reported that methane levels in the atmosphere have leveled off. No one seems to know quite sure why. There have been reports of methane being released from below the thawing permafrost on land in Siberia but if this is occurring it hasn’t yet affected methane levels in the atmosphere. The next bit of very bad news regarding methane could be that atmospheric levels are beginning to sharply rise. Such news could leave us with few options other than to get ready for the oncoming catastrophe.

Obama and Clinton Still Calling for More Biofuels

So far it appears that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have adjusted their policies on biofuels to the new scientific realization that large scale production of both ethanol and biodiesel are contributing to global warming rather than being a partial solution. The other major presidential candidate, John McCain, doesn’t seem to have any policy on biofuels or for that matter on how to reduce greenhouse gases from transportation as his website simply says that he offers to limit carbon emissions “by harnessing market forces that will bring advanced technologies, such as nuclear energy, to the market faster, reduce our dependence on foreign supplies of energy, and see to it that America leads in a way that ensures all nations do their rightful share.” At least Obama and Clinton do get down to some specifics.

Barack Obama’s website says that he “will require 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be included in the fuel supply by 2022 and will increase that to at least 60 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol by 2030.”

Hillary Clinton’s website says that she will have “60 billion gallons of home-grown biofuels available for cars and trucks by 2030.”

That’s a lot of biofuels to be promising considering that so far the use of biofuels has led to increasing food prices around the world and increased emissions of greenhouse gases in instances where land was cleared for planting. Cellulosic ethanol at this point remains unproven as a source of fuel and hardly something to count on.

What we should be hearing from all three candidates is that they want to put a halt to large scale production of ethanol and biodiesel and carefully review whether the using these fuels in place of petroleum-based fuels at this time makes any sense. Unfortunately that is not what they want to hear in Iowa or neighboring farm states so there is little if any chance anyone will be hearing it from the candidates very soon.

Biofuels Are Losing Their Clean Energy Label

Heralded as an answer to both attaining energy independence and limiting global warming biofuels have enjoyed great popularity during the last few years even though concerns about using crops for fuel instead of food has raised concerns in many places. Biofuels have become so popular in fact that last year Congress passed legislation mandating that the US produce 36 billion gallons of the stuff annually by 2022. However, here we are only a few months after this legislation was passed and signed and it appears that the wheels are starting to come off the biofuels bandwagon. Biofuels have lost their “green” appeal almost overnight because scientists have found that rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions compared with burning gasoline biofuels for the most part increase greenhouse gas emissions.

It turns out that the main problem with biofuels is that when land clearing to plant the crops is included in the equation the amount of carbon released from the cleared plants is so great that it dwarfs the carbon saved by using biofuels versus gasoline. Biofuels were thought to produce less carbon emissions because the next crop of plants sequester as much carbon as is released by burning ethanol or biodiesel. The crop clearing “inconvenient truth” is described in a Time magazine article by Michael Grunwald called The Clean Energy Scam. Grunwald concludes his article by saying that:

Advocates are always careful to point out that biofuels are only part of the solution to global warming, that the world also needs more energy-efficient light bulbs and homes and factories and lifestyles. And the world does need all those things. But the world is still going to be fighting an uphill battle until it realizes that right now, biofuels aren't part of the solution at all. They're part of the problem.

The challenge facing the environmentalists is convince the public and politicians that biofuels should not be used after there has been so much written and said about the benefits of using biofuels. This could be a tough sell.

China’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Greatly Exceeding Predictions

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that from 2004 through CO2 emissions would increase annually by 2.5 to 5% in the region of Asia that includes China, but according to a report in Reuters economics researchers from the US publishing in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management say that the annual rate of increase for China over this time period will be at least 11%. According to the researchers the increase in CO2 emissions from China will greatly exceed all the reductions pledged by the countries participating in the Kyoto Protocol for the years 2008 to 2012. One of the researchers said that "What we're finding…is that the emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations, and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve."

Much, much harder to achieve may even be an understatement. Perhaps impossible to achieve is more accurate. With all the positive reports about increasing numbers of wind turbines and solar installations being in the news it seems that there is some reason for optimism that atmospheric CO2 levels can kept to a level that does not precipitate catastrophic climate change, but this report on China is quite a reality check.

Climate Scientist Says Arctic Ice Cap May Be Gone this Summer

Predicted dates when the Arctic polar ice cap will disappear during a summer have been getting earlier and earlier. The date can’t get any earlier than the one predicted by Dr. Olav Orheim, head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, in an interview with the Chinese news service Xinhua. Orheim says that the ice cap may disappear this very summer. All it would it would take according to Orheim is that the average temperature for Norway this year equal that of last year. He said that in 2000 the ice cap was 7.5 million square kilometers whereas during the warmest weeks of the summer last year it reached a low of 3 million square kilometers.

If Orheim’s prediction comes true perhaps this will be a good thing in that it could be a wake up call just before decisions have to made about what to after the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. As we have seen it is nearly impossible to put a dent in the business-as-usual attitude which pervades the world. Some tangible evidence of a startling change in the climate such as the temporary loss of the Arctic polar ice cap might help trigger a reaction in politicians and the public to finally take climate change seriously.

Massive Antarctic Glacier Picking up Speed

A team of British scientists reports a huge Antarctic glacier has speeded up by 7% since last year dumping large amounts of ice into the ocean. Previous studies during the last decade found this glacier to be speeding up by only 1% a year so this is a disturbing finding. The scientists, who described the situation to the BBC, found that this glacier, called the Pine Island Glacier, is the largest of three massive West Antarctic glaciers that have increased speed over the last decade. If most of the Pine Island Glacier winds up in the ocean the global sea level might rise by 25 cm. The scientists can only speculate on why the glacier is moving so fast. One hypothesis is that warmer water in a deep ocean current is flowing near the mouth of the glacier and under the ice. Another hypothesis is that geothermal heat is being released in the area. In any event, if the glacier keeps moving at a rapid pace, predictions of global sea level rise for this century will have to be adjusted upward.

Bill McKibben Calls for 350ppm Carbon Dioxide Target

Environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, who launched the Step It Up campaign last year, has revealed the next phase of his plan to fight global warming with local activism. The Brattleboro Reformer reports that McKibben told a group of local activists that this next phase will call for a target of 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As things stand now we are at about 385ppm and heading upward at about 2ppm per year. He is calling his plan 350. McKibben said that “What we need is people in their own communities to take that number and spread it, with music, with art, and take pictures and get it back into that centralized area.” Unlike his Step It Up campaign which was limited to the United States, this new 350 campaign he envisions as international. McKibben clearly understands the precarious situation that excessive emissions of greenhouse gases from human sources has caused saying that “We are in a big, freaking hole and there’s absolutely no guarantee that we are going to get out of it.” So, it is on to 350.

James Hansen Says CO2 Must Be Reduced to 350ppm

The aim of most people fighting global warming is to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from increasing above 450ppm, which is approximately 65ppm above today’s levels. This target has been advocated by climate scientist James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and has been also been advocated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But Hansen is now saying that the target is too high. In an article in the British newspaper The Sunday Times he says:

“If humanity wants to preserve a climate resembling that in which civilisation developed, then the palaeoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest CO2 must be reduced from its current level to between 300-350ppm. A 350ppm target is only achievable by phasing out coal use….We need a moratorium on the construction of coal-fired power plants and we must phase out the existing ones within two decades.”

If Hansen is right, it appears we will just have to accept a planet that does not resemble the one we are familiar with. Limiting CO2 to 450ppm appears to be an almost impossible task, particularly with China and India counting on coal to lift hundreds of millions of people out of a meager existence. Reducing CO2 to 350ppm or even lower doesn’t seem to be a feasible goal. It is hard to imagine the world only 20 years from now without any operating coal-fired plants. According to the article, Hansen will support his view of setting a lower target in a research paper. Until that paper is published and other scientists have a chance to review it is unlikely that the target of 450ppm will revised. However, perhaps we should be prepared for an even gloomier view of the possibility of extracting ourselves out of our global warming predicament than we now have.

Two More Studies Zap Biofuels as an Answer to Global Warming

The case against using biofuels to fight global warming has grown stronger with the publication of two studies in the journal Science which show that the destruction of natural ecosystems to produce the plants for fuels actually increases greenhouse gas emissions when compared with using regular fuels. In an International Herald Tribune article the lead author of one of the reports notes that the one exception may be sugar cane grown in Brazil, because relatively little energy is needed to turn this crop into fuel. These findings once again illustrate the wide gap between scientific knowledge and actions by the U.S. government as exemplified by the recently passed energy bill which requires a substantial portion of vehicle fuel in the future to be biofuel. In all likelihood most of this biofuel will come from growing corn. The politicians like to point out that using corn to make biofuel will increase America’s energy independence, which appears to be true, but they neglect to mention that with regard to the much bigger issue, global warming, their policies will probably only make the problem worse. It seems the habitability of the planet is being sacrificed for votes in the corn belt. In other words, the most important thing of all is that the politicians hang on to their jobs. The fate of the Earth appears to be a secondary consideration.

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.