Al Gore's New Book

The last month has been bad for the struggle against climate change. The Pew Research Center's recent poll shows that Americans are almost evenly divided between those who think it's a very serious threat, those who think it's a somewhat serious threat, and those who don't think it is a serious threat.

APEC nations announced they would not sign enforceable limits on greenhouse-gas emissions at the Copenhagen meeting coming up in December.

And now we have Al Gore's much-anticipated new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

His first book was supposed to show the science about global warming and climate change, but he got the science wrong and thereby gave ammunition to the denialists. The best-known mistake was the graph that showed the correlation between global average temperature and CO2 concentration over the last 400,000 years. What he may have failed to notice, and certainly didn't point out, was that the temperature changes preceded the CO2 changes by hundreds of years, which contradicted his thesis.

So expectations weren't high when he published this new book, which deals with the solutions. And we were neither disappointed nor pleasantly surprised.

He covers all the important points in the subject. Some of the information no doubt is accurate and valuable. Unfortunately, it's poorly referenced so readers can't distinguish between solid information and his own opinions.

And we see grating inconsistencies. Our interest here is mainly in nuclear energy as an important part of the solution. He shrugs it off, saying only that a very great investment is needed to implement it.

His solution? Besides the usual exhortations to practice efficiency and conservation, he gives us only the usual tired nostrums: wind, solar, and geothermal energy. As we have shown here to the point of tedium, the investment required for wind and solar energy is higher than that for nuclear, and geothermal could at most provide only a few per cent of our electricity requirements. By his logic, nuclear should be at the top of the list of solutions; sadly, his information doesn't carry him to the right and obvious conclusion.

He does get credit for at least considering the problem of intermittency. Here again, alas, he falls down. He proposes that plug-in hybrid car batteries will solve the problem of storing enough energy to get the country through periods of low energy production from wind and solar.

We happen to know how much electricity has to be stored. As we calculated here, the US would have to store between 141 and 386 billion KWH, depending on how much comes from solar and how much from wind, based on current consumption rates. But Toyota's intended battery has a storage capacity of 202 volts x 13 amp-hours, or 2.6 KWH. Each battery costs around $10,000. The number of plug-in batteries required would be 54 billion to 148 billion, in a country with 306 million people. Or, if every person owned one battery and used it only for energy storage, the combined capacity would be only 0.2% to 0.56% of what's needed. For the storage to provide 5% of the amount needed would require technological improvements that aren't even on the horizon.

Ironies abound in the second half of the book. He points out the undeniable fact that the most effective way to limit population growth is to promote economic security in poor countries. "The most powerful contraceptive is the confidence by parents that their children will survive," he quotes Julius K. Nyerere, Tanzania's first Prime Minister and President. But he wants to limit their energy sources to the most expensive and unachievable ones.

He offers us this crucial conclusion: "The only meaningful and effective solutions to the climate crisis involve massive changes in human behavior and thinking." That clearly is true, and it's too bad he doesn't apply it to his own attitudes about nuclear energy.

He refers to the confusion over climate change mentioned at the beginning of this article. He blames the confusion on self-interested political groups that spread misinformation about the subject. They didn't have to prove they were right, they just had to create doubt about the truth. He quotes climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer: "What they've done is try to take scientific understanding and put it on the same level with political opinion." Why can't he grasp the fact that the same thing happened to nuclear energy?

As was the case for the first book, Mr. Gore's errors fortify the arguments of those who oppose his program. For some time, they've been pointing out that if the situation is as dire as he makes it out to be then he should be calling for massive nuclear construction. His demands for solutions that are more popular but less effective undermine his credibility and, it follows, his argument.

So that's the deal on his book. Certainly some of the information has to be good, but it's not referenceable. The pictures are good. If your public library has it, you definitely should read it.

A Talk with Al Gore

I just read Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason. He's such an intelligent guy, don't you wish you could sit down with him over coffee and talk about global warming? I've got some thoughts on nuclear energy to share with him. He doesn't say much in his An Inconvenient Truth book on the subject, but he appeared at a House of Representatives hearing last year and nuclear energy came up. Imagine what it would be like if we were in on it:

Mr. Gore says (to Mr. Hastert):
      You mentioned nuclear. I am sure that will come up again. I
am not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear. I think it is
likely to play some role. I don't think it is going to play a
major role. But I think it will play some additional role, and
I think the reason it is going to be limited is mainly the
costs. They are so expensive, and they take so long to build,
and at present, they only come in one size: extra large. And
people don't want to make that kind of investment on an
uncertain market for energy demand.

Heck, Al, renewables cost more to build than nuclear plants. Look at this. If we're going to replace all the fossil-fired plants in the US, do you really think size is going to be a problem?

(To Mr. Inglis)
      I think that decentralization is the wave of the future.
And also on liquid fuels for road transport, by the way, and
the next generation ethanol the enzymatic hydrolysis stuff that
is coming on line. But on your core choice, I am not opposed to
nuclear. I have deep questions about it. I am concerned about
it. I used to be enthusiastic about it. Back when I represented
Congressman Gordon's district, TVA had 21 nuclear power plants
under construction. And then later, I had represented Oak Ridge
where we were immune to the effects of nuclear radiation so I
was very enthusiastic about it.
      But 19 of those 21 plants were canceled. And I am sure Bart
gets the same questions I used to get about whether those
partly finished cooling towers might be used for a grain silo.
But people are upset still that they have to pay for them and
not be able to get any electricity for them.
      And I think the stoppage of the nuclear industry was really
less due to 3-mile island and Chernobyl and environmental
concerns and more due to the fact that after the OPEC oil
crisis of 1973 and 1979, the projection for electricity demand
went from 7 percent annualized compounded down to 1 percent.

You're right on that one, Al. Growth of just about everything died when Jimmy Carter was president. Then natural gas drove out all its competition. Clean and cheap; what else could anyone want?

(To Mr. Upton)
I don't recognize the quote that you used as one
of mine. I am not saying it wasn't, but I don't really agree
with the way that was phrased.

[Quote from Nuclear Energy Information Resource Center: "I do not
support any increased reliance on nuclear energy; moreover, I
have disagreed with those who have classified nuclear energy as
clean or renewable."]

Yeah, you can't trust anything anti-nukes say.

      I am not a reflexive opponent of nuclear power,
Congressman. I am just a skeptic about nuclear power's
viability in the marketplace. I think that if we let the market
allow the most competitive forms to surface, what we will see
is decentralized generation, widely distributed, we will see an
emphasis on conservation and efficiency and renewable energy.
But where nuclear power is concerned I have expressed my views,
previously, I am not a reflexive opponent, I think there will
be some new nuclear power plants.
      But you mention China. Look at their 5-year plan right now.
You are right, they plan 55 new coal fired power plants per
year. Only three nuclear plants per year. Now why? They don't
have any opposition that they can't overcome pretty easily from
Beijing. But they see the same problems just in practical terms
that a lot of our utilities see. These things are expensive and
complicated. They take a long time and the fragility of the
operating regime has already been seen. I have been to
Chernobyl. I have been to Three Mile Island and I don't want to
exaggerate those problems.
      I think that we can come up with solutions for the dangers
of operator error. I think we can come up with solutions for
long term storage of waste. I don't think Yucca Mountain is it.
And I think if you don't skate past the real scientific
evidence of what they found at Yucca Mountain. What they found
on the geology there makes it simply wrong to put stuff that is
going to need to be contained for tens of thousands of years in
a place that is really not appropriate for it. Now that is my
reading of what the geological survey has said about that. But
I am not opposed to it as a category.

I don't think any of this is wrong, Al. But nobody has suggested an easier way to stave off global warming. Maybe we could ride bicycles and starve like the Chinese did fifty years ago, but I'm guessing that's not going to catch on. If we leave it up to the market to decide we'll just keep on using coal because nothing is cheaper; not nuclear or renewable energy and not even conservation. So to beat global warming we have to start building renewable energy sources and nuclear plants because that's the only way we can grow our construction capacity. The other choice is sitting on our hands and watching the habitat melt away. What do you think?

S. 2191, The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007

This Senate bill is the main legislation under consideration in the US for dealing with greenhouse-gas emissions.

Cap and Trade
Its most important feature is cap-and-trade covering utilities, industries, and motor fuels. It's aggressive enough, with ambitious goals, but it has so many escape clauses and offramps that its value has to be deeply discounted. Moreover, the emission rights will be auctioned off to support favorite causes, so it is actually a tax. Many analysts believe taxing carbon emissions is the only way to reduce them. Maybe they're right, but if it's a tax it won't fly. That's a given in US politics. People want the services and benefits that come from government largesse, but they won't vote for any politician who makes them pay taxes.

That pretty well makes the rest of the subject moot, but we'll proceed anyway because some other points have to be part of future discussions.

Carbon Sequestration
Another major feature is an emphasis on CO2 sequestration. It seems that CO2 producers will get credit for pumping CO2 into the ground. The bill contains provisions for determining the capacity of storage locations, but not for evaluating whether or not the CO2 will stay in place.

To date, no sequestration site in the world has been tested for leakage. Furthermore, no one knows how to conduct such a test.

On the subject of sequestration, Senator Jeff Bingaman makes this remark: "Currently there are no formal site selection criteria for carbon dioxide injection wells that will be used for carbon storage." He goes on to explain that the EPA has no clue how to set the criteria. That reflects the impossibility of sequestering CO2 with any confidence.

Under the terms of this bill, utilities can pump CO2 into the ground and act as though it never was generated, without any assurance it won't leak into the atmosphere some decades later. If it does leak, utilities will have paid large amounts for this program, all for no purpose.

Energy Supply
The US Energy Information Administration did a
study to compare the effects of the bill, under various scenarios. What the study showed is especially instructive.

The results seem obvious, but prove that nuclear opponents are wrong. Even under the most optimistic conditions, renewables won't provide the energy the country needs. The simple fact is that if nuclear energy isn't developed to its full potential, then the US will depend more on natural gas, a substance in great demand and short supply, and coal. Moreover, some of the coal combustion would have to be subject to carbon sequestration, an untested and dubious concept.

Future
One hesitates to criticize. The world faces an enormous challenge and it's only natural that practical people would turn to easy-sounding solutions such as carbon taxes and sequestration. Sadly, those won't succeed; one is political poison and the other is imaginary.

Instead, we have to commit ourselves to the hard work of reshaping our energy usage. Instead of auctioning off pollution rights, we have to outright ban the installation of fossil-fueled generating plants, either new or replacement capacity. New electricity demand must be met by a combination of renewable and nuclear sources, and offset by efficiency and the curtailment of low-return energy use. Vehicle efficiency has to be raised much more than the feeble changes Congress has mandated. Bureaucratic obstacles to synthetic fuels like Green Freedom should be cleared and, if it's necessary, subsidies that currently go to fossil-fuel producers should be directed toward offsetting the cost difference between petroleum fuel and synthetic fuel.

That's what it will take to beat this problem.

Are Skeptics Right? Is the World Cooling?

This is one of those moments when one must suck it up and take a hard look at one's convictions. The data have been showing right along that greenhouse gases have been driving climate change during the last half-century or so. Nothing else could explain why the global-average temperature was rising while solar activity declined after 1990.

But then the climate gremlins struck. Skeptics believed themselves fully vindicated when temperature data showed the global-average temperature to have declined during the last five years, with a very sharp drop in the last year. Here are two plots that show the striking effect.

Since we are determined to follow the science where it goes, not where we want it to go, this startling development demanded a cold-blooded analysis, not defensive handwaving.

The puzzle gains difficulty when we look at the data for the northern and southern hemispheres separately, as shown here. The northern hemisphere is continuing to warm up while the southern hemisphere has cooled a surprising amount. Before we can proceed, we have to understand why the two hemispheres would be so dissimilar. In particular, the skeptics can't claim to be right unless they can explain why the northern hemisphere is warming.

As we look at the data for the two, we see that they agree only in broad strokes. When we look at them in detail, we see that there are notable differences. For example, the southern hemisphere was warming in the 1960s while the northern hemisphere was cooling.

That doesn't help us much to understand what's going on, though. What does help us is the explanation of la Niña events, as given here together with some surface-temperature data, given here. The data show the effects of la Niña events, in which stronger winds over the South Pacific cause ocean water to turn over, bringing cold water to the surface. That explains the cooler average surface temperature over the southern hemisphere. The average temperature seems to be headed down; what actually is happening is that the last el Niño event (a period of relative calm over the South Pacific) was fairly strong and the current la Niña event is especially strong, putting a kink in the curve. It is not the case that the world is cooling off; rather, warm water is being driven down to lower depths and colder water is being raised to the surface.

So that's where we stand. La Niña events explain why the southern hemisphere is showing a cooler average surface temperature. Only global warming due to greenhouse gases explains why the northern hemisphere is warming.

It seems reasonable that global warming could be causing the stronger and more-frequent la Niña events, but that's a question for experts.

Tipping Points

With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change by Fred Pearce is not reassuring or comfortable. It is a scientifically-grounded explanation of climate change/global warming/freaky world changes.

It probably could only have been written by Mr. Pearce. He's been following the global-warming story as a journalist since about 1990 and because of that he was able to interview many of the principal researchers in the ongoing struggle to understand the process.

He presents four topics of interest. First, he explains the mechanics of climate change. If you're a little fuzzy on the ocean conveyor or methane clathrates he'll bring you up to speed. Second, he lays out the limits of knowledge. The parameters cover large ranges and he keeps clear the distinction between what is known and what isn't. Third, he covers the slipperiest part of the whole topic: tipping points; how they work and what happens when we reach them. He also discusses what the consequences of climate change are likely to be, bearing in mind the limits of certainty. We're going to say a little here about tipping points, based on the author's remarks.

Skeptics dismiss the concept of tipping points. You can't prove them, they say. Actually, you can prove some of them but it's not clear what will activate them. Some others aren't understood to the point they can be considered certain. It goes the other way too, though. There's no justification for traveling up the Keeling curve with insouciance. Before we jump into a pot of hot tar, common sense tells us we ought to find out how hot the tar is.

I'll go through the main tipping points the author describes.

* Shrinking ice caps. This one is maybe the most basic. As the ice caps shrink the world is absorbing more energy from the sun. Furthermore, the water released lubricates the glaciers' movements, causing the process to accelerate.

* Clearing of rain forests lowers the amount of rainfall downwind from them, whether it's done on purpose or by natural fires that result from drying out. As the vegetation burns and exposes the soil to sunlight, large amounts of CO2 are released.

* As frozen bogs thaw in the extreme north, rotting tundra releases methane, a terribly effective greenhouse gas.

* CO2 dissolved in the oceans is removed by marine organisms that use it to build structural body parts. If the CO2 level rises too high, ocean water becomes too acidic for the organisms to live and this CO2-removal mechanism disappears.

* Clathrates are layers of methane lying in deep ocean trenches where the pressure and temperature are extreme enough to keep them frozen. If ocean temperatures rise enough to thaw some of the methane then inevitably it will enter the atmosphere. But it could be worse: there are layers of methane gas under the clathrates, kept unfrozen by warmth from the earth. If the ocean melts through spots in the clathrates, large amounts of methane will escape.

* Clouds are a subject of considerable uncertainty. As water evaporates we expect to see more white, fluffy clouds that reflect solar energy. That may be why the world hasn't warmed more than it has. But if the atmosphere gets hot enough we'll see fewer fluffy clouds and more high, thin clouds. They admit more solar energy and intercept energy that otherwise would escape.

* The ocean conveyor is a superlong ocean current; one of the things it does is carry heat from the tropics to the north Atlantic, warming the US coast before it swings over and does the same for northern Europe. As it moves north to the Arctic region it cools and drops down to return under the north-moving stream. What if Greenland's ice melts? If it happens fast enough, a real possibility, the fresh water would cause the saltier and heavier water of the current to short-circuit; it would drop down to the return stream prematurely. Northern Europe would see severely cold conditions. Meanwhile, the tropics would warm up because of losing the Arctic cooling.

The author makes the point that this issue is different from the issues we're used to. Usually, when you learn more about a concern you find that it's not as alarming as you thought before. With global warming, the more you learn the more there is to worry about.

US Presidential Candidates on Global Warming

Here we offer a comparison of the views of the three major contenders for US President with respect to global warming.

Senator John McCain

Senator McCain has co-sponsored, with Senator Lieberman, legislation that would establish cap-and-trade measures for dealing with greenhouse-gas emissions. He tends to favor technological solutions over behavioral changes. In line with that view he supports federal support for nuclear energy.

Of the three candidates, he may have the most realistic views. At a time when millions of people are driving motor homes, yachts, and private aircraft around for recreation, buying houses bigger than they can afford, and treating flying vacations as a divinely-ordained right, perhaps it's too idealistic to suppose the greatest number would give up such indulgences.

As advocates of nuclear energy, we applaud his support for that technology. On the other hand, the view here is that what the country needs are coherent energy and environmental policies. If fossil fuels weren't subsidized with tax credits and if air-quality standards were reasonable, utilities would pursue nuclear and renewable energy without any federal support. Besides, nukes can't do the whole job, not even with cap-and-trade. The country needs some serious leadership on conservation as well.

Senator Hillary Clinton

Senator Clinton offers what looks more like a wish list than a plan. Cap-and-trade, R&D and subsidies for renewable energy, higher efficiency standards, and something called "home-grown biofuels." In the past she has said nuclear energy has to be kept on the table, but such sentiments don't appear on her website.

From here it looks as though she (or whatever staffer writes her energy positions) doesn't grasp the magnitude of the challenge or the urgency. Perhaps she knows better but doesn't want to offend the bicycling-and-winetasting crowd. We can sympathize, but it's not a point in her favor.

Senator Barack Obama

Senator Obama's positions are so close to Senator Clinton's it's hard to tell them apart. Possibly, the main difference is that he sets out his policies in more detail, so they come together as a plan. He understands the importance of setting stricter clean-air standards. He understands the value and the limitations of renewable energy sources, including biofuels.

He recognizes the importance of nuclear energy, but sets out four issues that must be addressed: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Then he proceeds to describe the measures he will take to address these same four issues. As advocates of nuclear energy, we are convinced that these issues have been addressed successfully and that any administration that looks at them clearly will work hard to develop nuclear energy.

Conclusions

Senator Obama seems to have the most comprehensive plan for dealing with global warming. Senator Clinton's might be as comprehensive, or possibly could be identical, but she doesn't spell it out and she doesn't mention nuclear energy; that's a major omission. Senator McCain is pro-nuclear; that's good but it's not enough.

It's appropriate to point out here the main problems with cap-and-trade, since it's the most important feature in all three candidates' positions. First, there's the ethical problem of letting polluters decide the price of pollution rights. Surely the victims ought to be setting the price. Second there's this political problem: call it what you like, cap-and-trade is a tax. Republicans won't allow it. Democratic politicians facing tough challenges won't vote for it. That means we have to weigh the different plans discounting the cap-and-trade part or any part that depends on it.

If we weigh the plans this way, Sen. McCain has only support for nuclear energy and Sen. Clinton has good intentions. Sen. Obama still has a plan.

The Academic Approach to Anti-Nuclearism

For a long time there's been a belief among anti-nukes that you can prove anything if you write enough. You just have to beat science with statistical analysis and smother it with paper.

This came up again on another blog, which uses a lot of scientific language but is dedicated to the proposition that the laws of nature can be over-ridden if they're inconvenient.

In this case, the writer of the article is determined to show that part-time energy sources can provide full-time power, if you just do enough mathematical manipulations.

First he cites "Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms" by Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, which argues that if enough wind turbines are interconnected they can provide base-load power. According to the authors, the part of the average output that can be considered 87.5% reliable is between 33% and 47%, depending on how many wind turbines are interconnected. However, the area they studied, centered on the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, has the most reliable winds in the US and their results don't translate to the country as a whole. Even so, they show that wind farms would have to be oversized by a factor of at least 2. They elect to call it base load, but that's not appropriate. It only can be base load if there is also some form of load-following power.

That's a problem. Without fossil fuel and nuclear energy, load following is limited to whatever hydro and pumped storage can be made available, and at most that can only be a few percent.

The article writer also cites "Improving the Technical, Environmental and Social Performance of Wind Energy Systems Using Biomass-Based Energy Storage" by Paul Denholm, which recognizes that problem and suggests using biofuels for backup. But there are a couple of problems here. One is that nowhere does he consider the fuel required to grow the biomass and convert it into biofuel. Currently, it takes up to a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon of fuel, and certainly a big part of a gallon. It seems unlikely that it will ever take no fuel to produce a gallon of fuel. In the absence of better information, his study has to be considered extremely optimistic.

His optimistic estimate is that it would take 6.9 hectares or .0266 sq mi to produce biofuels that would generate 1000 MWH per year. The US uses 4 billion MWH/year, so the area required would be 106,400 square miles, out of 650,000 square miles of arable land. Suppose wind energy allows us to reduce that in half, which would require a half-million 1.5 MW wind turbines (rotor height = 450 feet!); we still need 53,000 square miles. Since we're using almost all the arable land for food and fiber, it's not clear where the 53,000 square miles will come from. Also, to farm land of this magnitude means using less-productive land. He assumes 11.3 tonnes/hectare yields, which would require prime Iowa land, so the land areas would be much greater and very likely would require irrigation, for which water will not be available. That's enough trouble already, but consider that the need for motor fuels will vastly outweigh the need for bio-electricity, because there is another, better, way to generate electricity but no alternative way to produce non-fossil motor fuels.

So we're still where we've always been. Wind energy doesn't work without a backup, and biofuels won't provide the backup.

As we explained in an earlier article, nuclear energy allows solar and wind to play their maximum part in providing electricity. Further, it allows them to contribute efficiently to the production of hydrogen, by taking some load off the nuclear plants. This is the kind of solution that will minimize global warming. Trying to paper over the limitations of renewable sources with scientific-looking obfuscations, if it's successful, can only keep the world on its present reckless path to self-destruction.

But anti-nukes don't get this. They believe you can change reality by manipulating data. You want windmills to turn when there's no wind? No problem. Just crank out fifteen pages of equations, tables, diagrams, and charts and they'll turn themselves!

Carbon Offsets

Do carbon offsets work? They can work, but won't necessarily. There are companies ready to take your money and grant expiation in return. No doubt some of them are honest, but it's up to you to check them out. There aren't any agencies that regulate them.

Another issue is, what kind of carbon-offset schemes work? Some offer tree planting, maybe in some exotic place. But planting trees won't work, because trees all die eventually and give back all the carbon they've absorbed. It only could work if land was set aside permanently for new forests and if somehow it could be guaranteed that the land would never be cleared. There's no way such a guarantee could be made. At the rate the world population is growing, all the arable land will be needed for growing biofuel, not to mention food. In fact, global warming is likely to reduce land productivity.

But a different scheme could work. Non-fossil energy costs more than fossil energy. That's why we use so much fossil fuel, especially coal. So you could pay your local utility to buy your share of electricity from non-fossil sources, with you paying the difference in cost voluntarily. If this plan were structured properly, nuclear would be one of the non-fossil sources. It never is, though. All or nearly all the energy will come from wind turbines.

If you do that much, why couldn't you pay extra to make up for other CO2 emissions?

Here's some CO2 emission rates you can get from the US EPA's website.

For each KWH of electricity, you generate 1.37 lbs of CO2.
For each gallon of gasoline, you generate 20.4 lbs of CO2.
For each gallon of diesel fuel or heating fuel, you generate 22.3 lbs of CO2.
For each 1000 cubic feet of natural gas, you generate 120.6 lbs of CO2.

The EPA doesn't give this figure, but for commercial air travel, figure 50 passenger miles per gallon, or 1000 / 50 * 20.4 = 408 lbs of CO2 per 1000 passenger miles.

Now you can calculate your footprint in pounds of CO2 per year. If your utility has a green-energy program, ask what the premium per KWH is for green energy. At my utility, the rate is 1.25 cents, so the cost of becoming carbon neutral is 1.25/1.37 = 0.91 cents/pound.

Example:

Electricity	5000 KWH	6850 lbs
Gasoline	1000 gallons	20,400 lbs
	TOTAL	27,250 lbs

Cost of offset = 27,250 * 0.91/100 = $248/year, or $21/month.

So if our example consumer donated $21/month to the green energy program, he'd be carbon neutral, just like former US VP Gore. If your utility doesn't offer such a program, find one of those companies you have confidence in and donate it there. Just don't pay to plant trees.

Now that you're guilt free, let's discuss this sensibly. The only reason carbon offsets work is that we generate electricity in the most stupid way possible. As we move toward non-fossil energy sources, this system will break down. If all the electricity came from nuclear power plants and windfarms, there'd be no way to offset motor and aviation fuels. That means the world has to shift toward hydrogen, battery-powered cars, and electrified rail transit.

Obstacles to Minimizing Global Warming

In earlier articles we discussed the technical challenges of preventing massive economic and environmental dislocations because of climate change. Actually, the world has the capability to meet those challenges if it has the will.

For example, the United States transformed itself from an agricultural nation in the depths of an economic depression into an industrial giant able to manufacture the hardware needed to defeat the Axis powers in five years even with millions of its able-bodied men and women in military service. Compared with that, converting energy away from fossil fuels is easy.

The problems arise from attitude.

First there is the problem of skepticism about global warming. The evidence isn't just strong, it's conclusive. Yet people have made up their minds not to accept it. You can find them on the web even if you don't want to. Any criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, justified or not, from any person, qualified or not, is touted to be the final "debunking" (a term much in fashion) of climate-change science.

Overcoming this obstinacy should be the easiest part of the problem to solve, but we can't even accomplish this much.

Next is the perverse refusal of nuclear opponents, all of whom claim the mantle of Defenders of the Environment, to acknowledge the clear necessity of nuclear energy for minimizing climate change. The same Defenders of the Environment deny both the environmental benefits of nuclear energy and the limitations of part-time energy sources.

We see some erosion of this monolithic inertia among more thoughtful members of the public, but the executives at the major international anti-nuclear political organizations aren't budging.

Then, assuming these problems can be overcome (or possibly ignored), we face the difficulty of implementing solutions.

Perhaps there will be local opposition to construction of nuclear power plants. But wind farms already are seeing fierce opposition. And the fights over solar panels haven't begun. When utility ratepayers realize how much they're paying to subsidize their neighbors' rooftop panels they'll do one of two things. Some of them will decide to cash in on the program. But if too many people do that the program will collapse from the expense. So all the people left out will see their rates go up dramatically. Before it's over you will hear people say they wish they'd never heard of solar energy.

What's left is conservation. And conservation is always the preferred nostrum; whenever energy and global warming come up, conservation is always our best and brightest hope.

But conservation means more than putting in compact-fluorescent lightbulbs and recycling wine bottles. It even means more than junking our SUVs and buying hybrid cars. It means smaller houses and no vacation homes. It means giving up motorhomes and cabin cruisers and recreational flying. No more flying vacation trips.

Sounds discouraging, no? It is discouraging if stubborn, misinformed people are allowed to dictate the world's energy future. But there is a way to solve this, and that will be the next articles's subject.

The Dimensions of the Challenge

Most people don't understand the scale of the energy we use. This article will try to put it in perspective. The data will apply to the United States; nationals of other countries will have to interpret it for themselves. Generally speaking, though, nationals of other advanced countries will face challenges of the same scale or higher and those living in developing countries will increasingly find themselves in the same dilemma.

We will compare the different non-fossil energy sources that have been proposed with respect to their capabilities.  Where appropriate, we will compare the land areas required for each with the land area available.

Electricity

First, consider the amount of electricity the US uses, a total of just over 4 billion MWH/year.[source]

Wind

What really limits wind power is the small amount of storage available; hydroelectric dams can treat a small part of their capacity as short-term storage for wind power.  For the purpose of this calculation, we shall pretend that the limitation doesn't apply but we'll discuss storage later in this article.

Currently, typical wind-turbines on wind farms are sized at 1.5 MW, with a rotor-tip height of 450 feet and a rotor diameter of 231 feet.[source][source]. Allowing a generous load factor of 0.35 [source], each turbine yields 4602 MWH/year, so 869,000 turbines would be required. The minimum turbine spacing recommended is five times the rotor diameter [source], so each 1.5 MW turbine requires (5 X 231 ft)^2 = 1,334,025 feet, or 0.048 sq mile.

To provide all the electricity the US uses would require more than 41,720 square miles.  That would be a strip of land 40 miles wide running from the Montana/Canada border to the Arizona/Mexico border. To get good efficiency, a strip 60 miles wide would be needed.

Solar

Solar energy has the same storage limitations as wind power, but we still shall pretend that the limitation doesn't apply.

For the US, an average insolation would be around 5.5 KWH/m^2/day[source], or 2 MWH/m^2/year.  Allowing a generous 20% efficiency[source], the output would be 0.4 MWH/m^2/year.  To provide all the electricity the US uses would require 10 billion square meters or 3861 square miles of solar panels.  That would be a panel 1-1/2 miles wide running from San Diego to Boston.

Nuclear

Nuclear plants are operating at about 90% capacity factors.[source] 

However, new ones will run somewhat lower, so an average capacity factor of 80% will be assumed. 

For 1000 MW power plants, 571 would be required to provide all the electricity the US uses, compared with 104 that currently are in operation.

Up to now, this discussion has ignored the difference between peak power demands and gross power generation.  In the case of solar and wind power, it didn't matter because neither can reliably supply energy at any time, let alone meet peak demands.  Nuclear power is available at all times, though, so peak demand can be met.  The current US electric capacity is about 890,000 MW[source], so about a thousand 1000-MW power plants would be required, or a smaller number of larger plants.

Motor Fuels

The US uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year.[source]  Since ethanol has only 70% of the energy content of gasoline[source], at 439 gallons per acre[source], the US would have to plant 456 million acres, or 713,000 square miles in corn to displace gasoline with ethanol.  That is about one-fourth of the area of the 48 contiguous US states.

The US consumes 63 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year.[source]  The land area required to grow enough soybeans to displace the petrodiesel with biodiesel, at 63 gallons per acre[source], would be one billion acres or 1,563,000 square miles, about half of the area of the 48 contiguous US states.

These calculated land areas seem too high to be correct, but they are in line with calculations done by others.  For example, this analysis finds that, if all vehicles were diesel-powered, the land area required would be 58% of the US including Alaska.  Another calculation shows that if all the corn and soybean crops in the US were converted into biofuels they would replace just 12 percent of the gasoline used and just 6 percent of the diesel fuel.

Of the land in all of the US, only 18% or 650,000 square miles is arable[source], and most all of that is being cultivated for food and fiber.  Also, the calculations shown above assume that all the land would have the same yields as the prime farmland currently under cultivation and that there would be sufficient water for irrigation.  Neither of those conditions is true, of course, so plainly there isn't enough land.

Clearly, biofuels won't provide much liquid fuel.  There is a possibility that these land requirements can be reduced by two thirds if hydrogen is injected into the biomass during processing.  For example, 0.77 gallons of biodiesel can be produced by adding 1 kg of hydrogen[source], which requires 39.3 KWH of energy to produce from water.  The biodiesel equivalent of US diesel consumption is 70 billion gallons per year; to produce enough hydrogen would require 2.75 trillion KWH per year.  The fact remains, though, that biofuels can only be part of the solution.

For a long time, fuel cells have been the holy grail in the quest to free the world from fossil-based motor fuels. The barrier seems to be the catalyst; platinum so far is the only material that works. Not only is it very expensive, several thousand dollars per vehicle [source] but if fuel cells drove up the demand then the cost would be even higher. There also is the unsolved problem of storing enough hydrogen on board for a reasonable driving range. But suppose these problems could be overcome.

As a rough estimate, let's say the amount of hydrogen needed would be the energy-equivalent of 100 billion gallons of diesel fuel per year, chosen mainly because it's a round number about half of the total of gasoline and diesel fuel: 50 billion gallons probably is too little and 150 billion gallons probably is more than necessary.  The heat value of diesel fuel is about 38 KWH/gallon[source], so our energy equivalent is 3.8 billion MWH/year.  For our rough purposes, this is the same as our current electrical usage. 

Unfortunately, the process for converting water to hydrogen at normal temperatures is less than 30% efficient. So, the electricity required would be more than three times our current electrical usage.  To generate that much electricity with solar panels would require a panel 5 miles wide running from San Diego to Boston.  To generate the electricity with wind turbines would require a strip of land 130 miles wide running from the northern Montana border to the southern Arizona border with 2,870,000 turbines, all rated at 1.5 MW.

It is possible to produce hydrogen efficiently in a thermochemical process, using nuclear-generated heat.  The nominal efficiency is over 45%.[source] But the heat left over from the conversion can be used to generate electricity, so the hydrogen production is nearly 100% efficient.  The nuclear plants can produce electricity and hydrogen at the same time.  More power plants aren't required because the additional heat will be available during off-peak hours.

Currently, hydrogen storage is the weak link.  It's practical only for local transportation, but intense research is underway.

Bulk Energy Storage

Pumped Energy Storage
The purpose of this admittedly rough calculation is to estimate the amount of pumped storage that would be required if wind power provided all the electricity the US uses.

First, consider the amount of electricity the US uses, a total of just over 4 billion MWH/year.[source] On an average day, not a high-demand day, that's 11,000,000 MWH/day.

We have to make up a fictitious example because there aren't any real examples. Suppose we use Lake Erie, Niagara Falls, and Lake Ontario as our pumped-storage, pretending that we could increase the capacity of the turbines enough.

We know that Niagara Falls' power capacity is 2400 MW, using 375,000 gallons/second of water.[source] We also know that the capacity of Lake Erie is 484 cubic kilometers of water, which is 128,000 billion gallons.[source] At present, the falls could produce 57,600 MWH/day, using 32.4 billion gallons/day. So, to serve all of the US for one day, the water required would be (11,000,000/57,600) X 32.4 billion gallons = 6,187 billion gallons, which is 4.8% of Lake Erie. That means that Lake Erie could provide storage for three weeks.

How much storage would be required? Looking at data for all of the US, we see that, with surprising consistency, low-wind months have average speeds about 70% of the average speeds for the high-wind months.[source] Based on the cubic relationship between wind speed and power, we would expect seasonal variations in energy generation of around 0.35 to 1, so the average would be something like the rated capacity times (1 + 0.35)/2 or 0.675. Conversely, for the generation to equal the load, the rated capacity of the wind farms would have to be the yearly average load divided by 0.675, or multiplied by 1.48. Since we can expect the generation in a slow-wind month to be 0.35 times the rated capacity, the storage capacity would have to be about 1 - 0.35 X 1.48 (= 0.48) times the yearly average load times the length of the low-wind period.

21 days' capacity would be good for 21/0.48 = 43 days of low winds. But low-wind seasons last longer than 100 days.

The power grid allows for some redistribution of power from areas experiencing high winds to areas with low winds. But the wind-variation patterns cover large regions so there are limits to what can be achieved. Allowing for redistribution still leaves a need for more than three-weeks' capacity.

To provide adequate pumped-storage capacity for wind power as the main electical-energy source for the US would require damming canyon streams to create twin lakes around the country equal in volume to something bigger than Lakes Erie and Ontario. Even if enough locations could be found, the projects would not be permitted because of the high ecological cost.

Compressed Air
Another scheme that sometimes is mentioned is storing compressed air in caves. There is a facility in Huntorf, Germany that we can use for an example.[source] It compresses air to 1000 pounds per square inch pressure.

The data show that it stores 3 x 290 = 870 MWH of energy and the cave volume is 310,000 cubic meters.

For one day of electricity storage for the US, the volume needed would be

      11,000,000/870 X 310,000 = 3.92 billion cubic meters = 138.4 billion cubic feet.

Suppose a cave had an average cross-section of 50 ft X 50 ft = 2500 sq ft.

For one day's electricity storage, the cave's length would have to be 138.4 billion / 2500 = 55.34 million feet = 10,490 miles. Granted that most big caves have never been surveyed, it's still safe to say that there aren't ten-thousand miles of caves in the US. So there is no possible way enough energy could be stored to see the country through 100 days of low winds.

Conclusion

Barring some startling new energy development, what all this shows is that solar panels and wind turbines won't provide major parts of the world's energy; biofuels can only be important if a large amount of hydrogen is available.  If global warming is to be avoided, the only two technologies that can provide sufficient energy are nuclear and hydrogen.

In the next article we'll look at the obstacles to solving this problem. In the article after that we'll see a scheme for reducing the consumption of fossil fuels.

Are Anti-Nukes Environmentalists?

As was shown in the last two articles, nuclear energy offers many environmental benefits. In fact, the leading threat to the environment is global warming and nuclear energy is absolutely essential for minimizing it. Besides that, its environmental costs are very low, even lower than for most of the alternatives that have been suggested.

But the biggest international environmentally-oriented political organizations oppose nuclear energy and in the strongest terms possible. How can this obvious contradiction be explained? A close look at the record of these same organizations makes clear what has happened.

Please take a look at this scorecard. It shows that, for all their self-praise, these organizations have a poor record. It also includes descriptions of how they got to be so ineffective, from the viewpoints of insiders.

Besides a stubborn unwillingness to look at environmental problems that matter, anti-nukes also have in common a total misunderstanding about the ability of various energy sources to meet the world's present needs and no imagination about the world's future needs. We'll discuss the limitations of the various energy alternatives in the next article; later on we'll discuss future needs.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 4

In the last article we covered the arguments in favor of nuclear energy. This time we'll cover the arguments against.

Wastes


The waste materials from nuclear energy are at most a hypothetical concern. No person has ever been harmed by them. Despite that, people who oppose nuclear energy do so mainly because the wastes stay radioactive for a very long time, even hundreds of thousands of years. It's odd that the same people don't have problems with coal wastes, which pile up in vast heaps and sludge ponds that stay toxic forever.[source]

Until recently, the plan was to bury the wastes in geological structures where they would be safe until the radioactivity decayed away. But now the plan is to reprocess the wastes to separate out the valuable uranium and transuranic actinides to use as fuel. The remaining wastes are only 3% of what was there before and lose their toxicity in much less time, hundreds of years instead of hundreds of thousands.[source] Many geologic places, such as caves or abandoned mines, could store those wastes safely. Besides that, proven technology exists to irradiate the wastes into other, shorter-lived materials.[source] To deal with the wastes this way doesn't require any technological breakthroughs, just a political decision.

Bomb Proliferation


There is a common misunderstanding that nuclear power plants are a requirement for making bombs. That is not the case, as explained by Hans Blix, a former Director of the IAEA, the United Nations agency responsible for preventing proliferation [source]:

"A phasing out of nuclear power in some or all states would not lead to the scrapping of a single nuclear bomb.

"States can have nuclear weapons without nuclear power though it is not common today. Israel is a case in point. It has no nuclear power but is assessed to have some 200 nuclear warheads. For a long time China had only the weapons. Indeed, most nuclear weapons states, including the US, had weapons before they had power. "

Despite that, people have a concern that nuclear fuel could be diverted and used to make a bomb by someone who shouldn't have one. This concern overlooks the fact that, even assuming someone could defeat the security measures for protecting the material and somehow ship it to his own facility, the material has to be treated with chemical separation and isotope separation and enrichment. This is a major industrial operation. In every case where it has been done, it required a nation's best minds and vast capital resources. And there still remains the problem of learning how to make a bomb go off. If a nation decides to make a bomb and is willing to make the investment, it can make it from natural uranium; stealing fuel is not a requirement.

Dirty Bombs


A possibility of dirty bombs comes up in some discussions. The concern is that a terrorist could get his hands on spent fuel and blow it up with conventional explosives. That is a possibility, and puts it in the class of other threats, such as chlorine or ammonia or explosives made from fertilizer. But spent fuel is unattractive to terrorists for several reasons. One is that it's monitored in shipping and it's highly likely that the thieves would be caught and the terrorist plot would be exposed. Another is that it has to be heavily shielded so it would take a huge explosion to spread the waste. Another is that the radioactive material is easy to detect; people who are contaminated can be decontaminated quickly and cleanup crews can clean up the contaminated area. Of all the things we have to concern ourselves with, dirty bombs don't rank very high.

---

Conclusion

This finishes up the initial series of blogs. What they show is the following:

• Global warming is happening.


• Global warming is caused by artificial greenhouse gas, mainly carbon dioxide.


• There's a possibility global warming could reach a tipping point, after which there's no way to fix the problem.


• To prevent global warming, carbon-dioxide emissions have to be minimized.


• To minimize carbon-dioxide emissions will require all the renewable energy we can manage, all the nuclear plants we can build, and more conservation than anyone wants.
  

In future blogs we'll cover some of the same issues in more detail.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 3

In this article we'll cover the arguments in favor of nuclear energy. We'll cover the arguments against in the next article.

4) Nuclear Energy

Pros of Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy has the best safety record of any energy source. No member of the US public has been killed or injured by any nuclear plant. This is a key point, because many people are under the impression that nuclear plants are wildly dangerous. The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986 showed what the actual scale of an accident could be without normal safety provisions. After the accident, the World Health Organization did an extensive investigation and continual followup; its findings were that actual deaths have numbered less than 50 and there could be as many as 4000 fatal cancers in the future.[source] As tragic as that is, it doesn't approach the death rate due to burning coal. Even in the US, tens of thousands of people die every year just from the pollution from generating electricity with fossil fuels.[Abt Associates Report, Exhibit 6-4] More important, the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 totally destroyed the reactor but resulted in no adverse health effects, which validated the defense-in-depth designs used in all US reactors.[source]

Nuclear energy is clean. Since reactors emit no pollutants they are as clean as any of the renewable energy sources that have been suggested.

Nuclear energy is abundant. At current usage, the world's known uranium reserves producible at less than US$60 per pound of U3O8 will last 85 years. Geologic data show that the supply is over 600 years. At higher prices, the supply is even greater. With advanced fuel cycles, the proven reserves would last over 2500 years.[source]

Nuclear energy is economical. Presently, it is cheaper than any energy source except hydroelectricity. Both of them are cheap because the capital costs have all been paid back. Here are average operating costs in the US in 2005, in cents per KWH[source]:

Nuclear	1.816
Fossil Steam	2.769
Hydroelectric	0.886
Gas Turbine and Small Scale	5.885

For new plants, of course, the cost would be higher because of the capital costs. Here are comparisons for different energy sources [source]. The costs are in UK pence/KWH.

Gas-fired CCGT	2.2
Nuclear fission plant	2.3
Coal-fired pulverised-fuel (PF) steam plant	2.5
Coal-fired circulating fluidized bed (CFB) steam plant	2.6
Coal-fired integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC)	3.2
Onshore wind farm	3.7
Offshore wind farm	5.5
Wave and marine technologies	6.6

Note that the coal-fired electricity costs more than nuclear, which no doubt is because advanced-technology plants are being considered in order to minimize pollution. If older-technology plants were being priced, the cost would be somewhat less, probably less than any of the costs shown.

Nuclear energy is effective against climate change. Comparing life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions, nuclear ranks with the cleanest of all electric-energy sources in tonnes CO2-equivalent per GWeh.[source]

Coal	974
Combined-cycle natural gas	469
Photovoltaic	39
Nuclear fission	15
Wind	14
DT fusion	9

Furthermore, most of the solutions to replacing petroleum-based motor fuels require hydrogen and the most efficient way to convert water to hydrogen is with high-temperature processes, at temperatures nuclear reactors can provide. In particular, hydrogen can be added to biomass to triple the output of biofuels; that could make biofuels a major alternate fuel.[source] The nominal efficiency is over 45%.[source] But the heat left over from the conversion can be used to generate electricity, so the hydrogen production is nearly 100% efficient.

So those are the points in favor of nuclear energy. In the next article we'll go over the arguments against.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 2

3) Renewable Energy Sources

In this article we'll look at alternative energy sources and appraise their effectiveness in minimizing global warming. The numbers apply to the US; nationals of other countries will have to figure this out for themselves.

Residential Energy Sources

Some important savings can be made by making greater use of natural energy sources. Home heating and residential water heating could be switched almost entirely to solar and solar-heat-pump systems. Passive solar heating techniques can be built into homes. The remaining residential applications would mainly be cooking, which could almost entirely be converted to electricity. These changes would reduce CO2 emissions by 367 million metric tons, or 6.1% of the total.[source]

Wind Power

Wind power is already providing some electricity at a price which is only a little higher than electricity from fossil-fired power plants.[source] What limits wind power is the need for storage, since neither homes nor businesses can stop functioning when the wind power is unavailable. Currently, only one form of bulk storage is available for energy: existing hydroelectric dams, which account for 6.6% of total US electrical capacity.[source] There are limits to how much storage can be used, since dam operators have to maintain minimum water flows and also have commitments to irrigators, but it's conceivable that wind power could provide a few per cent of the country's energy.

If some sort of bulk energy storage could be developed, that could make wind energy practical. The storage method closest to practicality is pumped storage. In fact, there is a small amount of pumped storage in use now. A rough calculation shows, however, that there aren't enough places to install pumped storage for wind power to become the main electricity source.

A different strategy would be to have fossil-fired power plants standing by to back up wind power. Since wind turbines have a load factor of 25 to 35%, that would seriously hamper the effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because the fossil-fired plants would have to operate a large portion of the time.[source] But the existing fossil-fired plants will be around for some decades while replacement capacity is built. In the meantime, they can be used as backup for wind turbines and other renewable sources. So, in the short term, wind power can be a major power source until replacement sources are constructed and the wind turbines wear out.

Solar Energy

Solar photovoltaic systems are presently too expensive to compete with other energy sources, but over the years can be expected to become cheaper.[source] They already are becoming popular in remote locations where connecting to the electrical grid is impractical. If costs continue to fall, solar energy can complement wind power but the unavailability of bulk storage will apply to solar energy as well.

Geothermal energy

Geothermal energy presently supplies 0.34% of the energy used in the US.[source] There are two types of geothermal energy: wet and dry. The wet type is being exploited about as much as it can be. There is a lot more available in dry form; unfortunately, there aren't any practical ways of extracting it.

Biofuels

Biofuels represent a possibility. To use them unblended as motor fuels would require new engine designs, but that will be unavoidable with any change from petroleum-based fuels. Currently, the best estimate is that it takes 0.75 gallons of fuel to produce the energy-equivalent of 1 gallon of conventional fuel. That's only true if credit is given for the value of the leftover material as animal feed; once the demand for animal feed is satisfied, the payoff ratio won't be as good. It is believed that the fuel input could be reduced to as little as 0.4 gallons with advanced technology that allows agricultural waste to be used as the raw material.[source] Agricultural waste is what gardeners call mulch; it hasn't been determined what would be the adverse consequences of diverting mulch away from fields. Research is being done on different biomass plants and chemical processes that could give better results.

The International Energy Agency estimates[source] fossil-fuel use at 388 exajoules per year worldwide, which may be expected to double or triple in this century. It also estimates that to supply 300 exajoules/year, a goal attainable with moderate effort, would require 7% of Earth's landmass, requiring forest clearing and insecticides and synthetic fertilizers. In comparison, 13.3% of the landmass is arable, including 4.7% already under cultivation.[source] The IEA concludes that biofuels can be an important means of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions on a global scale. For the US and Europe, though, given their limited free agricultural land and their high dependence on liquid fuels, the main effect would be switching from oil-rich suppliers to land-rich ones. Presumably, the benefit of reducing global warming would justify the higher cost.

Silver Bullets

Many other systems have been proposed: wave engines, tidal engines, and ocean-thermal-gradient engines, to mention only a few. People have suggested micro-hydroelectric power, installing small turbines on thousands of creeks and streams, but never have addressed the legal obstacles to extinguishing hundreds of species. Fusion research continues apace, but no projections are made regarding when it could become practical. Schemes have been suggested for energy storage, such as compressing air in caves, or building mammoth flywheels. All of these ideas are exactly where they were over thirty years ago: nowhere.

Hydrogen

But one idea has real potential: hydrogen. Presently, hydrogen use is hampered mainly by the low energy efficiency (around 30%) of converting water to hydrogen at ordinary temperatures.[source] There are more efficient processes, but they require high temperatures and are poorly suited to renewable energy sources. Alternatively, research is going on to improve the efficiency of photosynthetic production, currently around 2%.[source] If the efficiency could be improved, then there is a real future for hydrogen. Storage technology is ahead of production technology, and fuel cells are already proven. Hydrogen could be a fuel substitute and could well be the main element in future energy delivery.

However, there is a trap in something this attractive. For over thirty years, Americans have chosen to stay with fossil fuels based on the promise that something new and better was almost ready to displace the use of fossil fuels. The new and better something never materialized, with the result that fossil-fuel use now is threatening the planet's climate. Is it safe to continue this way, or should we look for other solutions that are available now?

Summary

There are two time-frames to consider. With present technology, renewable energy can displace a big part of fossil-fired electric power, but will lose that capability as the backup fossil-fired plants wear out. In the long run, the world must focus on non-fossil energy sources. Unless some form of bulk energy storage is invented, renewable sources will only be able to provide about ten per cent of the energy the US uses. Conservation, if pursued aggressively, could hold energy consumption to its current level.

The next few articles will take a look at nuclear energy.

Solutions to Global Warming: Part 1

In an earlier article we showed that CO2 from burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. So now we'll have a series of article on what to do about it. I'm going to present this from the perspective of the US. It's not my place to tell other people what to do about the problem, except insofar as we all will face the consequences so we all need to contribute to the solution.

The following information comes from the US Department of Energy, using data from 2005 for US emissions.[source]

The total emissions of CO2 for the US weighed in at 6009 million metric tons. The main contributors that are amenable to replacement are as follows:

Electricity generation from fossil fuels	2375 MMT
Residential use of natural gas	262 MMT
Gasoline motor fuel	1171 MMT

The remaining 2291 MMT is spread over a large range of agricultural, residential, industrial, and transportation applications and miscellaneous applications such as road pavements. Some improvements can be sought here, but most of the users already are economically motivated to reduce energy consumption, so we should only count on modest improvements. Here's a plot that shows where all the greenhouse gases are coming from in the US:[source]



Out of all these, electricity generation is where the greatest savings can be made, accounting for 40% of the total CO2 emissions.

Taking CO2 emissions as a whole, there are four options available: carbon sequestration, conservation, renewable energy, and nuclear energy. We'll cover the first two in this article.

1) Carbon Sequestration

It is possible that the CO2 could be captured and stored in some geological formation.

The problems with sequestration are that it's very expensive to pipe the CO2 from the power plant to the formation and pump it deep into the ground, and there's no way to be sure the CO2 will stay there. The scheme du jour is to bubble the gas into saline aquifers and hope the CO2 will form stable minerals there. No one knows what the capacity of the available aquifers is, or how to find out.

2) Conservation
Improving energy codes has gone a long way toward reducing greenhouse gases. Americans are using only as much energy per capita as they were ten years ago and twenty years ago. Meanwhile, energy consumption per dollar of domestic product has dropped about 40% since 1980. Of course, the US has shifted away from manufacturing toward importation in that same period, which accounts for some of the savings. Nonetheless, it's clear that energy codes can play a part in greenhouse-gas reduction.[source]



It can be stated with no fear of contradiction that people who live in affluent countries could reduce their energy consumption by large amounts. The problem with this solution is that there is a huge difference between can-do and will-do. People for the most part don't know how to quantify energy consumption. People drive motorhomes and put in compact fluorescent lights to balance their carbon footprints. People live in 8000-square-foot houses but recycle their wine bottles so it's all okay. An energy plan that depends on people giving up their big houses and their flying trips around the world and their motorhomes or boats or personal aircraft needs to be studied carefully.

What happened in the past was that alternative-energy advocates assured everyone that using fossil fuels was perfectly acceptable because new energy sources would meet the world's energy needs and switching over was only a matter of making some simple political decisions. But it turned out that the new energy sources weren't adequate for the task and continuing to use fossil fuels had tragic results.

In the next article we should look at some of those alternative energy sources and see what their limitations are.

Skepticism about Global Warming

The world is facing some tough decisions on how to deal with the oncoming effects of global warming, so it's right and reasonable that people are looking at the subject closely to make sure we don't dislocate people's lives inappropriately.

In the past, this has led to some unfortunate situations. A few people claiming to have scientific qualifications have made arguments that are demonstrably false. It also led to an embarrassing TV presentation in the UK which claimed that global warming was a conspiracy authored by Prime Minister Thatcher in which scientists lied for pay. The presentation showed falsified solar data, claiming that it matched global temperature history, and warned that Africans would suffer severe deprivation if they were denied fossil-fueled electricity.

Among the skeptics, one of the most important is United States Senator James Inhofe, the ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. One would predict that Senator Inhofe would examine the subject carefully. Representing an oil-producing state, and being a strong conservative with investments in aviation, the Senator also flies personal aircraft as an avocation. He and his staff have compiled an extraordinary treatise which must include just about every criticism aimed at the process by which the consensus on global warming was formed.

As we look through the arguments, some patterns emerge. The most substantive of the arguments assume that there can only be one cause of global temperature change; since solar activity was clearly the driving force before 1850, they conclude that it still is the sole driving force. This and the other scientific arguments repeat the false arguments mentioned before.

Of the remaining arguments, many contend simply that too much emphasis is put on dubious methodologies: proxy data and computer models. That's reasonable enough, but the compilation leaves out the fact that the proof of climate change doesn't depend on either of these, as shown in our last article.

Some of the critics don't challenge the science but complain about the management of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That's important to conspiracy believers but not to people more interested in the actualities.

The last group of critics don't challenge either the science or the politics, but warn that excessive alarmism could lead to mistaken decisions. Implicit in this argument is the contention that CO2's effects on the environment couldn't be very great.

The question here is, what is very great? We've only seen a temperature rise of 0.7°C (1.2°F) in over 150 years. Who cares? You can't even feel that! But mountain glaciers get a little less snow in the winter and melt a little faster in the summer. In time, the glaciers disappear and farmers who depend on snowmelt in the summer don't get it. Semi-arid parts of Africa that got just enough rain to grow some grass for cattle get less and tens of millions of people watch their livelihoods die. Beetles that never could get up a big population before because of winter-kill now can survive and increase gradually in numbers so they can destroy a forest. Cold-water fish don't tolerate temperature change and move to a different part of the ocean, disrupting their reproduction cycles. That's what we're seeing now: small temperature changes have big effects. What will happen as the temperature rises another degree? Or two degrees?

Maybe this is alarmism. If so, then alarmism isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Now that we've covered the evidence for global warming and the arguments against it, the next articles should cover our options for minimizing it.

Is Global Warming Real?

We'll get this one out of the way quick. Global warming is real indeed. Not only is the news replete with evidence of it (melting arctic ice, shrinking glaciers), the measured data show it.

First, let's look at the temperature data we have. One set of data comes from NASA [source] and the other is provided by Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change in the UK.[source]



The data don't agree exactly because (1) the NASA data shows the deviation from the 1951-1980 average and the Hadley Centre data shows the deviation from the 1961-1990 average and (2) the calculations were done independently so small differences are expected. We should bear in mind that the older data comes from spottier readings and is less reliable. The Hadley Centre data is shown both raw and smoothed. Now we'll look at the different factors that affect global average temperature, comparing them with the smoothed data.

Solar Variations

Sunspots receive plenty of mention in the popular literature and we have more data to look at.[source]

This is promising. Notice that the sunspots are lower in number, almost zero, in the period 1650-1700. There is anecdotal evidence that Europe and China were cooler then.[source] There also is anecdotal evidence of the same thing happening in the early 19th Century[source], although the Tambora volcano could have contributed.

Looking more closely, we see that the low number of sunspots around 1900 fits the lower temperature then, and temperature and sunspot-count both rise thereafter. There was more activity around 1960 that shows up as a temperature bump, and also around 1980-1990, that fits with a slight, stretched-out bump. So it seems clear that sunspot activity affects global temperature. Or, possibly, sunspots affect the irradiance and it's the combination that affects global average temperature. A suggestion under review is that solar activity diminishes cloud formation by influencing the intensity of cosmic rays, as shown in this figure:[source]

On the other hand, the temperature bumps are small compared with the upward temperature trend since 1900. Furthermore, if solar activity was the main driving force, then average temperature should drop after 1990 but instead it keeps going up. That means something else has become a stronger driving force since 1900.

Solar irradiance is the intensity of solar energy striking the earth and its atmosphere in watts/sq meter. It seems to follow sunspot activity, which seems reasonable. But it only matches the temperature changes about as well. [source]

Natural Greenhouse Gases and Atmospheric Dust

The gas emissions from natural vegetation are an important part of the atmosphere's loading, but the amount of land devoted to it hasn't increased. It's possible that emissions have risen as a result of global warming. Either way, natural vegetation can't be blamed for the temperature rise since 1900.

Volcanoes emit gases, too. We can do a quick calculation that shows volcanoes could never affect the atmosphere's CO2 concentration.

Volcanoes also emit particulates and aerosols, which reflect heat away from the earth and cause more clouds to form, causing further cooling. Data from the Mauna Loa Observatory shows the effects of volcanos since 1958.[source]

We can see that volcanoes reduced solar transmission in 1982 and 1991, but they don't affect the global-average temperature rise by much. The conclusion is that volcanoes don't affect global warming either way.

Heat Transfer from the Earth's Core to the Oceans

One way the Earth's core could heat the oceans is by undersea volcanoes. We can do a quick calculation that it would take around a half-million undersea volcanoes equal in size to the one at Mount Saint Helens in 1980 every year to account for the warming the oceans have seen since 1955. Even if the calculations are off by a factor of ten, it would take around five thousand such volcanoes every year just to account for ten per cent of the warming. And, there would have to have been no volcanoes before 1910. So undersea volcanoes aren't a major factor.

Another possibility is the extrusion of magma into the oceans at the edges of separating tectonic plates. But the USGS has found that the rate tectonic plates have been moving hasn't changed in the last thirty years from what it's always been.[source] So magma doesn't explain the recent warmup.

Artificial Atmospheric Dust

As is the case for natural particulates and aerosols, artificial particulates and aerosols have a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and by causing clouds to form. The temperature graph shows a sharp drop around 1940 until almost 1950, then a slow rise until 1980 or so, and after that a sharp rise. That fits with our expectations: industrial production increased radically during the war. Virtually no attention was paid to the resulting pollution. The postwar period experienced some relaxation in both production and pollution. About 1970, serious efforts were started to control particulate emissions from fossil-burning power plants, and the temperature graph clearly shows that global warming accelerated.

Artificial Greenhouse Gases

There are a lot of these that can be important: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are the most dominant. We need to consider their emission rates in order to compare their relative importance in the changing of the global average temperature.

The US Department of Energy has estimated their yearly emission rates and ranks them this way (2005 data [source]). Global data comes from IPCC's report for 2001[source]. All the rates are in million metric tons per year. These numbers are calculated, but show more precision than they should. Nonetheless, they show relative magnitudes.

		US	US (CO2 Equiv)	World	World (CO2 Equiv)
	Carbon dioxide	6009	6009	29223	29223
	Methane	26.6	612	323	7429
	Nitrous oxide	1.2	367	7	2072

Clearly, CO2 is the most important artificial greenhouse gas in respect to changing temperature. The present CO2 content of the atmosphere is 3,036,000 MMT, so the emissions amount to almost 1% of what's presently in the atmosphere. The CO2 concentration is rising roughly 0.5% per year, so about half is staying in the atmosphere and the other half is going somewhere else, mostly into the ocean. We have some measured CO2 concentration data taken from ice cores.[source]

This is our smoking gun. The CO2 concentration has risen from less than 300 parts per million all the way up to 383 ppm in 2007. Of all the factors affecting global average temperature, it's the only one that's been increasing since 1980, so it's the only one that can explain the temperature rise during that time.

What is especially troubling is that, before 1850, CO2 concentration has not exceeded 290 ppm in over 400,000 years.[source]

That's not to say that we can ignore the other greenhouse gases, but controlling CO2 emissions is essential to limiting global warming.

The Culprit

The evidence shows that solar activity and aerosols can influence global temperature. Before 1900, when greenhouse-gas concentrations were below 300 ppm, solar activity seems to have been the main driving force. Since then, greenhouse gases have become the main driving force.

The Skeptics: There are individuals who argue against these conclusions. Their claims been refuted many times but still get a lot of attention from media outlets. Read about their arguments.