Geothermal Ballistic

Tuesday, 4 January 2011

Climate-change technology risks catastrophic outcome

Risky and unproven climate-changing technologies could have "catastrophic consequences" for the earth and humankind if used irresponsibly, according to a new report.

Yet without drastic further cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, a geoengineering solution may offer the only hope of saving the world from disastrous run-away global warming, experts warned.

A report by the Royal Society, Britain's leading academic institution, looks at the feasibility and potential dangers of technologies designed to cool the earth.

They include artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and spraying sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun's rays into space. The scientists concluded that, although some approaches were possible, they had not yet been properly researched and posed serious potential dangers for the planet.

Professor John Shepherd, who chaired the Royal Society geoengineering working group, said: "It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions we are heading for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases."

"Our research found that some geoengineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems — yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them."

Article continues: http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/other-uk-business/2009/09/01/climate-change-technology-risks-catastrophic-outcome-report-65233-24585797/

Saturday, 1 January 2011

Oceans Absorb Less Carbon Dioxide as Marine Systems Change

From: Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute, More from this Affiliate

The oceans are by far the largest carbon sink in the world. Some 93 percent of carbon dioxide is stored in algae, vegetation, and coral under the sea. But oceans are not able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide

released from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, a recent study suggests that the oceans have absorbed a smaller proportion of fossil-fuel emissions, nearly 10 percent less, since 2000.

The study, published in the current issue of Nature, is the first to quantify the perceived trend that oceans are becoming less efficient carbon sinks. The study team, led by Columbia University oceanographer Samar Khatiwala, measured the amount of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions pumped into the oceans since 1765.

Industrial carbon dioxide emissions have increased dramatically since the 1950s, and oceans have until recently been able to absorb the greater amounts of emissions. Sometime after 2000, however, the rise in emissions and the oceans' carbon uptake decoupled. Oceans continue to absorb more carbon, but the pace appears to have slowed.

The reason is based in part on simple chemistry. Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide have turned waters more acidic, especially nearer to the poles. While carbon dioxide dissolves more readily in cold, dense seawater, these waters are less capable of sequestering the gas as the ocean becomes more acidic. The study revealed that the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica, absorbs about 40 percent of the carbon in oceans.

Article continues: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6323

Saturday, 25 December 2010

How Clouds Over the Oceans Affect Our Climate

How clouds over the ocean affect our climate, and how climate change

may be affecting THEM, is not well known. There is no network of observing stations like on land, and climate models have not been shown to really simulate clouds well. They may be just too fine a detail for models that cover such large scale phenomenon as oceanic circulation. But clouds over the oceans have been thought be important in our understanding of what drives our climate.

In a study published in the July 24 issue of Science, researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego begin to unravel this mystery. Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.
The result of their analysis was a surprising degree of agreement between two multi-decade datasets that were not only independent of each other, but that employed fundamentally different measurement methods. One set consisted of collected visual observations from ships over the last 50 years, and the other was based on data collected from weather satellites.

"The agreement we found between the surface-based observations and the satellite data was almost shocking," said Clement, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami and winner of the American Geophysical Union's 2007 Macelwane Award for her groundbreaking work on climate change. "These are subtle changes that take place over decades. It is extremely encouraging that a satellite passing miles above the earth would document the same thing as sailors looking up at a cloudy sky from the deck of a ship."
Together, the observations and the Hadley Centre model results provide evidence that low-level stratiform clouds, which currently shield the earth from the sun's radiation, may dissipate in warming climates, allowing the oceans to further heat up, which would then cause more cloud dissipation.

"This is somewhat of a vicious cycle potentially exacerbating global warming," said Clement. "But these findings provide a new way of looking at cloud changes. This can help to improve the simulation of clouds in climate models, which will lead to more accurate projections of future climate changes. "

For more information: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/21575

Thursday, 25 November 2010

Global Salmon Study Shows Sustainable Food May Not Be So Sustainable

From: Science Daily

Popular thinking about how to improve food systems for the better often misses the point, according to the results of a three-year global study of salmon production systems. Rather than pushing for organic or land-based production, or worrying about simple metrics such as "food miles," the study finds that the world can achieve greater environmental

benefits by focusing on improvements to key aspects of production and distribution.

For example, what farmed salmon are fed, how wild salmon are caught and the choice to buy frozen over fresh matters more than organic vs. conventional or wild vs. farmed when considering global scale environmental impacts such as climate change, ozone depletion, loss of critical habitat, and ocean acidification.

he study is the world's first comprehensive global-scale look at a major food commodity from a full life cycle perspective, and the researchers examined everything -- how salmon are caught in the wild, what they're fed when farmed, how they're transported, how they're consumed, and how all of this contributes to both environmental degradation and socioeconomic benefits.

Article continues: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091124152803.htm

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

World is running out of oil--then what?

I think it is no secret now, when I tell you that the world is running out of oil. (See Hubbert's peak.) Up until now, most of our oil has been used to make energy (or as fuels). This has got to stop because the day is coming when oil will be more valuable than energy, and will be needed for other uses. (Should I mention global warming?) That brings up a new and timely idea.

If we think of using oil to make energy as a reaction:

Oil --> energy.

We should remind ourselves that the reaction is reversible, at least in principle:

Energy --> oil

There is an inefficiency involved in going either way. The existence of this reversible reaction has the effect of placing a link between the cost of energy and the cost of oil. Some examples:

1) The cost of oil can not be substantially lower than the cost of equivalent energy from other sources (allowing for inefficiency), otherwise energy production will shift to use of more oil. (Which just supposes that economics has more sway than common sense.)

2) The cost of oil can not be substantially higher than the cost of equivalent energy from other sources (allowing for inefficiency), in the long run, because man's inventiveness will allow oil to be made from energy.

The question then follows as to whether there are or can be practical means for making oil from energy.

We may say that we live in an exciting time, when the world has to face a transition from the "industrial age" when we have powered everything with fossil fuels. The daily advance of news on this, this summer, is quite surprising. The underlying question is, what will replace oil? Wind turbines, etc., make electricity, not oil. The question hasn't been very important until now, when we can see that we really are going to run out. There are maybe three answers to the question--

1) Biomass to oil, fuel, etc. An example is NREL's research on using the Fischer-Tropsch (or F-T) process to convert trash to oil--not the best approach. The direct conversion with pressure and heat is better (sorry, don't have the reference, now in pilot plant operation). There are many others, including my favorites: growing biomass at sea for conversion to methane, and producing "biodiesel" from low-value crop materials.

2) The darling of industry, converting coal (or natural gas, oil shale, etc.) to liquid fuels. This is already in use in one two-step process: "coal gasification" to synthesis gas, then coversion to long-chain hydrocarbons with the F-T process. This produces a very good-quality diesel fuel, or about anything else you want. Pretty rough on the environment, so only half a solution.

3) Efficient conversion of electricity or other high-quality energy directly to hydrocarbons. Most of the good alternate energy approaches produce electricity. Okay, I will list the best of these: wind, tide /wave, PV, and solar-thermal. A unique exception, a dish solar concentrator, can also produce high-quality heat (10,000 suns) at the focus.

Number three is exactly what I was talking about. It is the only one that makes sense but doesn't rely on photosynthesis. Notice that I have excluded hydrogen from consideration, as a replacement for oil and other liquid fuels. I know further that hydrogen can be made from electricity, and in turn can be used to make hydrocarbons, by the F-T process. This looks way too expensive and inefficient to get very far, in my judgement.

I was searching around on the internet last night, looking for new ideas on making synthetic oil or hydrocarbons--Ideas that would fall within #3. I found nothing! This topic, producing hydrocarbons from electricity or heat directly, is of great importance for the future of man. Though it may be a little early yet, this will be a major problem soon. When we (the world) turn our attention to it, solutions will quickly emerge. I see two paths:

1) Use of heat. Two reactions at high temperature have been mentioned in the past:

H2O --> HO + H --> H2 + O2

CO2 --> CO + O --> CO + O2

Removing the oxygen, the products together are "synthesis gas," which can be used to make alcohols or long-chain hydrocarbons by the F-T process. Or, either of the gases singly, with water or CO2, can be used to the same end.

There are surely many other known processes that I am unaware of.

2) Use of electricity to make hydrocarbons directly. This seems to be a largely unexplored field, having been at an economic disadvantage for the last century. Here, two approaches come to mind: plasma chemistry, driven by electrical power. A subset of this are the thermal processes mentioned in 1).

A second approach is well known, but not worked on currently, I think-- that is organic electrochemistry for making fuels. In principle, electrochemical reactions carried out in cells can make hydrocarbons and other organic materials. A few industrial processes already exist that do this sort of thing.

Michael Faraday reported an experiment that should be a point of beginning for research. He passed an electric current through a solution containing carbonate ion, and discovered that organic compounds were formed. (Formic acid or formaldehyde?)

I hope I have shed some warm light on Hubbert's peak.

Ernie Rogers

Monday, 1 November 2010

Can national parks be saved from global warming

From: Margot Roosevelt, LA Times

The federal government must take decisive action to avoid "a potentially catastrophic loss of animal and plant life," in the national parks, according to a new report that details the effect of global warming on the country's most treasured public lands.

The 53-page report from the National Parks Conservation Assn., a Washington-based advocacy group, contains a litany of concerns related to climate change in the parks, from the bleaching of coral reefs in Florida to the disappearance of high-altitude ponds that nurture yellow-legged frogs in California.

The group, which has offices in California and 10 other states, called on the National Park Service to come up with a detailed plan and funding to adapt to temperature-related ecosystem changes.

"Right now, no national plan exists to manage wildlife throughout their habitat, which often is a patchwork of lands managed by multiple federal agencies, states, tribes, municipalities and private landholders," wrote Tom C. Kiernan, president of the group.

Article continues

Sunday, 24 October 2010

NOAA Confirms Presence of Global Warming

This is a welcome piece from NOAA. It generally confirms that the global climate has warmed over the past three decades. Presently it appears to be on a slight downtrend for the past decade, but still well above the preceding norms. Enough to nicely eliminate the attempt to link it all to CO2 but not sufficient to claim that the general warming is now over.

We still have no particular comfort regarding causation but we do now have comfort that for the past thirty years we have been able to measure enough variables properly so that when the next cooling event come on, we will figure it all out.

I am more and more inclined to think that the global climate system if left undisturbed will rise to levels a half degree warmer than present. We have been undisturbed many times for great periods of time. Yet when disturbed, we are knocked back sharply.

The Arctic sea ice is now degrading heavily and we are losing huge swathes of freed multi year ice this year. As posted before, mass loss has been consistent for three decades. Because of that, I projected that the bulk would be gone by 2012 back in 2007. I did this before NASA came out and said the same thing (likely because they did not want to say it first) . The press has yet to pick up on all this

If we are now irretrievably losing a third or so of the remaining multi year ice this year alone then we are very much on schedule. Commencing in 20012 we will have a decade of open late summer waters throughout the Arctic with only swathes of one and two year ice to knock though from time to time depending on winds.

Global warming is 'undeniable', says NOAA

Jul 29, 2010

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/43369

The 2009 State of the Climate report, issued on 28 July by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is unequivocal: the past decade was Earth's warmest on record, continuing a 50-year trend.

The report is "an annual scorecard for the climate system", incorporating every type of measurement from around the world, says Tom Karl, transitional head of NOAA's proposed Climate Service.

In a conference call briefing for reporters, Karl said the 218pp report has 303 authors from 48 countries, all of whom worked under extreme time pressure to complete it in a timely manner.

Deke Arndt, of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, described the report as normally like the annual check-up one might receive at a doctor's office, "but because 2009 was the end of a decade, we wanted to take stock of a longer term view", just as one might at one's medical check-up in a decadal birthday year. To do so, the authors focused on 10 key indicators of climate change, using multiple data-sets to track each indicator over several decades.

The climate-indicators project was led by the UK Met Office. Peter Thorne, then at the Met Office and now with the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, told reporters that it is difficult to keep track of the massive amount of climate data arriving daily, so scientists decided to step back and look at the proverbial forest, rather than at individual trees. They identified the key indicators as:

· Near-surface (tropospheric) temperature

· Specific humidity

· Ocean heat content

· Sea level

· Sea-surface temperature

· Temperature over the ocean

· Temperature over land

· Snow cover

· Glaciers

· Sea ice

"Together with colleagues from around the world, we then went out and found, to our knowledge, every existing scientific analysis of global-scale changes in these indicators," Thorne said.

"These produced a compelling picture of our changing climate. Each indicator is changing as we would expect if the world truly were warming," continued Thorne. "The bottom-line conclusion that the world has been warming is simply undeniable."

Scientists at the briefing emphasized the role of the ocean, which absorbs over 93% of Earth's warming and, in particular, the role of the Arctic in determining global climate. The decline of Arctic summer sea ice over three decades, and especially 2000–2009, has been "dramatic", said Walt Meier of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and National Snow and Ice Data Center. In addition, accelerated glacial loss, especially in Greenland, was the major contributor to sea-level rise over the past decade, he said.

"Greenland has actually been quite a surprise for us, because of these new measurements, in terms of how fast it has been moving mass," said Meier. In short, he said: "The Arctic is not at all like Las Vegas. What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic, and that's one of the reasons why the Arctic is a big concern and why it's an indicator of what we expect to see in the future."

Asked whether human activity is the cause of the observed warming, Karl said that this annual report has traditionally been limited to observations, including of atmospheric composition. It does not seek "to make the link between the cause and what we observe," he said, "but this is the basis for the next step, because without this data, it's impossible to take the next step".

As in previous years, the 2009 report has been published as a peer-reviewed supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).