BlogTogether
Thanks for a kickass conference, Anton, Bora, Brian and The real Paul Jones, thanks so much for the great program and getting all these people together. Everything worked, wifi, lunch, dinner, all the projectors, all the microphones, the swag, wow! It was great to put faces to people, make connections, etc.
Technorati Tags: sciencebloggingconference
A guest poster at the oil drum throws a little water over cellulosic ethanol (pouring a little water over scotch – good, over raging hype machines, even better).
What’s the moral in all of this? If corn ethanol is marginal on an energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) basis, it is very difficult to argue that biomass grown to make ethanol will be any better. To be blunt, if there are concentrated stocks of waste biomass in place, such as at lumber mills, then biomass ethanol probably makes sense. Otherwise, it appears to be more or less equivalent to corn based ethanol – in other words, a wash.
Overall, it’s a good take down. I am always leery about believing farm/agriculture promises because there’s way too much subsidy money involved for people not to have a vested interest in promoting some new plant or the other. Unfortunately, I know nothing about farming 🙁 , so I can’t judge his assumptions.
Why can’t we just agree to consume less (energy that is, not scotch)
While developing countries face devastating droughts, floods and general mayhem due to climate change, it appears that melting ice in the Arctic could expose all kinds of mineral resources, including more oil to accelerate global warming, to the very countries, the US, Canada and Northern Europe that caused the bulk of the problem.
Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage – Yahoo! News
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.
Well, I have nothing more to say…
In case you did not know already, the IPCC is very close to releasing its report on climate change impacts.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate change ‘to hit poor hard’
Dr Parry outlined the four areas of the world now thought to be the most vulnerable to climate change. “The arctic, where temperatures are rising fast and ice is melting; sub-Saharan Africa, where dry areas are forecast to get dryer; small islands, because of their inherent lack of capacity to adapt and Asian mega-deltas, where billions of people will be at increased risk of flooding,” he explained. As a result, the most severe impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest countries, the report says. “The poorest of the poor in the world… are going to be the worst hit and are the most vulnerable in terms of impact of climate change,” said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. Mr Pachauri said those people were also the least equipped to deal with the effects of such changes. Scientists and government officials from more than 100 countries met through the night, trying to agree on the wording of a summary for policy makers. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft.
The U.S objected to the contention that climate change would cause severe economic damage in the United States, China wanted to reduce the certainty applied to these changes, and I have no idea what India would object to, since it stands to lose a great deal. But as usual, the people who have the most to lose are not the ones doing the negotiating, so I guess that is to be expected.
Paul Krugman takes on climate change economics, just read the whole damn thing, but I will summarize so you don’t have to wade through 8 pages.
In what follows, I will offer a brief survey of the economics of climate change or, more precisely, the economics of lessening climate change. I’ll try to lay out the areas of broad agreement as well as those that remain in major dispute. First, though, a primer in the basic economics of environmental protection.
Magazine Preview – Climate Change – Building a Green Economy – NYTimes.com.
First off, it is well written, aimed at simplifying the economics of pollution so most people can understand, what you’d expect from him!
Of course, he ends with the caveat that the political will to do this is going to be sorely lacking.
What do I think? While it pretty much encapsulates what I think of as the big picture approach, Krugman hand waves around the many personal changes in consumption, land use, urbanization, localization that all have to occur. All of that is included in “additional command control based changes”. I don’t necessarily believe in Homo Economicus, the rational human who responds to economic incentives. So we will have to, as citizens, agitate forcefully for local actions that set us in the western world up for reduced consumption and increased efficiency. In addition, we have to simultaneously support national level politicians that are serious about climate change and punish the ones that are not, so they can help enact the right national and trans-national policies.
Anyway, all in all, an excellent read.
Duke Energy, that is, not the Blue Devils!
The Supreme Court sure has a green tinge today!
newsobserver.com | Justices rule against Duke on pollution controls
The Supreme Court gave a boost today to a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing utilities to install pollution control equipment on aging coal-fired power plants.
In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled against Duke Energy Corp. in a lawsuit brought by the Clinton administration, part of a massive enforcement effort targeting more than a dozen utilities.Most companies settled with the government, but several Clinton-era cases involving more than two dozen power plants in the South and the Midwest are still pending. The remaining suits demand fines for past pollution that if levied in full would run into billions of dollars.
The justices ruled that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overstepped its authority by implicitly invalidating Environmental Protection Agency regulations in a way that favored Duke. The case now returns to the lower courts.
The appeals court’s decision “seems to us too far a stretch,” Justice David Souter wrote.
The enforcement program is aimed at reducing power plant emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide that contribute to smog and acid rain. Sulfur dioxide is the leading cause of acid rain.
The utility industry has long resisted installing costly pollution controls under the program called New Source Review. It waged vigorous campaigns against the program starting in the 1980s and more recently by battling it out with regulators when sued in federal courts.
Emissions increased from 6.2 PgC per year in 1990 to 8.5 PgC in 2007, a 38% increase from the Kyoto reference year 1990. The growth rate of emissions was 3.5% per year for the period of 2000-2007, an almost four fold increase from 0.9% per year in 1990-1999. The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios IPCC-SRES. This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario. Fossil fuel and cement emissions released approximately 348 PgC to the atmosphere from 1850 to 2007.
This is very scary news, and there’s more in the carbon budget for the last 7 years released here. It shows a total lack of leadership from the US, Canada, and Europe, countries responsible for over 80% of the historical anthropogenic contribution.