Climate Climate & Energy

Why did Nature run Pielke’s pointless, misleading, embarrassing nonsense?

The usually thoughtful journal Nature has just published a pointless and misleading -- if not outright dangerous -- commentary by delayer-1000 du jour, Roger Pielke, Jr., along with Christopher Green, who, as we've seen, is another aspiring delayer.

It will be no surprise to learn the central point of their essay, ironically titled "Dangerous Assumptions" (available here [PDF] or here, with a subscription), is: "Enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at acceptable levels." This is otherwise known as the technology trap or the standard "Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah" delayer message developed by Frank Luntz and perfected by Bush/Lomborg/Gingrich.

The Pielke et al. analysis is certainly confusing, which is not surprising given that the subject matter is arcane: the appropriate baseline for emissions scenarios in climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What is surprising is that Nature would run a piece that comes to a conclusion not only at odds with its own analysis, but a complete reversal from the conclusion of standard delayer analyses just a few years ago:

Five years ago the American Enterprise Institute "proved" that the lowest IPCC emissions projection is too high, and they backed up their conclusion with actual 1990s data, whereas Pielke, Wigley, and Green have "proven" that the highest IPCC emissions projection is too low, and they backed up their conclusion with actual data from this decade.

Hard to believe, but true. And they say you can't make this stuff up. Well, maybe you can't. But the delayers can.

This piece is an embarrassment to Nature's reputation as a leader on climate issues, and it suggest that the editors (and reviewers) didn't actually understand what they were reading.

In this post I will endeavor to explain what's so incredibly pointless about the piece, flawed about the analysis, embarrassing and misguided about the conclusion. Regular readers of this blog know why the technology trap is dangerous (it leads to delay, which is fatal to the planet's livability). This can't be done briefly. You should probably read my recent posts "Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible?" and, possibly, "The adaptation trap 2: The not-so-honest-broker" first. Oh, and you should actually read the article. Come on, you know you are hot for this baseline analysis stuff. Trust me, you won't believe what these guys try to get away with.

Duke Energy CEO responds to climate scientist Jim Hansen

Dear Dr. Hansen:

I am happy to meet with you as you suggest in your letter dated March 25, and will work with my staff to find a time that is mutually convenient to discuss climate change. I am in New York City on a regular basis and also open to scheduling a special trip to meet with you. I look forward to spending some time together to discuss climate change and explore ways we can work together on this critical issue.

I enjoyed attending your presentation on climate change at Queens University last fall. I have admired your work and leadership on climate change over the past several decades. Your contributions to this issue have been extraordinary.

I was pleased to read in your letter that you support coal projects that can capture and store carbon dioxide underground. As you know, this technology is not yet commercially available for large coal plants, and the federal EPA has not yet prepared the permits for this technology for large-scale coal plant demonstration sites.

I was surprised to see that you do not want us to proceed with our Edwardsport IGCC plant in Indiana. This plant will be one of the largest IGCC plants in the world and has received $460 million in local, state, and federal clean coal and economic development incentives. The project is located in an area with excellent geology to demonstrate carbon sequestration. It is one of the best -- if not the best -- site in the nation to advance and commercialize this technology. We intend to work with the federal government and other partners to offer the site to demonstrate carbon capture and sequestration as soon as it is technically feasible.

I was also concerned that you apparently continue to be against our Cliffside project. Since your visit to Queens University, we have worked extensively with the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources on our air permit, which we received last January.

The following is from a column by Keith Overcash, Director of the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, that was published in the Winston-Salem Journal 14 Feb. 2008. Keith provides an overview of the permit and the innovative approach used to make the Cliffside project carbon-neutral by requiring the retirement of 1,000 megawatts of older unit

James Hansen writes to Duke Energy on coal

This is a guest post by noted NASA climate scientist James Hansen.

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The captains of industry, perhaps more than anyone else, have the ability to solve the global warming problem, so they deserve attention. But different strategies are needed for a Mr. Rogers or a Darth Vader.

Some may argue that Mr. Rogers, $28M/year chairman of Duke Energy, is just another executive focused on short-term profits, with any concern for his children and grandchildren directed toward their portfolios rather than the world they will inherit.

I have a different impression. Mr. Rogers attended a talk on climate change that I gave in North Carolina. That doesn't prove much. And the words in Duke newspaper ads ("Cliffside [coal-fired power plant] -- Good for the Environment and North Carolina") have the same ring as those of celebs and other well-to-dos who purchase "carbon offsets" to "balance" their carbon emissions. Mr. Rogers, in using the rationale that new coal plants are more efficient than old ones, is misguided, but he does not deserve the enmity that Darth Vader has earned.

(The problem, in the thinking of both celebs and Mr. Rogers, is failure to recognize that burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the air that we cannot practically get back. A large fraction of the elevated CO2 will remain for many centuries. Potential offset by growing trees is limited and that drawdown potential will be needed to reduce airborne CO2 back beneath the dangerous level, to avert centuries-long overshoot of the dangerous CO2 level [PDF]. We simply cannot put the CO2 from most of the remaining fossil fuels into the air. Most of the remaining coal must be left in the ground or used with CO2 capture and storage. It does not help to burn the coal more efficiently or more slowly, because of the long lifetime of the airborne CO2.)

Last week, I sent the following letter to Mr. Rogers:

Mysterious new pro-coal organization

ABECC

We’ll need a lot of Socolow and Pacala’s wedges

The short answer is: "Not today -- not even close."

The long answer is the subject of this post.

Regular readers know that the nation and the world currently lack the political will to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or even 550 ppm.

The political impossibility is also obvious from anyone familiar with Princeton's "stabilization wedges" [PDF] -- and if you aren't, you should be (technical paper here [PDF], less technical one here [PDF]). The wedges are a valuable conceptual tool for showing the immense scale needed for the solution (although they have analytical flaws).

Of course, if solving the climate problem were politically possible today, I would have found something more useful to do with my time (as, I expect, would you). But 450 ppm or lower is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. Indeed, that is the point of the wedges discussion, since they rely on existing technology, and the conclusion to Hell and High Water.

The purpose of my last post on the adaptation trap was to make clear that 800 to 1,000 ppm, which is where we are headed, is a catastrophe ar beyond human imagining, one that makes a mockery of the word "adaptation," that has a "cost" far beyond that considered by any traditional economic cost-benefit analysis. It is a rationally and morally impossible choice. So too, I think, is 550 ppm, assuming we could stop there -- which as I argued, we probably can't, thanks to the carbon cycle feedbacks like the melting tundra.

What needs to be done?

Potentially a long-term option for putting waste heat to use

RealClimate has a good introductory post on air capture, which they explain as:

The idea would be to let people emit the carbon dioxide at the source but then capture it directly from the atmosphere at a separate facility.

This is going to be a relatively expensive and complicated strategy for decades -- and, of course, you need a place to put the carbon dioxide. That said, a lot of work is going on to see if one can do air capture driven by heat.

Why does that matter? The world has a lot of zero carbon waste heat not currently being used for anything. Indeed, U.S. thermal power plants alone throw away as much energy in waste heat as Japan uses for every purpose! That's more than 20 quads. And that doesn't even count the heat thrown away in industrial processes. Now, the smartest thing to do with that heat, for the next few decades, is obviously either generate electricity with it or use it for heating buildings or industrial processes.

Transit investment should and will be a part of the peak oil solution

Joseph Romm has made a number of very good points in his new Salon piece (and accompanying Gristmill post) on the problem of peak oil. He is, in my view, quite correct that oil prices will continue to increase based on supply and demand fundamentals. He is right that alternative oil source development would be […]

Protesters arrested outside N.C. coal plant

Eight protesters were Tased and arrested after locking themselves to bulldozers at a Duke Energy coal plant in North Carolina Tuesday morning. Activists say the plant under construction is, in short, a terrible idea. “In the face of catastrophic climate change, building a new coal plant is tantamount to signing a death sentence for our […]

More on Roger Pielke, Jr.

In Part 1, we saw that ...

1. Adaptation as primary strategy for dealing with climate change is widely oversold.
2. This is especially true as atmospheric CO2 concentrations approach 800 to 1,000 ppm, a likely outcome if we listen to either the delayers or deniers.
3. A leading adaptation advocate and apparent delayer-1000, Roger Pielke, Jr., "labels adaptation what is in fact mitigation, and his idea of mitigation is apparently research into adaptation."

Let me elaborate on these points. The day before the dubious pro-adaptation L.A. Times piece, one of Pielke's fellow Prometheus bloggers, Jonathan Gilligan, pointed out, "if our political system stinks at managing floods, coastal storm risks, and fresh-water resources in the absence of anthropogenic climate change, why would it manage better if climate change does turn out to significantly increase the mean severity and/or variance of the distribution?"

Blogger Nathanael Greene takes on Philpott re: biofuels

The Natural Resources Defense Council evidently remains pretty sanguine about biofuels as a "solution to energy dependence and global warming." Over on the group’s Switchboard blog, senior policy analyst Nathanael Greene recently took exception to some unkind words of mine on cellulosic ethanol. I responded in the comments section. I hope a robust debate follows.