Climate Climate & Energy

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.

Small wind in urban settings

I never really thought much about small wind's potential as a significant source of a city's electricity supply. Windmills in a urban setting? I just don't see it.

Didn't see it, that is, until I saw it. The other day I biked by 1303 Alabama St., in the Mission District of San Francisco. Softly -- very softly -- whirring overhead is a 1.9 kW Southwest Windpower Skystream windmill. The Choose Renewables resource estimator says that it's a class 3 wind site, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually higher. As any San Franciscan knows, the Mission can be very sunny and pleasant during a summer day, but on summer evenings, as the marine layer moves in, the wind just nukes over Twin Peaks and the South Mission/Noë area can be a wind tunnel.

The result, I expect, makes for propitious economics. The house also has a 5 kW SunPower solar system. California's system peak is shifting later and later, which is being reflected in PG&E's tariffs. The old E-7 Residential Time of Use (which is being phased out) had a summer peak of 12 to 6 p.m. The new E-6 has a summer peak of 1 to 7 p.m., and a partial peak of 7 to 9 p.m. In practice, that means that as the solar system's production winds down in the early evening, the windmill steps in and produces electricity that would have cost up to 53 cents/kWh if bought from the utility.

That's just a wonky way of saying that wind and solar are like peanut butter and chocolate: great on their own, but even better together.

Similarities between the skin cancer and climate change ‘scams’

I was recently reading The New York Times and saw a fantastic ad:

Recent research indicates that the benefits of moderate exposure to sunlight outweigh the hypothetical risks. Surprisingly, there is no compelling scientific evidence that tanning causes melanoma. Scientists have proven, however, that exposure to all forms of ultraviolet light -- both indoors and out -- stimulates the natural production of vitamin D. And research has proven that vitamin D protects against heart disease and many types of cancer, in addition to providing other important health benefits.

If you go to their website, you can read all about it.

The similarities between the "skin cancer" scam and the "global warming" scam are all too clear. First, according to this website, there is actually no evidence linking sun exposure with cancer. Amazing. I thought the epidemiological data nailed that connection decades ago. Boy, was I wrong! This is similar to the fact that there is no evidence linking carbon-dioxide emissions with climate change.