Climate Climate & Energy

Or is that geoengineering at work?

A new study shows that geoengineering should work. Just not exactly how we imagined:

Geoengineering could indeed cool the atmosphere, ecologist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, and colleagues conclude in their new analysis. The team examined the impact of 11 possible projects over the next century using computer simulations and assuming trends in greenhouse-gas emissions will continue unchecked.

The good news is such measures would be effective even if undertaken decades from now, the researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The bad news is that in all cases studied, reducing solar radiation would also shift global rainfall patterns, potentially drenching some areas and parching formerly productive agricultural land. Worse, the simulations predict that if the atmospheric fiddling suddenly stopped, the warming would accelerate dramatically -- possibly to 20 times the current rate -- because CO2 would still be accumulating.

Credits will be auctioned and limits tightened

This is extremely heartening: Europe is moving toward making significant changes to its emissions-trading system that could force large polluters to pay for most, if not all, permits to produce climate-changing gases, European officials said Monday. Although the European carbon-trading arrangement is considered to be among the world’s most functional, the countries that administer it […]

Why we gotta knock solar?

Can we please, once and for all, stop decrying solar energy for being too area-intensive? See, for example, the oft-cited statistic that to power its economy, the U.S. would need "10 billion meters, squared, of land." America isn't exactly short on square meters, and awfully sunny ones at that. But 10 billion square meters sounds a lot bigger than it really is.

10,000 square kilometers (100km x 100km) form a square you could drive around entirely, at legal highway speeds, in four hours. (Less if you speed.) 10,000 square kilometers is also roughly one-fortieth the area that the human species has already occupied for hydroelectric reservoirs -- all to produce, according to the IEA, 15 percent of current global electricity demand. (This certainly overstates the efficiency of large dams, which do not produce 100 percent of the world's hydroelectric power.)

Get that? For vastly less space than we already consume for the pittance we get from hydroelectric dams, we could power the world. Space is not the limiting factor -- and soon enough, cost won't be either. Which will leave mulish stupidity the remaining roadblock.

Conservatives like Bush’s climate plan because greens don’t

The conservative National Review likes the president’s new climate change strategy. Not because it will work to reduce emissions, mind you. Because it irritates environmentalists and Europeans.

Stormy weather ahead

Well, we might find out, according to an exclusive from The Oil Drum and Chuck Watson of KAC/UCF, also using a weather blog, where Margie Kieper writes:

An unusual event is happening over the next 48 hours, as the first tropical cyclone with hurricane-force winds, and major hurricane-force winds at that, is approaching the Gulf of Oman, to strike the eastern coast of Oman, curve northward, and make landfall on the coast of Iran. In the tropical cyclone best tracks and the modern era of weather satellites, there is no record of such an occurrence.

As the Oil Drum writer comments:

Still a Great Wall to progress

On the heels of Bush's bluster of the week, China today released its first comprehensive plan for climate change. But as the NY Times reports, it too isn't much to sing about. Said Ma Kai, head of China's National Development and Reform Commission:

Our general stance is that China will not commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets, but that does not mean we will not assume responsibilities in responding to climate change.

Thus, the plan calls for improving energy efficiency, but doesn't include any hard caps on carbon emissions.

This is pretty scary news, since by now we all know that no matter what the rest of the world does, we sink or swim with the decisions of China, and in the near future, India. On one hand, it's hard to blame China for protecting its booming economic growth -- after all, per capita, China still consumes only a fraction of the energy we do. On the other hand, the rationale seems myopic at best. Said Ma:

The ramifications of limiting the development of developing countries would be even more serious than those from climate change.

But with experts predicting vast numbers of climate refugees from the Yellow River basin due to shrinking glaciers, a sharp decline in arable land, and consequent overcrowding of the cities (with no food to eat), it's hard to imagine what that "more serious" would look like.

Or As We Like to Call It, Inept Development

Clean Development Mechanism comes under fire for incompetence World Environment Day not depressing enough yet? Check this out: the Clean Development Mechanism, a key emissions-reduction program under the Kyoto Protocol, is riddled with incompetence, rule-breaking, and possible fraud, The Guardian reports. The CDM allows nations to fund green-energy projects in developing countries instead of slicing […]

More on nuclear shillery

A while back I mentioned a great article by Diane Farsetta about the nuclear industry’s big PR push and the gullibility of the journalists covering it. Now there’s a similar piece in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, from Amanda Witherell, and it contains this delightful tidbit: A survey by Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at […]

Reflections from the scene of this weekend’s G8 protests

Michael Levitin is a freelance journalist living in Berlin. He has written for Newsweek, Slate, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Tuesday, 5 Jun 2007 ROSTOCK, Germany If you dress head to foot in black, set cars on fire, launch stones and beer bottles at police, and brave hand-to-hand scuffles amid clouds of tear […]

A concise introduction

The great question about wind is intermittency, and the great answer is energy storage. There are a number of energy storage technologies out there; I suspect the right storage mechanism will differ from region to region. One of the most interesting storage options out there is pumped hydro. The concept is pretty simple: you build […]