Army Corps climate efforts in New Orleans may not be enough

No one wants to see this again — but can post-Katrina protection efforts keep the Big Easy safe? Photo: NOAA...

Cogeneration and ethanol production

I am not the biggest fan of corn ethanol. But I am the biggest fan of cogeneration, also known as combined heat and power, or CHP (well, maybe the second-biggest fan). It is probably the single most overlooked strategy for sharply cutting greenhouse-gas emissions while reducing overall energy costs.

Now a new EPA report finds that running an ethanol plant on natural gas CHP can, with the right design, result in negative net CO2 emissions (click on figure to enlarge).

Important caveat: "Impact of Combined Heat and Power on Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in the Dry Mill Ethanol Process" (PDF) does not examine the energy consumed (or emissions generated) from growing and harvesting the corn or from transporting the corn or ethanol. Still, with CHP, corn ethanol can actually generate significant CO2 reductions compared to gasoline.

If Congress is serious about promoting ethanol in a manner that actually reduces GHGs, they should require all new ethanol plants to cogenerate.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With amusing results

Tackling the biggest source of climate confusion

Avoiding catastrophic global warming requires stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations, not emissions. Studies find that many, if not most, people are confused about this, including highly educated graduate students. I have personally found even well informed people are confused on this point and its crucial implications.

We need to cut emissions 50 to 80 percent below current levels just to stop concentrations from rising. And global temperatures will not be stabilized for decades after concentrations are stabilized. And of course, the ice sheets may not stop disintegrating for decades -- and if we dawdle too long, centuries -- after temperatures stabilize. That is why we must act now if we want to have any reasonable hope of averting catastrophe.

One 2007 MIT study, "Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults' mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter," concluded "Low public support for mitigation policies may be based more on misconceptions of climate dynamics than high discount rates or uncertainty about the risks of harmful climate change."

Here is a great video clarifying the issue, which you can send to folks. It is narrated by my friend Andrew Jones:

If you want to play the simulation itself, go here. They make use of the bathtub analogy: While atmospheric concentrations (the total stock of CO2 already in the air) might be thought of as the water level in the bathtub, emissions (the yearly new flow into the air) are the rate of water flowing into a bathtub.

Seed-savers and greens unite to challenge Monsanto’s latest cash cow

For years, candy makers and other industrial food manufacturers refused to use genetically modified sugar, fearing a consumer backlash. Photo:...

Umbra on staying positive

Dear Umbra, I am a new but faithful reader of your excellent column. I’ve learned a lot, but one thing...

Today: Christopher Castro

In previous editions of the "Inhofe 400," we found one skeptic whose only qualification for being a "climate expert" was to have written an op-ed and another who argues that climate change must not be happening because God would never allow it.

We also found some economists who don't seem to doubt that humans are causing the climate to change.

Today's "skeptic," Prof. Christopher L. Castro, is a bonafide atmospheric scientist, so he clearly has relevant expertise on his resume.

I emailed Prof. Castro about being on this list, and he replied:

Since I'm asked about this often, my "official" position on global warming is given in my series of lectures I present in NATS 101 (accessible via my website link). You are free to quote my position from that if you like.

I went on his website and found these quotes from this lecture (MS PowerPoint file, slides 3 and 4):

How will the auction vs. allocation debate affect power prices?

Last January, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) convened hearings on the ways allocation of CO2 permits under a cap-and-trade system will impact power prices and utility profit margins. The short version, drawn from the evidence of Kyoto and other systems that have given credits away for free, is that while free allocations lower power prices in theory, in reality prices rise just as much as they would otherwise -- but they increase margins for exempt generators (i.e., coal plants). Indeed, one of the great criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol has been that it has directly led to increased profits for Europe's old coal plants.

Since then, there has been a growing chorus from (coal-heavy elements within) the electric sector arguing that utility regulations compel them to pass along any operating savings to the rate payers -- and therefore, that free allocations really do ensure lower power costs. (See here for more details on the "pass-throughs" innate to modern utility regulation.)

So on the one hand, we have the paper trail from Kyoto, and on the other hand, we have what would appear to be a pretty robust theory based on modern utility law. Who's right?

The short version: facts on the ground trump theory. The longer version is below the fold.

Ecosystems are nonlinear

Here's a disturbing study that seems to mimic nothing so much as my mother-in-law's theory that small brownie pieces cut from the edge of the remaining mass of brownies left in the pan ("the efficient frontier," an economist might call it) don't have calories, because each little tiny mini-slice hardly changes the amount of brownie left at all.

On the one hand, the example cited is not particularly objectionable: Researchers claim to have found a mangrove where you can remove 20% of it with little reduction in flood control capacity -- meaning you can use that 20% for factory farmed shrimp and such.

The attitude of this article is in sharp contrast with that of Aldo Leopold and others, who would suggest that recognizing nonlinearity is a good first step, but that wisdom, or even an approximation of it, doesn't begin until you recognize that this ...