Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

If you think GW is a non-problem, then its you who've got a problem.No energy shortage? Seen any oil company advert recently? er you just said there was no energy shortage...thats just ridiculous.

Such as?



The Russians are talking about collecting He3 from the surface of the moon and combining it with deuterium in a rather neat fusion reaction on earth. It might be possible to do this. But its not going to fill your tank tomorrow is it? I find such complacency quite frightening.

American petroleum powered the tanks and aircraft that won WW2 for the allies. Germany lost their last big chance at the battle of the Ardennes because they ran short of fuel.

Now America imports nearly 60% of its daily oil requirement. All non OPEC countries have passed their peak oil production. Something like 2/3 of the remaining petroleum reserves are in the middle east. And you probably think the US invaded Iraq because Saddam had wmd.

We are just as likely to be approaching yet another ice age as a warming trend. How will you know what to do?

Well, in that case I must admit that my life experience counts here a lot.

And by that, I truely tend to believe more in a climate change towards warming than getting colder.

But since I'm a few years younger than you are, George, your experience certainly might be different.

yeah he was probably around at the last ice age

Re nuclear power, I think its an indication of just how serious the energy problem is that governments all over the place are looking to build more nuclear plants. They are very far from the perfect solution. They dont even qualify as zero carbon, because a great deal of CO2 is generated by their construction and in decommissioning, all of which should be taken into account over the lifetime of the plant.

Accidents are always a possibility, though improvements in design and operating procedures should make another Chernobyl all but impossible. However, the more nuclear stations there are, the more chance there is of something going wrong.

But more worrying is the proliferation of nuclear materials, in particular plutonium. Plutonium in the hands of al Qaida is the nightmare...

And we still have no really good solution to the disposal of highly radioactive waste. Burying it in the subduction zone of a tectonic plate sounds ok, but its hardly ideal.

Of course if we could get it off the planet and lob it towards the sun, that would be much better. Problem with that is you would need a highly reliable rocket system before you trust it with a few tons of nuclear waste.

But there is an idea which might just work...not as crazy as it seems at first. With new materials for construction such as carbon nano tubes, it might be possible to build the Space Elevator and gently and cheaply lift nuclear waste into space. Arthur C Clarke said it would be built approx. 50 years after everyone stopped laughing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Do you suppose that vast arrays of solar panels can be constructed without the production of CO2?

Medal fabrication and concrete construction involve some CO2 generation, whether they are used to build roads, office buildings for environmental police, gas turbine electrical power generators, or nuclear power plants. Nothing man made is a zero carbon process.

Apparently you are arguing for the extermination of mankind.

It's true Walter, I am probably older than you - wiser too. However, I believe you were alive during the most recent period of global cooling from 1947 to 1972.

The Germans lost because the ran short of fuel, said the peakoilist
They lost because they ran short of manpower, said the demographer
They lost because they ran short of weapons, said the gun lover
They lost because they ran short of warm clothes said the fashion designer...
When your only tool is a hammer, all things appear like a nail.


Europe import 90% of its oil, Japan 100%, so what ? As to ALL non OPEC countries passing their peak, that's a ludicrous claim and I don't know what your sources are. Brazil has just started tapping in its huge off-shore fields. Mexico has plenty of "non conventional" oil.
BTW, for years, the peakoilist like Campbell or Laherrere or Simmons were peddling their "peak-oil" doom porn. Want to see the cemetary the stupidest predictions of peak-oilers ? Just look at http://trendlines.ca/energy.htm

Maybe Bush was just applying the precautionary principle, like the warmers who want to take preventive action against GW

You are constantly repeating à la WWF the "problem" of nuclear waste. Have you calculated the volume of all US waste (or French waste which is much smaller due to the recycling choice) after more than 30 years of civil energy production ?
If you don't have the numbers right, your reasonning will be incorrect.

You were just using anecdotal evidence, hbg.
The poorest and the most environmentally harmfull countries are also countries which use the less energy and fossil fuels.
Europe and America cut down their forests at huge paces up until the 1900s. Now that they are richer, thanks to fossil fuel, they can give back land to the wilderness, make natural reserves, preserve species (forested area increases every year in the Northern hemisphere, be it in N America, Europe or Asia).
These are facts, check out the numbers.

It isn't difficult to do when you just have so - relatively - few forest left, isn't it?

No, there is no climate crisis other than the one in your head. There will be indeed an energy crisis in GB, even more if you are really serious in complying with Kyoto, but not in other parts of Europe, not in France. And certainly not in the US, China or Australia.

"The European Union has established by fiat that a two-degree rise in global temperatures would be quite dangerous. However, this data is not scientifically sound" Yuri Izrael, Vice Chairman of the IPCC

So you would disagree with the activist campaign "stop climate change" or with Margaret Beckett who said "we need to show that tackling climate change is about saving the human" or "we must form a collective effort to achieve climate security" or with Miliband's endorsement of the campaign "stop climate chaos" ?

It's difficult when the country is poor and not relative to the already deforested land. When you have no fertilizer for intensive and ultraproductive agriculture, no animal food source other than grazing, no burning fuel other than wood, the pressure on nature is intense and the forest shrinks. That's what happens to many African countries, to Madagascar (I was there, the damage done to its forest to feed people is heart wrenching), to Haiti, to many parts of Indonesia or the Philipines.
On the contrary, the advance of forests in the Nord hemisphere is a fact, not a very known fact to the general public and an inconvenient truth for the environmental activists (like the fact that atmospheric pollution has greatly decreased in rich industrialized countries).

Since Germany is in the northern hemisphere - and I've most knowledge about my country only - this remark is - at the least - ignorant of what actually happens.

(In Germany 29 % of the territory are covered with forest [out of which 70% are used commercially].)

I have my sincere doubts about it ingeneraliter as well - you certainly can provide sources, can't you, miniTAX?

minitax, you accused the British of being hysterical, but I detect a note of hysteria in your posts of late, even if not hysterically funny.

First, no one doubts peak oil anymore. Governments dont. Oil companies dont, and an increasing number of the general public dont. Its just the timing that is in doubt. It ranges from NOW to 2030 or so, depending on who you listen to. Its the sort of phenomenum we cant predict precisely, and probably wont be able to pin it down until we have passed it. But even so, 25 years is not a long time ahead.

A few "flat earth" economists still believe oil supply is dependent on demand and price, but petroleum geologists know better.

As for GW being a figment of my imagination, or whatever it was you said, that is rather typical of some of the silly things you have been coming out with lately.

George, you are of course correct that all human activity generates CO2. The manufacture and fabricating of concrete structures generates a lot. As does the manufacture of solar panels or whatever. All I was saying is that to get an accurate measure of the carbon footprint of any endeavour, you have to take into account not only the carbon dioxide produced during its lifetime, but also the CO2 generated in building or manufacture and in disposal or decommissioning.

I was not arguing for the extermination of mankind.

Just looked up some forestry-operation-history sources (that's an advantage when you sit in an univeristy library :wink: ):
the above numbers are about the same as ther were at the end of 14th century.
With one main difference: now we have got mostly fast growing fir trees instead of the original beech and oak tree forest.

New forests haven't been planned since ages .... exactly since 18th century.

Walter, the fact that the forest surface is now the same than in the 14th century (which I seriously doubt) does not refute my claim that it has dramatically shrunk up until the start of 20th century.
It reminds me of the high school German classes where I was told that "reuth" is in the name of plenties of places in Germany, the most famous being Bayreuth, "reuth" meaning a"clearing" or a place removed of its trees. And all over Europe, you have the same suffix: reid or ried in the south or England, rode, rade in the North (roed in Denmark). Massive deforestation in preindustrial Europe or North America is not a myth but was real.

As to the forested land, here is my source : it doesn't show long series but you can easily see nearly all rich northern countries have increased the forest percentage over the past years... with the notable exception of Germany, maybe because you chose to use more renewable or organic food, who knows :wink:
BTW, GB has only 10% of forested land. Maybe that's why they get so worried about the environnement

Recruiting plankton to fight global warming

By Matt Richtel Published: April 30, 2007


SAN FRANCISCO: Can plankton help save the planet?

Some Silicon Valley technocrats are betting that it just might. In an effort to ameliorate the effects of global warming, several groups are working on ventures to grow massive floating fields of plankton intended to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and carry it to the depths of the ocean. It is an idea, debated by experts for years, that still sounds like science fiction ?- and some scholars think that is where it belongs.
But even though many questions remain unanswered, the first commercial project is scheduled to get underway in May when the WeatherBird II, a 115-foot research vessel, heads out from its dock in Florida to the Galapagos and the South Pacific.

The ship plans to dissolve tons of iron, an essential plankton nutrient, over a 10,000-square-kilometer patch. That's equivalent to 2.47 million acres (3,861 square miles on land or 2,912 nautical square miles). When the trace iron prompts growth and reproduction of the tiny organism, scientists on the WeatherBird II plan to measure how much carbon dioxide the plankton ingests.

The idea is similar to planting forests full of carbon-inhaling trees, but in desolate stretches of ocean. "This is organic gardening, not rocket science," said Russ George, the chief executive of Planktos, the company behind the WeatherBird II project. "Can it possibly be as easy as we say it is? We're about to find out."



For Mr. George, this is not just science and environmentalism but business, possibly big business. Around the world, new treaties and regulations are forcing corporations to look for ways to offset their carbon emissions, and Planktos and its competitors may be able to charge millions of dollars for their services.

And that is where this science project takes on a Silicon Valley twist, and a healthy dose of scientific skepticism. Planktos ?- along with Climos, a competitor started by a former dot-com millionaire whose mother is one of the nation's top oceanographers ?-wants to commercialize ocean fertilization.

Their efforts underscore a growing effort to pull carbon from the atmosphere. Solutions include planting or restoring forests and ?- once many economic and technical obstacles are overcome ?- capturing tons of carbon from coal burning for electricity and oil refineries, piping it back underground or burying it under the ocean.

The technological solutions are starting to come from Silicon Valley, where investors and innovators are turning to environmental businesses. They are investing, too, in fossil fuel alternatives like wind, solar and ethanol power.

The financial returns for reducing carbon could be considerable, said Daniel M. Kammen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

In Europe, where there is a market for carbon credits, it is now worth only $2 to offset a ton of carbon emissions. But not long ago, that figure was $35, and it is expected to rise again as the limits imposed under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming start to bite. Planktos claims it can make a healthy profit if it receives $5 a ton for capturing carbon dioxide.

"The cost of offsetting carbon through these technologies is less than the cost of building solar panels or windmills," Mr. Kammen said. "There's no question that this is going to grow," he said of various carbon offset strategies.

But the question in the case of iron fertilization is whether the exuberance and marketing spirit of Silicon Valley and its can-do attitude are getting ahead of scientific reality. And some oceanographic experts say that there is a risk of doing more harm than good from artificially stimulating plankton growth in the ocean.

It is widely accepted by scientists that dumping iron in certain areas of the ocean can cause plankton to bloom. But there is considerable skepticism over whether doing so will lead to long-term absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Mr. Buesseler said that while carbon might be absorbed initially, there was ample evidence that when the plankton was eaten or decomposed, at least some of the carbon wound up going back into the atmosphere. The level of absorption depends on how much of the resulting mass of plankton sinks to the sea bed.

And some scholars in the field are concerned that creating plankton blooms could release methane and nitrous oxide, which might increase greenhouse gases. "There are some potentially dangerous side effects," said Paul G. Falkowski, professor of geology and marine science at Rutgers University.

Mr. Buesseler has organized a conference for the fall to bring together the experts in ocean fertilization to assess the years of research in the field and see what might be done to further it. He also wants to explore the policy issues; one unresolved question is whether regulatory bodies will even endorse iron fertilization as a valid means of carbon sequestration that would be allowed under any so-called cap-and-trade system to limit global warming gases.

Many scientists, even those who see long-term promise in the approach, worry that the commercial and political pressures are accelerating the programs too quickly. But others say that such pressure might not be an entirely bad thing.

"The marketing is pushing us forward faster, saying, 'Damn the science,' " Mr. Buesseler. But the vastly heightened concerns about global warming that are driving the market, he said, make it worth the effort. "I'm willing to consider it," he said, "when I consider the consequences of doing nothing."

Enter Mr. George, 57, the founder of Planktos, based in Foster City, Calif., just south of San Francisco. After working as an environmental consultant in Canada, Mr. George came up with the Planktos concept in 1997, the same year as the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty, which the United States refuses to participate in, that has driven most carbon-reduction regulations so far.

In addition to the iron fertilization project, Planktos also has a subsidiary, KlimaFa, which has begun a 10-year project to plant a quarter of a million acres of new forest in Hungary.

Mr. George said his goal was broader than mitigating carbon emissions. He said he also wanted to restore stores of plankton that had been lost as climate change led to less iron being deposited from the land into oceans.

The efforts of the WeatherBird II, he said, do not assume that the science is ready for commercialization but they are intended to provide research that could prove its effectiveness. And he agrees with many scientists and environmentalists that carbon sequestration is only one element in the effort to mitigate global warming, an effort that will still require lowering the use of fossil fuels.

Still, he asserts that many of his scientific critics are expressing doubts about the commercialization of ocean fertilization because of their own self-interest in maintaining a steady flow of research dollars for their own projects.

The scientists "have an enormous vested interest in preserving this as a research topic alone," he said. "If this subject remains in academia for the next 10 or 20 years, it will certainly get a bunch of senior scientists on to retirement age, but it won't do much for the planet."

Some prominent scientists, though, are beginning to get involved in the commercialization efforts. One of them is Margaret S. Leinen, former assistant director for geosciences at the National Science Foundation, who is now the chief science officer of Climos.

Ms. Leinen's connection to Climos is not just professional, but personal. She is the mother of Dan Whaley, the founder of the company. Mr. Whaley made his name and fortune during the dot-com boom, founding GetThere.com, a travel site that went public in 1999 and was bought by Sabre for $750 million in 2000.

Mr. Whaley has been slowly putting together a panel of scientific advisors, which now includes the former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the director for the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Mr. Whaley declined to discuss the plan or timetable of Climos to do its own commercial project. Nor will he say definitively when and how Climos will provide proof to the market that it can use ocean fertilization to provide a long-term offset to carbon in the atmosphere.

That did not stop him, though, from a dig at his competitors at Planktos.

"Whoever is serious about this needs to engage the participation of and bring along the leaders in the oceanographic community," Mr. Whaley said, "not just sail around throwing iron off the back of a boat."

Those are ludicrous claims you can only find on peak oil web sites. Show us a single oil company document or a government (from the energy department, the ones who know what they talk about) official declaration which support what you said. If you can't, what you say is just what peakoiler have repeated for nearly 20 years : unfounded hysteria from people with a near religious attraction for catastrophy propheties. (I gave earlier a link to trendline.ca which has plotted different prediction from EIA, IEA, Total, Exxon...).