Asymmetrical Information

I think you mean India's 900 million.

What we have to do is start sequestering carbon - landfilling as much paper and plastic as possible to get it out of earth's carbon cycle.

Good post.

James

Paper decomposes in landfills just like the roots of trees after they are turned into lumber decompose to CO2. Plastic depending on the type may not decompose. Many plastics will decompose, but may take longer than celluose.

Check out Junk Science for a non-hysterical view of global warming (among other topics).

there are only two options: go back to a permanently horrific level until we can get the population down (but which would rebuild the need and desire for exceptionally large families, as kids become assets rather than liabilities again) or grow as fast as we can to innovate out of the trap.

Since high income urban economies make children a liability and create downward pressure on absolute population (developed countries will start depopulating in several decades), and low income rural economies make children assets and put extreme upward pressure on population (i.e. look at organic pop growth in north america and europe in 1800s), going back to 1900 is most likely a very bad and counterproductive thing. Also, you'd likely see a mass famine induced die-off as intensive farming is stopped and people revert to subsistence farming (not a good thing.. really not a good thing)

one more piece of evidence how environmentalists really just hate humanity. grow or die... and we can get out of a carbon economy, as long as we don't listen to the environuts (fission and fusion are great sources of non-carbon power, and are rather cheap as long as you throttle the enviro left and the trial lawyers)

Of course we *could* just switch to nuclear power for our non-mobile energy needs...

As for China's population, I doubt that relaxing the 'one child' policy (which is already riddled with exceptions) will have any significant effect. Too many urbanites who won't want to give up their standard of living, and increasing wealth tends to correlate strongly with smaller family sizes in a self-reinforcing loop. My main worry about China is it's surplus of young men without enough women to go around. If that's not a recipe for war, I don't know what is.

As you point out, the challenge is not in the 60% worldwide consumption reduction, which _would_ amount to the "buying a hybrid and doing some gardening" for us, but in the "sharing the remaining portion equally" part. Or more accurately, in the "2nd-world" (post cold war usage) countries forcing this to occur by demanding larger proportions themselves. This of course is just like the deforestation debate -- "Well we chopped down our forests to aid our development, but now that we've done it, we don't want you to do it so we can preserve the environment." It's not going to wash.

Except -- China and India have had greater pressures historically to develop sustainable consumption habits. Unlike the U.S., which grew up with an infinite expanse of empty land in the background, these countries have had to deal with the realities of soil exhaustion, tight water supplies, etc. for centuries. If you read about China's recent history (1950's on), you'll notice many instances of "progressive", environmentally-aware policies, from vast reforestation programs in the north to the unparalleled exploitation of hydroelectric power, generally far exceeding the scales of similar efforts in the west.

I think there will be some initial exuberant consumption as we are seeing now with China's rise in automobile use, but both population density and cultural/historical factors are going to mean they will never reach a U.S. level of consumption. In fact I suspect, if global warming does turn out to be a worry, we will be following the social/technological lead of nations like China and India, rather than the other way around.

Geo3:

Not in a conventional landfill. The materials are trapped in a relatively dry, anerobic environment, with no exposure to ultraviolet light (the main thing that causes plastics to degrade). There have been several recorded cases of researchers digging into decades-old landfills and finding intact hotdogs an corn cobs. My comment was intended as tongue-in-cheek, though.

Jane, everything you say is true and yet so widely unappreciated. Speaking as a leftist environmentalist, I think global environmental policy ranks right up with counterterrorism as the most important issues facing civilzation in the coming decades. But Kyoto (and other like-minded measures)? Please - the reductions would have placed member states at a competitive disadvantage while yielding no material benefit for the environment. The types of reductions necessary to achieve real benefits are far beyond anyone's contemplation, and far beyond realistic politcal reach (as they perhaps should be).

So we can't reduce our consumption enough to stave off any pending disaster, if any disaster is indeed pending. Since most the credible scientific evidence suggests that the globe sinply can't handle for long our rapacious current carbon consumption (much less future expected increases), the solution seems emminently clear: we MUST develop alternative energy sources. BIG MONEY needs to be thrown at this problem, and fast, if disaster is to be averted. Bush's push for hydrogen cars is a start, but it isn't nearly enough. Instead of Kyoto's stupid cuts in consumption, the multilateral treaties should be binding countries to contribute research funds (BIG $$$) in accordance with their current carbon usage.

Of course, a massive carbon tax would spur this along just as well (if not better), since private firms would be incentivized to develop alternatives, but I'm not sure the short-term economic damage that would be done is politically feasible -- not to mention the very real concerns about competitive disadvantage that would manifest if the tax were less than global in scope (which it most assuredly would be).

You need to be careful with any population projections - historically, no one has predicted this very accurately over any length of time, and the scary predictions of the 70's sure do not seem to be coming to pass.

Prosperity seems to slow population growth, and despite widespread inequities, more people are more prosperous than ever, which should help some.

Maybe China and India will lead the way with resurgence of nuclear power - pebble bed reactors seem to address many of the earlier reactor designs' problems, and population pressure may force them to be pragmatic enough to go this route.

I really don't expect to see any effective, centrally directed efforts to address these concerns - although I can believe a lot of misery will be created through trying. Why should future history show us to be wiser than we have been to date?

I expect to see people in the mass react to local conditions, including compliant and non-compliant responses to regulation and direction. Whatever happens will be examined through the retrospectoscope, and social 'scientists' will continue to dine out on their navel-gazing about the 'trends' they have 'discovered'.

If controlled fusion is developed, all bets would be off - especially if the much hyped 'cold fusion' can be brought about. This would be equivalent to the invention of fire, I think - what would we do with unlimited cheap energy.

I know, I ramble - but we're talking about the future history of everything, which gives me room to do that...

Although perhaps not hugely important, the US and the West provide a template for what a developed country should look like and developing countries absord this image through movies and tv.

So there is likely to be some externality in china effect if say the US cuts down today. The problem is that its not likely to be of the order of 60%!

First, the Chinese are already planning to go nuclear, using pebble bed reactor technology. They'll be able run as many hydrogen powered cars as they like, with no pollution.

Second, the idea that we can control climate is lunacy. We're not even able to measure climate, much less understand it or attempt to change it.

I believe that in one of his novels, Vonnegut described a future world where everyone was "made numb" below the waist. Perhaps that's how we'll solve the fundamental problem - population.

Jane: "On this weblog I've maintained (with tiresome regularity) that cutting our carbon emissions means drastically cutting our consumption.."

Um, no. Two words: Nuclear Power. A proven AND SAFE (zero human fatalities in the civilized world) technology with no carbon emissions. Deal with the waste issues with reprocessing and the fuel security issues with, well, security.

If global warming is real, we had better get over our anti-nuclear superstitions and taboos - and fast. Much of the rest of the Western world has done so already.

Of course, a massive carbon tax would spur this along just as well (if not better), since private firms would be incentivized to develop alternatives, but I'm not sure the short-term economic damage that would be done is politically feasible -- not to mention the very real concerns about competitive disadvantage that would manifest if the tax were less than global in scope (which it most assuredly would be).

Pretty much politically infeasible, yes, but mainly because of the "massive" clause. The US already has a successful emissions-trading program on sulfur dioxide; a similar system for carbon ought to be explored, which would keep market forces involved while letting the affected parties decide how they wanted to pass costs down the chain.

Prosperity seems to slow population growth, and despite widespread inequities, more people are more prosperous than ever, which should help some.

Yes, but prosperity seems to inevitably lead to significant per-capita increases in resource consumption, so significant that the environmental impact of prosperity replacing population growth is often effectively zero-sum (or even negative?).

Firebug:

I think you mean "in the West" vice "in the civilized world" in your post above. The Soviet Union was considered civilized at the time of Chernobyl - just not Western. Chernobyl was a part of the Soviet commercial (i.e., nonmilitary) nuclear program. There were indeed fatalities at Chernobyl.

Mace:

Believe the Vonnegut piece you're referring to was "Welcome to the Monkey House". It was a short story, if I remember correctly.

Current emissions are the wrong way to look at the problem. The right way is ask what fraction of total fossil fuel resources are we going to use. The total amount burned is what counts not the speed (within realistic limits)with which we burn it. Obviously we are going to have to eventually find a way to do without fossil fuels. The challenge is to find a way to do without before we are forced to.

Limiting current emissions buys time but won't help in the long run if it just delays the emissions.

Jane:

India's population is now estimated at approximately 1.065 billion vice 900 million.

Appropriate. It is, after all, the land of the Kama Sutra.

Mace:

Short story, "The Monkey House". And it was *not* a solution. Neither were the "Ethical Suicide" parlors.

And, there was a revolution, too....

Perhaps we need to make the problem bigger, as Ike used to say. I don't know what that might look like, but short of a global "28days Later" type of apocalypse, there's going to be more and more of us, consuming ever more and more.

How do we (as a planet-wide race) support that, without stripping the planet bare? How can we be more productive and less destructive? How can we figure out what the best direction is, and get the herd headed in that direction?

BTFOM.

But I think we'd better.

What, you guys never heard of "Soylent Green?"

"That doesn't mean that we shouldn't make this sacrifice. If global warming is going to devastate the earth, then we should go back to living in 1900, and it's no good sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la, la, la I can't hear you!" when the scientists point it out."

No, we shouldn't. If global warming is going to devastate the earth, then we should prepare to live elsewhere, or to live with the altered climate on Earth. We already live decently in a hostile climate; if the climate turns more hostile, further technological development is the appropriate response. It's highly unlikely to be worse than simply going back to living in the current hostile climate without the technology we've developed to deal with it.

I'm pro-nuclear power, but I always wonder why the enviros don't seem to be. Am I missing something? Isn't a lot fossil fuel (which I take to be the main C02 releaser) used to create energy that could be replaced by nuclear power? I'm not looking for Jetson cars - just lighting the house, etc. What, exactly, is the environmental case against nuclear power? (Assuming no Chernobyl). If we had massive increases in nuclear power plants, would we still be unable to address the C02 problems?

I think that the popular beliefs about global warming are generally overblown. Nobody really understands all the variables nor the positive/negative feedback mechanisms at play. The computer simulations are only as good as the theory that is numerically implemented. Plus the earth has been warming up for millenia following the most recent ice age.

If you happen to live in N. Dakota, you're probably hoping for global warming. If you live in Ireland, which receives much of their climate's warmth from the ocean currents that global warming is expected to disrupt, it's a big deal.

China and the U.S. have a lot of coal - it's such a cheap, readily available source of energy, it's only reasonable to expect that it will be used. I agree with James Shearer's assessment of looking at the total available fossil fuels.

I think raising US minimum mileage standards are the most direct way to address the problem while screwing with the market the least.

mileage standards kill people, period. lower weight per mile (at any given efficiency of an engine) = higher likelihood of death in any sort of crash (1 car, 2 car, n car) as there is less mass with which to absorb energy and less space to decelerate in..

nukes are hated because greenies fear technology, think that we should be living in stone age, and or have no understanding of the risks they deal with every day: a nuke plant can represent a concentrated risk, but is less risky than accepted technologies

plus, people equate nuke plant going out of control with hiroshima x 100, rather than a fire and some contamination (i.e. chernobyl) where the death rate would have been rather lower if they had told people to get out and given rescue/cleanup workers proper equipment instead of sending them in in shirt sleeves

US (military) has lost people in nuke accidents, due to design flaws in the fuel rods... guys were doing some tests in 50s/60s (tests.. where things always go badly with nukes...) and they put the fuel rod in too far, creating too fast of a reaction, water overheated, built up steam pressure and shot a fuel rod into the ceiling with one guy impaled by it. Post that accident, west switched to designs where the fuel was stationary and the damping element (control rods) moved up and down so that in crises you simply dropped the control rods and every thing shut down (rods lifted by electro magnet... if you lose power the magnet lets go, rods go down, reactions cease)

pebble bed is much much much better...

but it pretty much is all the lawyers fault why we don't use nukes...

Oh yes, we all know the only way to cut carbon emissions is to return to the stone age. No other power sources are even *physically possible*.

mileage standards kill people, period.

this statement is at best short-sighted and at worst just plain wrong. let's examine it more closely...

I suspect what you're alluding to is that a key way to improve mileage is to make lighter cars. I was referring to an increase that would basically force hybrids in the near term, and further down the line push it to a newer generation concept (hydrogen fuel cell is the current front-runner here). I'd guess you agree hybrids have no impact on car safety.

With respect to lowering the weight of the vehicle, this lowers the danger to the occupants of the heavier car only to the extent (in 2 car accidents, the most common and deadly) that the other car is lighter and at the expense of higher danger to the people in the lighter car. To reduce the danger to both cars, the best way is to lower the weight of both cars, as this reduces the total energy involved in the impact.

On the other hand (careful...we have serious confounding of variables here)for a given weight, larger cars increase safety... think crumple zones. Hence the best chance to increase safety is to use more low density, high strength materials. A great, quantitative paper on this topic that uses a lot of data to tease on the conclusions I tried to outline above:

www.scienceservingsociety.com/p/154.pdf

I have an idea. How about if we paint all our sky facing surfaces white to see what that does for global warming for 10 or 15 years. Then, we can ban SUVs and bovine flatulance.

Before you move into the cave and start chewing hides for clothes like the good ole days. You might like to read the attached article. Other articles I’ve seen in National Geographic a shows a graph of the atmospheric data of the last 400,000, with a periodic of atmospheric conditions almost identical in form every 100,000 years. We are on the high point that has typically gone into an ice age, the interglacial period. Hence the debate as to whether we’re going into or coming out of an ice age. Couple that with other articles about the recent sun activity and volcanic eruptions being major if not majority responsibility of the atmospheric conditions. The increased man made levels of CO2 will be a small factor in the coming years, and as noted in the NG article, can help extend the interglacial period, which normally lasts 25,000 to 30,000 years, we appear to be about half way through the cycle.

The only problems with nuclear power would be countries like Iran and N. Korea, alternative power sources must be addressed, such as solar energy and must be achieved for safe guarding the future. Man can affect his world, but the day after tomorrow will be the same as the day before yesterday. We aren't that powerful and nature is more resilient.

Just as a side note, modern landfills cap the top with a HDPE liner to collect the gases of the organic decomposition to be burned off or sold as a heating source. This further completes the elimination of waste by products.

Potable water is the most problematic concern that should be considered as urgent. Irrigation has depleted the water table in the west and pollution has greatly affected the water table in the east.

I quote:

Quote 1: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year..."

Facts: Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas (water vapor is).2
Carbon dioxide accounts for less than ten percent of the greenhouse effect, as carbon dioxide's ability to absorb heat is quite limited.3

Only about 0.03 percent of the Earth's atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (nitrogen, oxygen, and argon constitute about 78 percent, 20 percent, and 0.93 percent of the atmosphere, respectively).4

The sun, not a gas, is primarily to "blame" for global warming -- and plays a very key role in global temperature variations as well.

Quote 2: The AP said: "Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space."

Fact: Most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come from the burning of fossil fuels. Only about 14 percent of it does.5

Quote 3: The AP said: "Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases."

Facts: Most of 20th Century global warming occurred in the first few decades of that century,6 before the widespread burning of fossil fuels (and before 82 percent of the increase in atmospheric CO2 observed in the 20th Century7).”

Source links and foot notes on the page shown
(reprint from http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR032204.html)

Jane,
Somebody should run the numbers. I wonder if Lance Armstrong or the rest of the boys in the bike race all overuse their alloted 4kg of carbon just breathing hard for a 7 hour bike race? They burn some 7000-9000 calories during the race. I don't know chemistry well enough to run those numbers.

What this smacks of is linear thinking. Jane seems to continue with an assumption that we argued about a while ago that cutting CO2 is linear with cutting GDP. In other words, cutting CO2 emissions by 20% requires a GDP cut of 20%.

Car companies tried this when they argued that mileage standards killed jobs. They assumed every working building cars above the proposed standard would simply be fired because people wouldn't be able to buy such cars. Of course, in the real world a person who was planning to buy a 23 mpg car would probably end up buying a 25 mpg car if mileage standards were in place.

The cost of cutting CO2 can be dramatically reduced from the 'linear estimate' if we did it with market oriented policies. Emission trading has demonstrated that you can cut dramatically for a fraction of the projected cost. Even without trading a CO2 tax refunded against other taxes can drive energy into finding CO2 alternatives.

The environmental case against nuclear power revolves around two things: the current lack of a truly satisfying way to dispose of nuclear waste, and the scary failure modes of reactors.

What you will never hear from an environmentalist is a true cost-benefit analysis of expanding nuclear power capacity versus the alternatives. They only look at the negative consequences of a course of action, they don't care how large the positive consequences are in relation. Even if the positive consequence, in this case reduced fossil fuel use, is something they should be very happy about.

Until this changes, they will continue their slow fade into irrelevance.

This article tries to hold France up as a model for the US.

It cites figures which claim that since 1970 French consumption of petroleum has dropped by 21%. Meanwhile, American petroleum consumption has risen 16%.

Missing from the article are two salient facts:

1. During that period the population of the US rose considerably while the population of France fell.

2. During that period, economic output of the US rose precipitously, while the economic output of France stagnated.

I'm going to assume that you're replying to me, DOJ. I'm still wondering whether (assumed) acceptance of nuclear power would render Jane's argument moot. If TNT's numbers are correct (I have no idea), then we're talking about nuclear power replacing some fraction of 14% of the emitters of CO2. Is this enough, under our standard understanding of the phenomenon, to either stop or slow sufficiently global warming?

The word "power" has two different meanings. There's the meaning used by engineers and physicists, which refers to the rate at which energy is produced or consumed. And there's the meaning used by economists and political scientists, to refer to the clout of nations.

But it turns out that those are more closely linked than you might think. Historically speaking, there has always been an extremely close correlation between the amount of (physics) power which is readily available for use by the average citizen of a nation, and the amount of economic and diplomatic power of that nation in the world.

And in every case I know of, when the physical power used by a nation declines, its economic and diplomatic power does as well.

I know of no important case where a major nation significantly reduced its overall consumption of energy without economic and diplomatic decline.

The problems with nuclear power include:

1. There is no economical way to dispose of their waste. Yucca mountain is being built by the taxpayers not the power plants and it will just cover the waste that currently exists.

2. I've heard that no one wants to build new plants because there is no way they could cover their liability. No insurance company wants to or can handle the risk. Isn't this the market telling us something?

By all means, if you tax and/or 'cap and trade' CO2 the economics of nuclear power become better but it should stand on its market performance. I suspect some of nuclear's supporters on this list are taking their side because they are reflexivly anti-environmentalist just as environmentalists are depicted as reflexivily anti-nuclear.

Even if we never figure out an alternative to using fossil fuels (which seems unlikely for a whole host of reasons) there are still many solutions to global warming. Such as CO2 sequestration, man-made carbon sinks, climate modification techniques. There is even the possibility of reducing the amount of light the Earth receives from the Sun to balance a high greenhouse effect with lower insolation. Some of these things can be done now, like RIGHT now, some of them will have to wait for the future but are not really as difficult as some might think. On the whole I think it's a very serious long-term problem but also a very solvable problem without resorting to substantial reductions in quality of life.

Like that other shabby bugbear - Social Security - this Energy Problem will seem like an insurmountable dilemma right up to the day WE ACTUALLY NEED TO SURMOUNT IT.
At which point we'll invent a solution.
And, yeah: by "WE" I mean "humans" or, more likely, "somebody else's children."
You and I will have departed this green-yet-saddening world for more Elysian pastures long before the proverbial feces hits the fan.
We ought, indeed, to strive heroically against entropy, strain ourselves in a Sisyphean effort to leave naught but pablum and hedonistic puerility to the next generation.
Nevertheless, we will fail.
Our successors, in turn, will pick up the pieces, do what they can, or suffer what they must.
At some point, we betray our duty to the living if we fear only for the life of the world to come.

One of the exerpted quotes from TNT's post:

Facts: Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas (water vapor is).

At face value, this does not appear to be an intelligent assertion on the part of that quote's author. Earth has a fixed amount of water, but that water is largely out in the open (either oceanic or polar ice caps). The earth also has a fixed amount of carbon, but a significant chunk thereof is presently locked in fossil fuel reserves (oil, gas, etc.) or fossil structures (coral, limestone...)

In other words, one of those variables can be easily changed by human activity, the other far less so. Also worth considering is whether elevated temperatures due to carbon release would yield increased evaporation and hence a greater amount of suspended water in the atmosphere, possibly creating a positive feedback mechanism for heat entrapment.

Just one aspect among many of course, and by no means conclusive, but I find those sorts of spin quotes to be irritating.

2. I've heard that no one wants to build new plants because there is no way they could cover their liability. No insurance company wants to or can handle the risk. Isn't this the market telling us something?

That this country has too many trial lawyers?

Im not willing to sacrafice a single creature comfort in an effort to conserve fossil fuels or spare the enviroment the greenhouse effect. Most Americans run off at the mouth about the enviroment, then go and buy a new SUV. Its pretty obvious to me that there isnt going to be a substantial American push for alternative energy sources until either reachable oil is exhausted, or a much bigger tragedy than 911 occurs due to our energy policy. I do think nuclear power could be a large part of a solution. I think technology has made nuclear power alot safer than when 3 Mile Island melted down, but most enviromentalists scream like a hostage in an Iraqi decapatation video at the very mention of nuclear power. Even though we still have no safe way to permenantly dispose of nuclear waste, I think we have managed to render nuclear waste inert, but I read this some years ago, so I could be wrong. One thing about nuclear power that enviromentalists dont consider is that unlike carbon based fuel sources, nuclear waste is all contained in a centralized location, nobodys dumping it in sewers, or any of the other unenviromentally friendly disposal of waste.

That this country has too many trial lawyers?

Perhaps but there's plenty of non-nuclear plants that have managed to get built. Considering the links between various fossil fuels & things like asthma it would seem there's no shortage of non-nuclear cases for the trial lawyers. The nuclear plant, as long as it keeps its radiation under wraps, is more or less lawsuit proof.

The IHT article Steven Den Beste links to also rather sidesteps another significant point.

The IHT's words are (France)"...accelerated the shift of electricity production from oil-fired power plants to nuclear reactors."
What it omits is the percentage: IIRC France produces 77% of its electricity from nuclear power.

Just imagine the storm on the left if the US pursued that as a policy.

If you look it up, you'll find that fossil fuels release far more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear plants. But nobody wants to believe that because nuclear=hydrogen bomb in too many minds.

Too many people have too much ideological fanaticism invested in "global warming" for me to believe that it's a real problem, when the historical record shows much larger swings in temperature before man even existed than anything experienced in the time since "greenhouse gases" started being artificially created. The screeching about global warming without any principled theoretical basis for such a conclusion has reached the level where I now regard anyone who says he "knows" that the earth is getting warmer because of man's activities as an emotionally blinded liar.

IMO, anyone who truly wants to live like it's 1900 in the USA is probably already doing so. For the rest of us, going back isn't an option.

What's missing from an otherwise excellent post is that technology can also SAVE energy versus our former way of doing things. We can poo-poo things like compact florescent bulbs as insignificant, but returning to former sources of indoor lighting like whale-oil lamps, candles or kerosene certainly isn't the answer. To use another example directly from this post, heating your water on the stove would use MORE energy per gallon of water than using a modern water heater. The only savings would come from using less hot water because it's harder to get.

" Its pretty obvious to me that there isnt going to be a substantial American push for alternative energy sources until either reachable oil is exhausted, or a much bigger tragedy than 911 occurs due to our energy policy."

That's why we aren't going to be leading this effort, nor will Europe. China, and perhaps India, will.

"One thing about nuclear power that enviromentalists dont consider is that unlike carbon based fuel sources, nuclear waste is all contained in a centralized location, nobodys dumping it in sewers, or any of the other unenviromentally friendly disposal of waste. "

You're assuming a post-Yucca mountain situation. Right now nuclear waste is scattered around all manner of places, and as someone else pointed out, it's taxpayers bearing the costs, not the power companies. The market chose nuclear power, for a time, based on distorted, short-term economic numbers.

Personally, I am plan to buy some land in currently inhospitable parts of Canada. Global Warming? Bring it on!

ABR I think your likely right that a nation similar to current China or India will likely be first to find whatever is the first viable fossil fuel alternitive. I have to believe US big energy doesnt think there will be much profit in whatever energy source comes next.

I understand Yucca Mountain type storage of nuclear waste hasnt taken place yet. But I think nuclear waste is even now stored in a much more enviromentally friendly way than say, oil. I hope that all the pub about "dirty bombs" have increased the security where nuclear waste is stored. Imo theres plenty of uninhabitable desert in the US where nuke waste can be stored until we find a way to destroy it, or render it inert.

What I find interesting about the Yucca Mountain kerfluffle is that opponents accepted that the stuff would remain safe for tens of thousands of years, and then claimed with a straight face that that wasn't good enough (!), apparently taking it as a given that civilization will not escape this planet and that this waste will be a hazard to the savages that inhabit this planet tens of thousands of years from now.

(Which just may come true if these guys get their way. But I certainly hadn't seen such a clear indication that they were planning for it. anticipating it, and didn't think it was important enough to change their minds!)

(Which just may come true if these guys get their way. But I certainly hadn't seen such a clear indication that they were planning for it. anticipating it, and didn't think it was important enough to change their minds!)

I don't believe anyone has a serious plan for what the Earth will look like 10,000 years from now. It does make sense, however, to assume the worst. That humans 10,000 years from now will not understand what is in Yucca Mountain & won't have magical Star Trek type techonology to neutralize it. Of course, if they do then so much the better.

"It does make sense, however, to assume the worst. That humans 10,000 years from now will not understand what is in Yucca Mountain & won't have magical Star Trek type techonology to neutralize it. Of course, if they do then so much the better."

Assuming the worst doesn't mean assuming the ridiculous. Even if we assume that the Forces of Darkness win and our civilization collapses without ever escaping this planet, and the human race 10,000 years from now is nothing but a bunch of savages, what are the odds that every last one of those savages will end up living near Yucca Mountain in the middle of the desert?

Heck, even us relatively advanced 21st century types don't flock to the desert, and you expect savages without air conditioning to all be hanging around there? Nonsense.

If the humans of 10,000 years from now can't handle a little thing like mostly-decayed nuclear waste then their descendants probably won't be able to handle the dangerous radiation that would be emitted by natural uranium a billion years from now. Clearly, if there is no safe dose of radiation and if we should consider the effects for the indefinitely-long future and if currently-impermeable barriers cannot be trusted, we must use up that dangerous natural radioactivity as soon as possible. Each uranium atom will eventually release 50 MeV of radiation if it isn't split. The fission products will release half that.

The entire thesis of the paragraph hinges on a statistic that I find hard to believe, i.e. that one person, limited to 1.69 metric tons of CO2 emmissions, can only drive 9 miles per day. Consider:

1. One gallon of gas weighs 5.8 to 6.5 lbs.
2. 1.69 metric tons = 3718 lbs.

If I drive 9 miles per day in my evil SUV which gets 15 miles per gallon, I will consume 219 lbs of gasoline in the course of a year. Now ALL of the CO2 emissions must come from the gasoline, since any CO2 that enters with the air mixture is just being cycled through and doesn't add to the total amount.

Just how, exactly, can the consumption of 219 lbs of gasoline generate 3718 lbs of CO2?

Now, I can't see the article because I'm not a subscriber, so perhaps the author is including the entire CO2 generated by all industrial processes required to build an automobile and somehow spreading that cost on a per-mile basis. That strikes me as a much more difficult argument, subject to complex debates by people who know a lot more than I.

Can someone with a grasp of internal combustion technology help me out here?

I think technology is the out for this one.  Take residential construction; just by using state-of-the-art materials and building practices, houses of the last Solar Decathlon roughly doubled the savings which now qualify houses for Energy Star status, and their solar features were able to power the buildings and electric runabouts for the duration of the contest.  These houses were built with materials available today, so why do our building codes still allow new construction with inferior materials and practices?

(If a cut of 60% was required, it could be accomplished in residential construction with nothing more than top-notch insulation, daylighting and other construction practices.)

If we needed to slash greenhouse emissions we could still live nicely while doing things differently, e.g. by using solar-heated absorption refrigerators and air conditioners instead of fossil-fired electric.  If such units were the majority of the products on sale, developing nations would be buying them too (they could not justify plants building electric units just for them, any more than they can justify solar-absorption units for themselves now despite their expensive and unreliable electricity).

With regard to greenhouse gases:  It's true that water is the most influential.  It is also true that the earth is covered in water and the air is often saturated, so the remaining greenhouse gases account for almost all of the controllable greenhouse effect and most of the total in the (cold, dry) upper atmosphere.

"Jane: "On this weblog I've maintained (with tiresome regularity) that cutting our carbon emissions means drastically cutting our consumption.."

And you're wrong. I've pointed out several times that the cost of sequestering CO2 from power plants is

"Um, no. Two words: Nuclear Power."

Well, maybe as part of the CO2-emissions reduction solution.

How about these four words: Direct Carbon Fuel Cell. Being developed by a US non-government research lab, new materials & a novel configuration make this technology finally potentially practicable. Think of a jump in coal-fueled power generation efficiency from 35% to 70%, plus you get a pretty pure CO2 stream for sequestration.

""Facts: Carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas (water vapor is).

At face value, this does not appear to be an intelligent assertion on the part of that quote's author. Earth has a fixed amount of water, but that water is largely out in the open (either oceanic or polar ice caps)."

Err, not quite. What you probably meant to say was that the water in the atmosphere has a short residence time (in the order of weeks or days), so water vapor in the atmosphere is in equilibrium with the surface/ocean, wheras CO2 emitted into the atmosphere has a residence time of 50-200 years. So it takes a long time for any excess CO2 in the atmosphere to equilibrate with the land surface & ocean.

In other words, THT's observation is true but irrelevant; kinda like the fact that we're orbiting the sun at ~33,000 mph doesn't mean that it's OK to hit someone with a Hummer at 50 mph.

Alex:

Happy to help out.

1. Driving a 15MPG SUV 9 miles a day for a year requires ( 365 x 9 ) / 15 = 219 gallons of gasoline.

2. Automotive gasoline weighs, on average, 6.13 lb per gallon. 219 gallons of gasoline weighs ( 219 x 6.13) = 1,342.5 lbs.

3. Gasoline is roughly 84% carbon by weight (average chemical formula of gasoline is C8H18, if I recall correctly). This means that 219 gallons of gasoline contains ( 84% x 1,342.5 ) = 1,127.7 lbs of carbon.

4. Essentially all of the carbon in gasoline ends up as CO2 when it is burned in a modern automobile engine. Burning 219 gallons of gasoline would therefore convert 1,127.7 lb of carbon to CO2.

5. Carbon dioxide is 27.3% C by weight. Converting 1,127.7 lb of carbon to CO2 thus generates ( 1,127.7 / 27.3% ) = 4,130.7 lb CO2, or about 1.878 metric tons.

Simply put: you can't even drive a 15MPG auto 9 miles a day if limited to 1.69 metric tons of CO2 a year. The distance you could drive daily under these conditions is about 8.1 miles.

This is a possibility - http://blacklightpower.com/ - and although I can't make heads or tails of the math involved, it's apparently promising enough that NASA's looking at it. If it's a hoax, it's a damned elaborate one.

J.

Jane: "I've maintained (with tiresome regularity) that cutting our carbon emissions means drastically cutting our consumption, reducing our lifestyle to a hardship that most affluent Americans, including environmentalists, literally can't imagine." and "And then say that we shared the remaining fossil fuel equally."

To produce goods and services at the level of today's rich countries requires three things: labor, capital and abundant energy. As Jane correctly observes, take energy out of the equation and there is simply no way to produce at that level. Economic growth models that do not include energy are incomplete, at best. The fact that we have been able to make the transitions from one energy source to another in the past -- animal, water, coal, oil -- does not guarantee that there is a next cheap source available. Fission looks like today's best bet.

The sharing assumption is simply not going to happen. Absent some major new sources of energy, the rich countries are not going to allow the poor ones to catch up. I may not live long enough to see it, but fifty years from now I expect there to still be a relative handful of rich economies and a large number of poor ones. Some of the rich alignments may be peculiar. I expect US/Canada to be inevitable (apologies to my Canadian friends -- it's a potluck where you bring the tar sands and we bring the nuclear warheads). The EU/Russia? Japan/Australia? China, India and Pakistan are all nuclear powers now; can they "align" with someone for enough energy to raise their ability to produce? Given the populations of China and India, that's a lot of energy.

To produce goods and services at the level of today's rich countries requires three things: labor, capital and abundant energy. As Jane correctly observes, take energy out of the equation and there is simply no way to produce at that level.

This is certainly true but energy != CO2 emmissions. Even if it does there is little reason to think our current economy is optimized along the lines of CO2 emissions for one simple reason, it costs next to nothing to put CO2 into the air so what financial incentive is there to reduce it?

Here is a mind experiment I proposed the last time this subject came up:

Suppose aliens landed on earth and informed us that if we did not cut CO2 back to 1970 levels they would destroy the earth! Since we have no choice but to implement the cutback no matter what the cost how would you propose we do it?

The brain dead way would be to turn back the clock. Simply do everything that we did in 1970, no more no less. So if there were 25,523 Corvetts riding the streets in 1970, go back to that. Do the same for everything else in the economy. What would be the cost of this policy? Why the difference in GDP in 2004 versus 1970 (about $6,619B).

Now if you think about things for a moment you'll realize that we could redo 1970 but with less CO2. For example, cars get better mileage so instead of making do with the gas guzzles of 1970 we could have more cars. Likewise, gas fired power plants today produce a lot less CO2 than the coal plants of 1970. Why not use them instead and enjoy more electricity than was produced in 1970?

So you can turn back the CO2 clock to 1970 without turning back GDP to 1970. The relationship doesn't have to be linear!

JLawson:  Your bogosity detector isn't working (or maybe it has its threshold set too high).  The first paragraph of the site you cite (ooh, homonyms) ought to tell you that those folks are frauds; if they had actual physics to work with there would have been at least one Nobel prize-winner behind their theories already, and probably several.

Michael Cain:  I don't think I agree with your logic.  What's held the poor countries back so far hasn't been the rich ones but their own backward societies and corruption, either of which is sufficient to cause wealth to flee and progress to halt.  I think it's very likely that we will see solar panels made of quantum dots which use ballistic electrons to convert light to electricity at 50% efficiency or more, available at a price of $100 per square meter or less.  These will be commodity products, not restricted to the rich countries.  And guess what?  The protectionist import taxes, dysfunctional economies and graft of the poor countries will keep them that way even when their energy supply comes with zero carbon impact and zero carbon taxes.

Want an example?  Eastern Europe under the Soviets had huge amounts of energy to exploit, but the dysfunctional system left all but an elite rather poor compared to the West.

Boonton:  Would you try translating that to something that relates to the problem under discussion?  ADVthanksANCE.

Translation: Much of the 'costs' assigned to cutting CO2 are wildly overstated because they use a simplistic linear model (cutting back to 1996's CO2 = cutting back to 1996's GDP hence cost = 2004 GDP - 1996 GDP).

Boonton:

Switching to natural gas would help. Unfortunately, best case it only helps about 40-50%..

Per the US DOE, US energy consumption in 2003 is estimated to have the following breakout:

Oil, 40%; natural gas, 23%; coal, 23%, nuclear, 8%, hydro, 3%, renewables, 3%.

Total US energy consumption for 2003 is estimated at 98.1 quadrillion BTU.

Let’s assume the “renewables” generate no CO2 (bad assumption, but I don’t want to deal with an huge number of “what ifs” for 3% of the total).

Natural gas is mostly (94.9%) methane. Assume, for simplicity, it is 100% methane.
Coal is mostly carbon. Let’s assume for simplicity it is 100% carbon.
Oil is a mixture of a great number of hydrocarbons. For simplicity, let’s assume it’s all octane (C8H18). This actually is a bad assumption, since octane has a higher energy density than oil, but again I don’t really want to deal with a large number of cases here. Suffice it to say that this underestimates the actual amount of oil burned (and hence the amount of CO2 produced – but probably not by all that much).

Natural gas has an energy density of 55.5 MJ/kg, or about 52,130 BTU/kg.
Coal has an energy density of 24 MJ/kg, or about 22,748 BTU/kg.
Octane has an energy density of 49.7MJ/kg, or about 47,106 BTU/kg.

Since coal is nearly 100% carbon, each kg of coal burned will produce about 3.67 kg of CO2.
Since we’re assuming natural gas to be 100% methane – but methane is only 75% carbon by weight - each kg of gas burned will produce about 75% as much CO2, or about 2.75 kg of CO2.
Since we’re simulating oil by octane, each kg of octane – which is approx 84.2% carbon by weight – each kg of octane burned will produce about 3.09 kg of CO2.

Since coal produces 23% of the US energy total, this would require (0.23 x 98.1 x 10^15 ) / 22,784 = 9.9 x 10^11 kg of coal. This in turn yields 3.64 x 10^12 kg CO2.
Similarly, 23% of the US energy total from natural gas means we need (0.23 x 98.1 x 10^15) / 52,130 = 4.33 x 10^11 kg of natural gas. This in turn yields 1.19 x 10^12 kg of CO2.
Finally, 40% of the US energy from oil means we need (0.4 x 98.1 x 10^15) / 47,106 = 8.33 x 10^11 kg of octane. This in turn yields 2.57 x 10^12 kg of CO2.
The total CO2 is 7.40 x 10^12 kg.

Replacing all coal with natural gas gives the following:

CO2 from natural gas: 2.38 x 10^12 kg
CO2 from oil: 2.57 x 10^12 kg
Total CO2: 4.95 x 10^12 kg

This is a 33% reduction.

Using natural gas in place of oil and coal yields a CO2 total of 4.45 x 10^12 kg – a 40% reduction from the original case.

Unfortunately, that’s the best we can achieve, percentage wise, by fuel substitution. I also seriously doubt the US could get that much natural gas if we tried.

I’d guess, as a practical matter, we might achieve 10% additional through smaller cars, conservation, etc . . . . , and maintain anything close to current lifestyles.

True, a 50% would be nothing to sneeze at – if attainable. However, I don’t think it is.

Unfortunately, that’s the best we can achieve, percentage wise, by fuel substitution. I also seriously doubt the US could get that much natural gas if we tried.

I’d guess, as a practical matter, we might achieve 10% additional through smaller cars, conservation, etc . . . . , and maintain anything close to current lifestyles.

True, a 50% would be nothing to sneeze at – if attainable. However, I don’t think it is.

Certainly it wouldn't be free but it wouldn't cost 50% of the economy to pull it off. Now how much benefit will come from doing it is another question.

Certainly it wouldn't be free but it wouldn't cost 50% of the economy to pull it off.

Since we're talking purely of hypotheticals, why no, of course it wouldn't!. In the real world, it's very difficult to say. Even if that much natural gas could be obtained there's still a huge economic restructuring and infrastructure conversion required. Some new economic activity might be generated in the process, sure, but the money to pay for all of the conversion has to come from somewhere, and a lot of existing physical plant would be good only for scrap sale. How might we reasonably quantify the net economic impact? Could be +5% or -50% or something in between, or even something well outside of that range.

How about we stop building roads, zoning acre lots and stop building supermalls.

I don't own a car. I haven't in ten years. I live an apartment building which was built in 1911, yet is dramatically cheaper to heat than virtually any single family home. It is extremely environmentally advantageous to keep the people in cities and towns and leave the countryside as the countryside. Suburbia, and not the cars themselves are to blame.

(And yes, here in New York City use nuclear power.)

Boonton, anony-mouse:

The point of my previous post was that replacing all US fossil fuels (coal and oil, specifically) with natural gas would reduce US carbon dioxide emissions by only about 40%, even if it were possible.

However, there's a bigger problem: it's simply not feasible - even if we assume a free, no effort, overnight conversion.

In 2001 (the latest year for which I can find a decent estimate), world natural gas production was approximately 2.555 x 10^12 cubic meters. The US consumed about 6.409 x 10^11 cubic meters, or about 25.1% of the total. This natural gas consumption provided about 23% of US energy needs; fossil fuels (oil/coal/gas) in total provided about 86% of US energy needs (nuclear/hydro/"renewable" provided the remaining 14%). Thus, we would need to consume roughly (86% / 23%) x 640.9 x 10^11 = 2.396 x 10^12 cubic meters of natural gas in order to satisfy all US energy consumption needs that are currently met by some type of fossil fuel.

That means that the US alone would need nearly 94% of the estimated world natural gas production. Something tells me that just ain't gonna happen.

Even replacing coal only (coal provides about 23% of US energy needs) would mean that the US would need just over 50% of the world's natural gas production. Don't think that's gonna happen, either.

Hondo, you are my kinda guy.  Facts talk, handwaving walks.

I've been analyzing some aspects of US energy consumption over at The Ergosphere; do feel free to drop by and enrich things.  One thing you'll notice is that I have not suggested any expansion of natural gas consumption, and you've just shown why.

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