Yes, but the ‘H’ is silent.

“We run out of energy when we run out of planet. AND
We run out of materials and plastics when we run out of planet. AND
We run out of food when we run out of planet.

It isn’t a question of technology development, only price. And that is why I’m generally positive about our future prospects. The only shortage is of imagination and will.”

Wow EM, those are definitely words to live by… thanks.

They want to kill off all the plants that turn CO2 into the Oxygen that we breathe.

I’m not a meteorologist and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but it’s really cold here in Europe. It snowed 6″ in Marseille this week. It never snows in Marseille. Never, as in never ever.

Global warming? Not so much.

Almost all plastic and organic chemical synthesis starts (or can start) with ‘synthesis gas’ CO + H2. (Guess why it’s called synthesis gas…) If you have CO2, you can make syngas via a hydrogen from water. Just add water and a lot of heat to CO2 and you can get synthesis gas. (Some added C helps but there are ways around that).

What this means is that as long as there is CO2 and energy there is chemical feed stock… Think about it… Now realize that we have tons of CO2 produced from rocks when we make cement and other products. Even if we didn’t use plants, we can still get CO2 from dirt, especially limestones.

This is ‘part 2′ of my no limits to growth mantra. Part 1 is there is no energy shortage and never will be. Then, as long as you have energy there is no shortage of syngas, which implies no shortage of non-metal materials. Since we can get metals from sea water and rocks with energy, you end with no shortages of stuff. Ever. The key is unlimited energy from nuclear and the sun. Since with energy and materials we can make lots of greenhouses and desalinizers food and water are not limiting either.

This is why I say:

We run out of energy when we run out of planet. AND
We run out of materials and plastics when we run out of planet. AND
We run out of food when we run out of planet.

It isn’t a question of technology development, only price. And that is why I’m generally positive about our future prospects. The only shortage is of imagination and will.

There is currently no “alternative” fuel that I am aware of that would cut CO2 emissions. The only fuel that would cut CO2 emissions that I see available is nuclear generated electricity.

Substantially true. Especially given the quantities involved. The tonnage of coal and oil burned each year makes any talk of an alternative fuel a bit laughable. You would need to find one heck of a lot of something to make it from.

With that preamble, there are in fact contenders. But you said ‘currently’ and that means sooner than a half decade or two from now…

The best quasi-non nuclear option is coal derived fuels using nuclear process heat (as worked on by VW engineers in the ’70s) where about 3/4 of the energy comes from nuke, transported in methanol from coal as the carbon source. One could use trash, trees, etc instead of coal, if desired.

The major contenders for fuel are algae & cellulose. There are startup stage companies working in those area, but not much production. VRNM Verenium and Poet (private) are doing cellulosic ethanol Real Soon Now and both Origin Oil (OOIL) and PSUD (Petrosun Energy?) are doing algae. PSUD has started contracting for ponds in Texas, so is closest to “production”. There are a couple of others, too. But the ramp up to ‘size’ will take years and years even after shown to work commercially.

If you want just energy and not fuel then you can look at things like electricity (but that gets into “fleet change” and a decade+ lag, so isn’t current either…). Hydrogen is just a chemical battery of sorts, not an energy source and just about everything you can use to make hydrogen is better used directly as a fuel or to make electricity.

What is important is that things such as mineral petroleum is too valuable a resource to simply burn up. When we run out of oil, we run out of plastic, paint, fertilizer, computers, televisions, and fibers for clothing. Conserving our petroleum resources will become an important issue but not because of CO2 emissions. It will be important because of all the other things aside from fuel that it is used for. The same applies for coal.

Um, not really… While this is often said and widely believed, the realitiy is that any carbon feedstock can be used. It’s an economic decision, not a technical one. Coal and plants were the original ‘petro’chemical feed stock and they are starting to be again. Examples?

Eastman Chemical EMN makes “petro”chemicals from coal today (they never bothered to swap from coal in the first place a gob of decades ago… coal was used long before petroleum…) Most U.S. chemical companies (like DOW and DD Dupont) use natural gas feed stock and have since the Arab Oil Embargo of the ’70s. Rentech RTK has demonstrated making fertilizer and other chemicals from coal or trash via gasification to “producer gas”. The biggest chemical, plastic and resin maker in South America, Braskem BAK uses sugar cane and sugar cane alcohol to make plastics and resins. Oh, and there is a company in the midwest making plastics from corn… Natureworks? Yes: http://www.natureworksllc.com/

http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2005-03-15/russell-cornplastic

Corn plastic became big business in 1997, when Dow Chemical, the plastics giant, and Cargill, an agricultural company, formed a new company, Cargill Dow, to develop the material. Cargill bought out Dow’s interest in the joint venture in January and renamed the company Natureworks LLC.

Oh, and Sasol SSL in S.Africa use coal for their “petro”chemicals. And there are undoubtedly others too. Heck, I’ve made nitro-cellulose from cotton (as was used in early billiard balls and photographic films ‘nitrate stock’) and rayon is also made from cellulose. The first president of Israel was a chemist who developed a system using a bacteria to make several alcohols and acetone prior to cheap oil:

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

There is much active work today to use bugs to get chemicals… and fuels. British Petroleum BP is building Butanol factories for fuel production from plants, though I’m not sure what method they use. Once you have an alcohol you can make it into anything organic… (Butanol is nice because you can drop it into a gasoline tank and just drive away… no conversion needed. See: http://www.butanol.com where the guy uses a different bug/process.)

And with this, I’m going to stop. If I didn’t this would get waaaay too long. (Alternatives for fuels and plastics is one of my tech hot buttons… I’ve only spent about 40 years fascinated by it…) Suffice it to say there is never going to be a shortage of plastics, fertilizers, chemicals, polymers, resins, etc. due to feed stock depletion.

“Occaisonally, when I’m feeling mean, when I come across a really strident AGW proponent I tell said person that if they are really interested in lowering thier carbon footprint they should advocate the boycotting of the Internet.”

I always recommend they kill themselves and save the rest of us from have to slowly roast in the CO2 they exhale.

Whoops, sorry! Should be “variation between +0.2 and -0.2″

Moderator, correct if possible?

The 4th order polynomial is a troublesome line. I just don’t like it, as pure data mining and especially with some conditional knowledge. What I see is a cyclic (sinusoidal) pattern with a frequency that varies from 3.5 to 4.5 years and with an amplitude of about 0.6 degrees C.

Whenever I look at any site, pro or anti Global Warming, I always get given a trend picked with some different start date to illustrate a point. One can make good cases for current temperatures trending up or down…

When I look at the data, I don’t see trend lines at all. I see step functions. Ignoring known perturbations, I see temperatures from 1979-2001 as flat, with a small dip in 1985. Then climbing from 2001-2003. Then flat from 2003-2007, then dipping from 2007-2009. So that’s 20 years of flat with a 5 year elevated spot.

My prediction, which is worth nothing at all, is that we’ll now get 20 more years of flat (that is, variation between +0.2 and -0.2), with a small dip somewhere….

Neither is Hansen, he is an astrophysics major. Don’t let it stop you just because you have no schooling in that field. It doesn’t stop the champions of global warming!

http://www.eponline.com/articles/70183/

Jared,

The key detail in that is that the study looked at correlation between seasonal variation in clouds SST’s and clouds, and then went on to extrapolate a secular rise storms based on a presumed “present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius.” That’s pretty close to the number we get from a simple linear fit through the UAH satellite temps, but as we all know the actual rise has been nowhere near that for some years now.

I haven’t looked at the underlying research, and am not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I might question whether the atmospheric-ocean dynamics that give rise to seasonal (annual) variations necessarily hold true for secular (longer term) changes in SST’s occasioned by other factors (regardless of what they are).

Actually, Crosspatch, there is a very viable alternative that would immediately cut CO2 emmissions. It’s called a worldwide economic recession.

But you are correct in pointing out the other benefits of fossil fuels. Occaisonally, when I’m feeling mean, when I come across a really strident AGW proponent I tell said person that if they are really interested in lowering thier carbon footprint they should advocate the boycotting of the Internet. The Internet itself is very, very ungreen. Besides the plastics, poisonous materials used to manufacture microchips, PCB boards, transformers, and LCD screens, the Internet is a huge drain on our power supplies. I point out the KW usage of a typical Google data center (I currently work in IT), not to mention data centers hosted by AT&T, Time Warner, Yahoo, and any number of Fortune 500 companies.

I tell my AGW proponents that they could do more by boycotting the Internet than any other activity. Of course, most of these AGW types live online and would the Internet would be the last thing they give up. Well, maybe not the last thing; they also love thier $4.5 Starbucks lattes.

http://www.eponline.com/articles/70183/

NASA did a 5 year study and came to the conclusion that clouds associated with severe storms are increasing do to global warming.

Two things I found odd about the conclusion

#1 – How come a 5 year study is okay if it backs up their claim, but an 11 year study of lowering temperatures is not long enough

#2 – Temps have decreased in the last 5 years not increased so if their study found more clouds associated with severe storms wouldn’t that mean they are increasing do to global cooling and not warming

Piers Corbyn has actually placed a £100 bet on this happening. This does bring Corbyn’s judgement into question since, whatever happens to global temps in 2009, the global warming (climate change) issue isn’t going to go away any time soon. It’ll be at least 5 years – and probably nearer 10 – before there’s any shift in government thinking.

If Corbyn wants a more sensible bet why doesn’t he approach James Annan or George Monbiot. If he’s just looking for publicity he’ll get it with Monbiot.

There is currently no “alternative” fuel that I am aware of that would cut CO2 emissions. The only fuel that would cut CO2 emissions that I see available is nuclear generated electricity.

But one must wonder why we even need to cut CO2 emissions. Warming is better than cooling. A warmer planet would make for a more diverse biosphere. Current IPCC predictions of environmental response to CO2 increase has been shown to be greatly exaggerated. If we doubled the CO2 in the atmosphere from pre-industrial levels, we would get less warming than we had from natural causes in the 18th century. It would get lost in the noise of natural variability. I see no reason to worry greatly about CO2 emissions.

What is important is that things such as mineral petroleum is too valuable a resource to simply burn up. When we run out of oil, we run out of plastic, paint, fertilizer, computers, televisions, and fibers for clothing. Conserving our petroleum resources will become an important issue but not because of CO2 emissions. It will be important because of all the other things aside from fuel that it is used for. The same applies for coal.

Nuclear energy with recycled fuel is our most environmentally friendly way to provide an inexpensive, large scale energy source that can power a global economy for centuries to come and still leave enough of our mineral petroleum resources to make the other materials we need in a modern society.