Climate project: Dr Peter Cook holds sandstone from the Otway Basin, where 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been stored underground.
Photo: Glen McCurtayne
July 7, 2008
IT IS technology vital to the Government’s hopes of cutting greenhouse emissions from Australia’s huge coal-fired power stations: capturing carbon dioxide from the polluting stations and burying it deep underground.
Australia’s first trial of geosequestration in the Otways reached its first milestone last week — 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide was successfully stored two kilometres underground in a depleted natural gas field.
Scientists from the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies hope to increase that to 100,000 tonnes next year, while continuing to monitor the local geology.
The centre’s chief executive, Dr Peter Cook, who is overseeing the $40 million project, is confident that the day will come when much of the carbon dioxide produced from large industrial sources can be buried.
See the complete article here in Australia’s The Age.
Ok here is my question: What about the long term effects of such a thing? One of the biggest complaints about radioactive hazardous waste disposal is that there is no confidence in predictions of long term stability of the burial site.
Take for example water, how do we know that this formation won’t become water saturated, and that the water will dissolve CO2 into the water and carry it elsewhere only to be released into the atmosphere again? Or how do we know that the system won’t vent the CO2 back to the surface gradually due to displacement or other geologic action?
I’ll point out that CO2 is a heck of a lot more reactive and soluble than glass encapsulated nuclear waste, yet nobody seems to think a thing about it.
In my opinion, the premise of CO2 burial seems absurd not only because of the lack of supporting evidence for certain climate change, but also due to it’s lack of foresight as to the effects of the burial scheme.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There is a real possibility that AGW can be shown to be false and a new consensus might emerge.
Here is the argument a nutshell:
1.) The IPCC CO2 positive feedback loop theory goes like this:
Increased CO2 (warming) -> increased water vapor and high-level clouds (warming) -> decreased ice cover/albedo (warming) -> (rinse, repeat) “tipping point” -> runaway warming
However, the Aqua Satellite (launched 2002) finds a different mechanism to be at work:
Increased CO2 (warming) -> increased low-level cloud cover/increased albedo (cooling) and increased precipitation/stabilized ice cover/albedo (stabilizing) -> homeostasis.
This conforms with the temperature record since 1998 (or 2001, if you prefer.
2.) The “big six” climate control atmospheric-oceanic cycles went from cool phase to warm phase from 1977 – 2001.
PDO to warm phase: 1977
IPO to warm phase 1978
AAO to warm phase: 1980
AO to warm phase: 1989
AMO to warm phase: 1995
NAO to warm phase 2001
PDO flipped back to cool phase in 2008. The rest will follow over the next couple of decades.
This conforms very well with Satellite data (lower troposphere) since 1979.
3.) The Argo Buoys record a slight oceanic cooling trend since deployed around 5 years ago.
4.) Sea levels have “heeled over” and begun to drop over the last 3 years.
5.) Past climate (MWP and RWP) are now believed to have exceeded today’s levels. The “hockey stick” reconstruction has been thoroughly falsified both directly and indirectly.
6.) The CO2 AGW thesis predated these developments and currently fail to address them.
7.) The climate models have proven to be wrong, so far, prima facie. Temperatures are down, not up, over the last decade.
8.) Severe compromise of surface station environment indicates that the past century’s rate of increase has been exaggerated. Anthony Watts has documented many of these violations. McKitrick and Michaels (2008 ) and LaDochy et al (2007) address this and are supported in theory by Yilmaz et al (2008 ) and LeRoy (1999).
There are other new points such as the longterm paleoclimate and CO2 sensitivity and saturation issues that have been called into serious question, but the issues I have listed are enough to be going along with. I do not address the solar theories not the current “dead sun” development.
In short, we have learned an awful lot, awfully recently, well after there was a ‘consensus” on CO2-related AGW.
All in all, I think a cooling is more likely than a warming.
But that is just a possibility, until that happens. Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree.
Based on the above developments, the number of skeptics is growing. So far I have heard no satisfactory refutation of any of the above points. There are more skeptics today than a year ago, and more a year ago than three years ago.
Furthermore, while I agree that more scientists believe in AGW than do not, far fewer agree that radical (not in the political sense), immediate changes are warranted. Some (like Dr. Lomborg) even believe in AGW and think it is a good thing. Others believe in AGW, but thnk adaptation is far more beneficial than mitigation.
I think there has been some AGW, mostly from land use and soot affecting Arctic ice and albedo, but very little from CO2 .
These non-CO2 issues are immeasurably easier and cheaper to solve than the effort and sacrifice involved in capping CO2. In fact, they will probably be solved in the completely normal course of “business as usual” demographics within three decades.
That is a fair (though incomplete) concatenation of why I believe what I believe.
May be, but that is no assurance that it will continue to happen. We cannot assume that there are solutions for every technical problem that will come up.
I disagree. We have every reason to believe it (though we cannot count on anything 100%). We must base policy on a standard risk-benefit analysis.
We could even solve the AGW problem assuming it is the absolute worst-case scenario, but it would involve policy decisions that would result in megadeath and megamisery, especially for the poor and most vulnerable.
Pascal’s Wager does NOT pertain!
But for argument sake double, or triple the reserves estimate.
“Reserves” is a very mushy word. there are “accessible reserves”, “obtainable reserves” and “potential reserves”.
Try multiplying them by 100. And then be sure you have underestimated them by anywhere between a factor of two and ten.
The USGA will tell you there are 3 billion barrels of sweet oil “reserves” in the Bakken “shale”. Demographers know damned well that there are over 400 billion barrels (at least). We can’t get it all at once, but that has nothing to do with the long term.
We wil run away from oil far sooner than we will run out of it (or even short of it).
In a decade we will look back on this period of stupidity and wonder at the head shaking idiocy of this time…..
To think that educated people can advance the idea that Human sources of CO2 can have a significant global effect on climate…. Is astounding. The fact that they have progressed it to the point of legislation is beyond belief.
It can’t last. Surely people are not that stupid?
Ever well put, Mr. Jones.
Questions for Mr. McLondon.
What has been that climate sensitivity number for the last 8 years?
According to the CO2 drives the climate theory, with out sensitivity number the amount of CO2 will not balance out with the amount of heat in the atmosphere.
How does the CO2 drives the climate theory account for the climate change from the MWP to the LIA?
<Evan Jones wins the argument hands down, IMHO.
Folks on this thread should be careful of making statements like this:
“On consensus, Evan, can you please provide one example of a scientific rule that was established without consensus (I am not trying to be critical, this is just a curiosity)?”
Wouldn’t you call E=MC2 a ‘rule?’ It is a universal rule – yet when it was proposed there was far from any consensus. Scientists of the day were as hostile to Einstein’s relativity theory as the UN/IPCC is to those questioning AGW today. In fact, one hundred eminent scientists signed an open letter claiming that Einstein’s theory of relativity was wrong.
Einstein’s retort to those 100 writers: ”To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
There have been so many peer-reviewed papers posted here and elsewhere, which falsify the AGW/CO2/runaway global warming hypothesis, that no rational person answering honestly still thinks that the tiny amount of human produced CO2, added to the Earth’s immense natural CO2 reservoir, will lead to catastrophic global warming [which has never happened in Earth’s history – even when CO2 levels have exceeded 7,000 ppmv – compared with today’s <400 ppmv].
“Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree.”
That is an untrue statement. George Gallup runs a polling business, and his reputation would be destroyed – and it would destroy his business – if he misrepresented his results: Click
And tens of thousands of U.S. scientists have co-signed a statement directly refuting the current AGW orthodoxy. That is an order of magnitude greater than the number of UN/IPCC scientists – who are employed at-will and dependent upon the UN, and who are well aware that their continued employment, or at least their prospect of advancement, depends on toeing the UN’s AGW line.
There is frantic activity among those desperate to convince the world that human produced atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to a planetary catastrophe, and that “the science is settled.”
But this frantic activity [and the associated propaganda] does not make their hypothesis true. [Note that this is not a strawman argument; without the scare of ‘planetary catastrophe,’ the grant money fueling the AGW/planetary catastrophe hoax will begin to go elsewhere.]
Yes, CO2 traps a slight amount of heat. But adding more CO2 provides a rapidly diminishing effect. The only major result of increased atmospheric CO2 is the substantial boost it gives to plant growth.
I’m waiting for the Gorebots to begin telling people that more plant growth is somehow a bad thing.
Go ahead hold your breath.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/Publications.htm?seq_no_115=202967
Now let it out.
But that is just a possibility, until that happens. Few scientists and a number of people agree with you, but a disproportionate number of scientists disagree.
Well, how many scientists are there and who beleives what? That’s just another one of those statements that is impossible to prove or disprove.
In short, we have learned an awful lot, awfully recently, well after there was a ‘consensus” on CO2-related AGW.
Exactly, the consensus side wasn’t expecting folks to come along and check their work.
There is no guarantee that green revolution will continue to happen.
The green revolution will continue into the forseeable future. There are technologies being experimented with now that would have seemed like science fiction 20 years ago.
(the Rice Institute for example) that were responsible for the green revolution.
Had nothing to do with it.
Evan Jones:
Just an update of your data:
NAO went strongly negative (or “cold”) in what looks like the second quarter of 2008.
Evan Jones:
Item 1(b), Can you give me a reference publication about the mechanism found by Aqua Satellite? This is not the one published by Roy Spencer last year I assume (cloud and radiation budget…). I looked through the literature, there are more than 200 publications, one of the relatively recent one I found (Vinnikov K. Y. Grody N. C., Science 2003) talks about “trend of +0.22degrees to 0.26degreesC per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.”
Even if the low level cloud mechanism is true, the reduction in temperature caused by low level clouds will be less than the warming from increased CO2 that caused increased low level clouds in the first place. Otherwise, it will be an unstable equilibrium.
Item (3), there was an article in NPR which summarized the issue, and it is unclear what exactly is happening. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025 They also talk about sea level rise consistent with temperature rise. There is, of course, a lot that we do not know. But even AGW scientists are well aware of all these issues, and the other arguments you raised, I assume. So, the same question is back, why are they not agreeing with it?
Item (7). I plotted those data is various ways and I cannot get any cooling in the past 10 years, temperature has gone up slightly, but not much. But as NPR quoted “Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming.” Christy also said the same thing.
Please see: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Item (8). OK, Then how do we explain this correlation?
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/giss-had-uah-rss_global_anomaly_refto_1979-1990_v2.png
“I disagree. We have every reason to believe it (though we cannot count on anything 100%). We must base policy on a standard risk-benefit analysis.”
Risk based analysis is certainly appropriate for certain systems. But for systems and technologies that are yet to be developed, risk analysis may not be of much help. Either we will develop such technology or we won’t. Even one small obstacle could prevent the development of such complex technologies.
I used 1250 billion barrels as the reserves, more than the 400 billion you used. But overall it appears to me that you are making a number of positive assumptions in your analysis- how fast the technology is going to develop, how much oil is available, etc.
Obviously you have put considerable effort in this area. So, I was wondering whether you have published any of these arguments in a journal? If so can you kindly post them? If not, I hope you will consider publishing them so that those opinions will have more impact.
Pofarmer/Smokey: “Well, how many scientists are there and who beleives what? That’s just another one of those statements that is impossible to prove or disprove.” No it is not – one can look at the literature. In fact someone actually did that several years ago and published a paper in Science, indicating that she was able to find only very few publications with a skeptical AGW view. I will go back to my original statement, I cannot find more than one Nobel prize winner in Science, and may be four or five National Academy members who expressed skeptical views about AGW. If I am wrong, please correct me with evidence – I am actually looking for that evidence.
No it is not – one can look at the literature
Obviously you didn’t look at the Gallup poll posted just above my last post.
So, you expect all the scientists who don’t belive in AGW to PUBLISH on it? I imagine they have other things to do and publish on that they DO beleive in. I know the head Meteorologist at the University of MO doesn’t beleive in Global warming, let along Anthropogenic Global Warming, because I’ve visited with him about it. (weather and climate are rather important to my operation) But, has he PUBLISHED anything about it?? I sort of doubt it.
“scientists who don’t belive in”
So we are back to “faith based” science again?
one of the relatively recent one I found (Vinnikov K. Y. Grody N. C., Science 2003) talks about “trend of +0.22degrees to 0.26degreesC per 10 years, consistent with the global warming trend derived from surface meteorological stations.”
Two problems:
First, that’s 2003 data. Temps have cooling (I address that issue below) over the last decade, and since 2001 if you want to skip the 1998-2000 phenomena. CO2 has substantially increased. See below for more comment on temperature trends.
Second, the surface station records are out to lunch. McKitrick and Michaels (2008) explain how this occurred. And the premier series on this very blog, “How Not to Measure Temperatures”, has explained how this occurred! (The possibility had been noticed by one or two folks before 2003, but it was before the Rev’s excellent work and not known by the mainstream climate community.)
Even if the low level cloud mechanism is true, the reduction in temperature caused by low level clouds will be less than the warming from increased CO2 that caused increased low level clouds in the first place. Otherwise, it will be an unstable equilibrium.
But the CO2 effect has no water vapor feedback. Therefore it has much less effect. Relative humidity has decreased all but the very lowest altitudes. This is discussed in detail in a recent article on this blog.
The warming is due to the fact that the ocean-atmospheric cycles flipped warm, one by one, from 1977 to 2001, not from CO2 forcing.
They also talk about sea level rise consistent with temperature rise
Well, yeah. But the oceans have been cooling for five years and sea level has been dropping for the last three years.
I plotted those data is various ways and I cannot get any cooling in the past 10 years, temperature has gone up slightly, but not much.
Unfortunately, you mis-linked and repeated the NPR “Global Warming’s Missing Heat” article.
I am presuming that this is because you are using surface data. That is corrupted beyond usefulness.
In order to get meaningful readings, one must use UAS or RSS satellite measurements for lower troposphere (cross-checked with radiosonde and adjusted to surface). That eliminates the severe site bias of the surface stations.
As for the surface measurements, NASA and NOAA show an increase (while HadCRUT shows an overall decrease).
This is carefully explained in very recent articles on this blog, complete with graphs. The 10-year trend is cooler. (The 11-year trend is flat.)
I agree with Trenberth (IPCC head) and Christie (UAH guru) that a few years of ocean cooling is not decisive. But it is certainly significant and contrary to AGW theory—so fa as it goes. We must wait and see what develops.
Item (8). OK, Then how do we explain this correlation?
By showing that once one sorts out the spaghetti, it’s not so close, after all. (Notice for example, how much lower GISS starts out.)
This is the 11-year comparison, which is flat.
http://bp3.blogger.com/__VkzVMn3cHA/SFs25eMZegI/AAAAAAAAAC8/pDT5GEKQTUA/s1600-h/11+Year+Temp+Data.bmp
The 10-year is negative across the board for UAH, RSS and HadCRUT. NOAA and GISS (based on NOAA) are not shown here; they show a positive trend.
Repeat the curse against auto-smileys and thanks for the earlier correction.
(2008) = ( 2008 )
I used 1250 billion barrels as the reserves, more than the 400 billion you used.
At Bakken or overall?
For world reserves, The Next 200 Years Kahn cites the interior dept as estimating 3.4 trillion bbls potential world reserve (incl. all sources; I made the conversion from metric tons)
I added up the pessimistic wiki’s current potential reserve numbers for sweet, tar, shale, etc.) and came up with a 6.5 tril. barrel total.
Current world annual usage is 85 bil. barrels.
But overall it appears to me that you are making a number of positive assumptions in your analysis- how fast the technology is going to develop, how much oil is available, etc.
Even with continual usage, estimated potential reserves have nearly doubled in a mere 33 years. And even that does not take into account that there may well be 3 trillion bls. in shale in the Rockies. And we are getting so much better so quickly at exploration these days.
I don’t see how it would be sensible to assume this trend not continue, even if it does level off.
What you consider to be optimism, I consider to be mere realism, or even pessimism.
Obviously you have put considerable effort in this area. So, I was wondering whether you have published any of these arguments in a journal? If so can you kindly post them? If not, I hope you will consider publishing them so that those opinions will have more impact.
It’s too simplistic. It’s not graduate level analysis. The data is just hanging out there for any undergraduate to note. It is so obvious to me that I cannot conceive that it could possibly amount to non-self evident, original work.
For my overall economic prognosis, I’ll cop a page out of Global Warming theory:
Mankind is reaching an “economic tipping point” fed by “positive feedback loops” of increasing affluence and technology. This will result in “runaway wealth”. And the only way to prevent this from happening this is via carbon caps! #B^1
John McLondon wonders why many skeptics distrust AGW zealots like Al Gore and James Hansen. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover there is much more to the Climate Crisis than meets the eye. You may have heard of the Club of Rome, a self-proclaimed international environmental think-tank.
The CoR published a report in 1991 called The First Global Revolution. In this report they state:
“It would seem that humans need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose.
New enemies therefore have to be identified.
New strategies imagined, new weapons devised.
The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
OK … now the really interesting part is who belongs to the CoR and their siblings, the Clubs of Budapest and Madrid:
Al Gore
Jimmy Carter
Stephen Schneider
David Rockefeller
Kofi Annan
Bill Clinton
Ted Turner
George Soros
Maurice Strong
Mikhail Gorbachev
Henry Kissinger
and many more….
You can read all about it here:
http://green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
Wake Up Sleepers!
The partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans controls, determines, establishes its atmospheric abundance.
Mankind, 6 billion plus, produce 8 Gtons of carbon yearly. There are 50,000 Gtons dissolved in the oceans and 100,000 Gtons more lying submerged on the continental shelves in Mg and Ca carbonates entering solution as needed.
“Hydrocarbon trap”? Why not cut down the earth’s forests and stack it all in the Grand Canyon? The new forests will remove another 200 Gtons at least.
Evan Jones: “The 10-year trend is cooler.”
Cooler than what? This is what the UK Met Office says: “A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/2.html
NASA: “Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.”
And: “The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.”
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20080116/
That doesn’t sound like cooling to me.
Evan Jones: “The 10-year trend is cooler.”
Cooler than what? This is what the UK Met Office says: “A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”
NASA: “Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century.”
And: “The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.”
That doesn’t sound like cooling to me.
John McLondon says:
Item (7). I plotted those data is various ways and I cannot get any cooling in the past 10 years, temperature has gone up slightly, but not much.
No cooling in the past ten years? Look at these independent sources: click
Temps for the past twenty years: click
And 4 gov’t sources plot the temperature trend over the past six years: click
Mr. McDonald can not be persuaded. He is a True Believer. I post the charts above for the consideration of more neutral readers.
{And thanks to DS for that very interesting link. I’ve always been suspicious of the Club of Rome’s Malthusian agenda ever since they appeared on the scene.]
Sorry, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my very busy days. But I like explore it more, so I will get back with my response within a day or so, when I get a short break.
In this case, JM and BH are both being straightforward and citing their sources. Their belief, “true” or not, does not apply in this specific instance.
They argue that the temperature trend over the last decade is up rather than down.
My reply is that those are NOAA and GISS sources. And yes, I agree that the NOAA and GISS both show warming over the last decade.
GISS takes NOAA adjusted data as its raw data input and adjusts it further. So, in effect, GISS metadata is refried NOAA metadata: Both are cut from the same cloth.
My problem is with the NOAA and GISS metadata itself. It is based on highly questionable surface station raw data which has been rendered using highly questionable adjustment procedures. Against all evidence and observation they adjust old raw data cooler and new raw data warmer. It seems patently obvious to me that this is the exact opposite of what ought to be done.
Bottom line: Not only does the NOAA raw data spuriously exaggerate the 20th-century warming trend, but scandalous SHAP and FILENET adjustments (inter alia) spuriously exaggerate the trend even further.
UAH and RSS satellite lower troposphere data (while not perfect, and only available since 1979) is far more methodically consistent. They show a flat trend over 11 years and a slight cooling trend over the last 10 years.
That is the basis of my claim that temps have (slightly) declined over the last 10 years.
For some reason, HadCRUT surface data (also based on the NOAA/GHCN), which I do NOT trust, as they refuse to release their adjustment methods, shows a cooling trend over both the 10 and 11-year period.
Brenden H.
“Cooler than what? This is what the UK Met Office says: “A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade.”
Those measurements are from ground based thermometers. I believe it has been pretty well established by now that the data provided by them is contaminated by poor station siting and significant land use changes around the station. For example, if one were to look at data from San Jose, Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, Santa Clara, and Cupertino, California, one would come to the conclusion that there was a major heat wave starting in the 1970’s. There wasn’t. What happened was all the orchards were cut down and housing developments and semiconductor firms replaced them as “Silicon Valley” was born.
The land-based record is junk. Garbage in, garbage out. Take a station that used to be surrounded by desert and turn that desert into farmland through irrigation and the temperatures recorded change but the climate as a whole didn’t.
That “warming” you are seeing is reflecting development, not climate change. None of the other measurements including satellite measurements and ocean temperature measurements are reflecting any warming that I have been able to detect.
DS: I am absolutely astounded than the Club of Rome would have the face to make those, well, absolutely astounding confessions in a public forum. Do they have any idea how terrible it makes them look? One would have thought that the whole idea of the dialectic would have been to keep its motivations strictly on the qt!
It’s like the old New Yorker cartoon where one ad man says to another: “Now we have to decide which we like best: ‘Remember, folks, Kleenodent contains Anethol!’ or ‘Kleenodent contains less Anethol than any other leading toothpaste.'”
Sorry, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my very busy days.
No sweat. Have fun fixing up sick people and check back in when you can.
To tell you the truth, I’d rather have you with us than against us, but in either case you are a positive addition to the mix.
Evan and Brendan re: a Global Temperature,
A project of mine 20 years ago was to create a ceramic circuit board firing furnace, some 20 odd feet, open at either end of the conveyor, having about 2 dozen sensing and heating zones, insulated throughout.
I found, in this ‘controlled’ enviornment (not CERN quality, certainly) that the temperature measured (having taken great care to eliminate ground-loops) was a chaotic fractal:
The temperature graphed at a station was sinusoidal, varying (as I recall at a distance) a few degrees C out of 500 (12 bit AD/DA). Interestingly, however, changing the scale of measurement, up or down some forgotten order, revealed the same sinusoid with the smaller scale signatures riding on top!
We digitally damp the returned values on your meters in order that the measurement converges to a ‘central’ value.
The old mercury thermometers had an intrinsic specific heat that performed a similar function, hard on which to improve.
I suspect, as someone commented above, that the global temperature, equating that of the Sahel with Vanuatu, is a chimera.