On the day the EPA declares CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” we have the from Rasmussen Reports
Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming
is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.
These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends.
Most Democrats (51%) still say humans are to blame for global warming, the position taken by former Vice President Al Gore and other climate change activists. But 66% of Republicans and 47% of adults not affiliated with either party disagree.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of all Americans believe global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, with 33% who say it’s Very Serious. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s a not a serious problem. The overall numbers have remained largely the same for several months, but the number who say Very Serious has gone down.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of Democrats say global warming is a Very Serious problem, compared to 19% of Republicans and 25% of unaffiliateds.
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President Obama has made global warming a priority for his administration. Half (49%) of Americans think the president believes climate change is caused primarily by human activity. This is the first time that belief has fallen below 50% since the president took office. Just 19% say Obama attributes global warming to long-term planetary trends.
Forty-eight percent (48%) rate the president good or excellent on energy issues. Thirty-two percent (32%) give him poor grades in this area.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of adults now say finding new sources of energy is more important that reducing the amount of energy Americans currently consume. However, 29% say energy conservation is the priority.
A growing number of Americans (58%) say the United States needs to build more nuclear plants. This is up five points from last month and the highest finding so far this year. Twenty-five percent (25%) oppose the building of nuclear plants.
While the economy remains the top issue for most Americans, 40% believe there is a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection. Thirty-one percent 31% see no such conflict, while 29% are not sure.
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THAT’S off the reservation.
Base load thermal (coal) plant – about 43 to 47% efficient, then about 6% for auxilary equipment on-site, resulting in more like 37 to 41%
Compared to the overall efficiency of an automotive gas engine – about 20 percent (only about 20 percent of the thermal-energy content of the gasoline is converted into mechanical work.)
Several fact-filled links on thermal (coal) plants:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11966912/Super-Critical-CoalFired-Power-Plant
http://www.brighthub.com/engineering/mechanical/articles/19182.aspx
Here, under the heading “Gasoline and Battery Power Efficiency” the article claims “overall efficiency of 26 percent” electric vehicle and power plant combo:
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell4.htm
Of course, including nuclear and hydo change the equation/the economics.
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Flanagan (13:35:33) :
That poll from 2 months ago that you keep talking about, “97% if climate rearchers”, as you put it, was discredited as soon as it came out. It was an online poll. It has no validity. It’s methods were flawed.
Caroline Lucas MEP, the leader of the Green Party, last week agreed on television that flying to Spain was “as bad as knifing a person in the street”, because air travel like this is causing people to die “from climate change”.
I don’t think I’m dying, but I am starting to feel a little sick.
DJ (14:57:24) :
Monckton did not lose in that court case in the UK
It’s almost starting to look like La-Nina is on its way back (still have to wait and see though)
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
The SOI continues to go up and has started going up even faster today and perhaps yesterday as well. If it continues going up like this it may have some implications for climate sooner or later this year. I also noticed there was a time where it seemed like it hit the brakes and would go back down but it just continued going up.
“crosspatch (15:46:23) : What the poll reflects is who is winning a marketing campaign,”
I wasn’t aware of any marketing campaign by the science side of this issue. Who has been marketing the real science of global warming? I don’t wtch much tv so maybe I’ve been missing it. Maybe Mother Nature is on a campaign to show Al Gore and co. are wrong if that’s what you mean. 😉
DJ, DJ, DJ; you give me papers and I give you temperatures.
====================================
“Tom in Texas (17:10:33) : …flying to Spain was “as bad as knifing a person in the street”, ”
I like it when they talk like this. It tips people that they are exaggerating for effect.
_Jim (16:31:44) :
You got me thinking about efficiency and what does it mean? Your probably thinking that’s a stupid question … efficiency means efficiency 😉 But here is what I mean.
Efficiency, as you used, presumably means (energy extracted)/(energy available). I’m going to argue that is irrelevant 🙂 Utterly unimportant.
Your argument:
coal –> electricity –> vehicle motion (0.4 x 0.7 = 0.28) … 28% efficient
gas –> vehicle motion 20% efficient
By the way, did you forgot transmission power lines in your calculation? Whether you did or didn’t though really doesn’t matter because there is also missing the mining of the coal, the transportation, the building of the coal plants, building the transmission lines, building batteries, building electric cars, all the labour. And of course on the other side, the same thing … drilling wells, refining gas, transporting the gas, building gas cars, all the labour. And so on.
Its all pretty involved and complicated, how could we figure it out? Well we could just look at the cost. We could assume that the market will translate efficiencies into costs and define efficiency as:
(miles my car goes) / (cost to make it go)
In this definition, we don’t care about energy efficiency … that’s just a useless number with meaning now when it comes to our end goal. For example consider nuclear power. The energy efficiency of nuclear power is abysmal (energy extracted)/ (energy available). Probably less than 1%?? I really don’t know. But that’s the point, energy efficiency is not what matters. Its an irrelevant number.
So how do we know what is cheapest, or (most efficient for society as a whole)? Well … probably the one that exists in a market based society. Electricity is subsidized, gas is getting more expensive, but even then, at the moment, it is still cheaper to run a gas car than an electric car. Will this change in the future? Probably. But saying arguing what one ‘should’ or shouldn’t do by appealing to models (i.e. not using the market mechanism) is probably going to fail … probably.
Environmentalists would point out that I’m not including externalities (pollution and so on) and rightly so. This is not completely true since there are many many regulations on externalities that add to the cost, so externalities are included, but probably not efficiently (from a market perspective). So put a market cost on externalities and let the market work. I’m all for it, and in that case nuclear (the least energy efficient from a conversion perspective) might actually be the winner. Only the market and time knows for sure.
Anyways, using calculated energy conversion efficiencies to make any decision is probably useless. Costs (direct and external) is what is important and these will probably almost no relationship to energy conversion efficiencies.
“I wasn’t aware of any marketing campaign by the science side of this issue. ”
Didn’t say the science side was engaged in such a campaign, but there certainly is one going on. The longest infomercial in that campaign is probably “An Inconvenient Truth”. People in science and industry now speak of AGW as if it is some kind of a fact. It is just plain Orwellian.
Can´t believe that the america of so many great scientists, artists and inventors who gave so much to the welfare of humanity, is now trying to sell to the world the silly “software” of global warming and/or climate change and fool´s hardware as windmill generators. It is pitifully preposterous.
DJ (14:41:00) :
“As you know, climate scientists massively and overwhemingly accept CO2 from humans as a driver of warming (viz the recent EOS paper) and the scientific literature from the “sceptics” is nonexistent.
Why would you “boast” about (perhaps) the greatest disjoint between science and public opinion in history?”
Because one of those groups has some common sense.
I agree with crosspatch on this. “Popular” science is what got us into this mess. I fear we are in an age where even reality needs a marketing scheme.
You know the EPA is asking for public comment on regulating !!!Global Warming Gasses!!! Eleventy!!! They want our opinion—GIVE IT TO THEM.
Go to Steve Milloy’s Green Hell Blog for the instructions.
http://greenhellblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/epa-seeks-public-comment-on-greenhouse-gases/
“As you know, climate scientists massively and overwhemingly accept CO2 from humans as a driver of warming.”
And as YOU well know each and every one of those climate scientists who believe is a snip.
Mike Bryant
Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends
This figure puzzles me. I’d have thought that the figure would’ve been more like 10%.
The ‘planetary trends’ are argued by Fairbridge and Landscheidt, and to a lesser extent maybe by Svensmark with his varying cosmic ray flux. Does half of America really know about these obscure propositions, none of which ever appears in the mainstream media? If this is true, it signifies to me that half of all Americans know a bit about these ideas, when if they’d been good MSM consumers they’d never have heard a damn thing about any of them.
I just hope that
(A) nothing is done for the next year or two and cooling continues while CO2 continues to rise; if they start doing something and the cooling continues the AGW crowd will take credit
(B) they do start to do something and energy prices escalate and the next election Obamas groupies are tossed in the garbage with the rest of the biomass
Idlex,
I think that refers to the more mundane “temperatures of this planet”. Don’t forget that 67% of Americans really really believe that Obama will spend us out of debt.
Mike Bryant
oops i meant “temperature trends of this planet”
Jim commment re
R Stevenson (10:18:07) :
Political leaders and their scientific advisors ( if they have any) have a poor grasp of technology. A change to electric cars would increase CO2 emissions because of the lower fuel to power efficiency of power plants compared with modern internal combustion engines
“THAT’S off the reservation.
Base load thermal (coal) plant – about 43 to 47% efficient, then about 6% for auxilary equipment on-site, resulting in more like 37 to 41%
Compared to the overall efficiency of an automotive gas engine – about 20 percent (only about 20 percent of the thermal-energy content of the gasoline is converted into mechanical work.)”
Jim, as an engineer, I am disturbed that the so called energy “experts” throw around so many diffferent numbers for virtually any energy alternative they are advocating. The electric car is no exception.
This advocacy tells me that there are too many out there that are willing to stretch the facts for any energy alternative they are pushing, and they have the “ability” to cherry pick data or distort the facts to make a point. Professionalism seems to be lacking in some of the scientific and engineering community especially in the universities. I have come to trust only the market rather than the “proponents” of a specific technology.
Some thoughts:
Your sources claim that the efficiency of a gasoline auto is 20 where as most sources seem to quote at least 25% or higher especially for the diesel engine. This is not my field of expertise so I can’t have a strong opinion on the various claims given the wide range of claims, except the 20% seems low.
The comment by R Stevenson also mentions CO2 emissions. I don’t think anyone would argue that for a given BTU of energy produced coal emitts much more CO2 than gasoline, and diesel produces less CO2 than coal but more than gasoline. If you are honestly chasing CO2, the above difference needs to be taken into account.
I checked your links and they did not mention transmission losses for electric power, was that included?
Also we all know that battery technology is not too effective dispite the years and years of research and dollars expended by the government and private industry. Electric vehicle range is horrible and to talk about H2 fuel cells is ignoring the fact that virtually all the worldwide hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels.
Finally most of us don’t waste all that heat energy from a gasoline engine for a good portion of the year, we use it to heat our cars, etc. so it is not wasted. Was heating an electric vehicle in winter included in your efficiencies? Was the enormous cost and carbon foot print of enlarging our electric power grid included?
Remember California mandated a percentage electric vehicles a while back and dropped the idea when electricity supply became short and more expensive. The electric vehicle was a failure then, what is different now.
As I mentioned above, this is not my area of engineering expertise so I do’t know whose “numbers” to believe, but I am skeptical of all the “hype” since the thermodynamic fundamentals don’t always add up . I can only believe the free market, not government mandates which distort the market. Did you debit the electric vehicle costs to cover the road tax courrently paid by the liquid fuels? Just look at the folly of the ethanol mandates if you want to see how the government does the wrong thing again and again.
“The ‘planetary trends’ are argued by Fairbridge and Landscheidt”
My first guess would be Milankovitch, but they probably mean “it’s natural” vs
manmade.
idlex: “…Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends
This figure puzzles me….”
I think it just means they think it is natural. Most (many?) know about ice ages and mammoths and Ayla, and so on, so they have an inkling that big changes happen.
One needn’t know the specific mechanisms to finally realize that climate changes naturally. All we really need to do is keep “marketing” (sorry) the fact that climate has always changed, sometimes in rapid and dramatic fashion long before humans could have possibly been a factor. Eventually the AGW mantra of “unprecedented” will crumble. With a precedent firmly in view, the public will be less likely to swallow the rest of the argument.
Ole Sol, PDO, AMO and the gang are already helping…we need to build on the momentum. And sorry, it is really about marketing…that’s what put real science behind the 8-ball in the first place (the marketing from the “other side”). It is more a PR and political battle right now than a scientific one.
(The below was formatted accomodate the abscence of a fixed width font or “tt” HTML tag)
Chart – Energy consumption relative to an Internal Combustion Energy (ICE).
Relative to ICEs:
……………………………………………..1………2….
Vehicle:…….. HEVs PHEVs EVs HFCEV HFCEV
Total energy -29% -41% -46% -30% +33%
CO2………… -29% -40% -45% -43% + 38%
(1-reformed natural gas) (2-electrolysis)
Vehicle acronyms:
ICE = gasoline car (internal combustion engine)
HEV = hybrid gas-electric car (uses gasoline to recharge batteries)
PHEV = plug-in hybrid (can be plugged in or use gasoline to recharge batteries)
EV = electric vehicle (plugs in to recharge batteries)
HFCEV = hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle
So, we see that ‘electrics’ and derivatives (plug-in hybrids etc) gain a benefit by using the more efficient ‘grid’ source of energy as opposed to gasoline engine only.
Chart from this .pdf file:
THE CLEANEST CARS: WELL-TO-WHEELS EMISSIONS COMPARISONS
http://www.pluginamerica.org/images/EmissionsSummary.pdf
Extract from SUMMARY:
This is an overview of all the analyses that I could find as of September 2007 looking at emissions produced by vehicles with electric drive and by their power sources (called well-to-wheels analyses). There’s quantity, and there’s quality – both the overwhelming preponderance of the data and the conclusions of the best-designed studies show that plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants than conventional cars, hybrids, or hydrogen fuel-cell
vehicles.
The intent of this summary is to compare vehicles with partial or complete electric drive to conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles running on gasoline. Biofuels are not included in this summary, but some of the studies listed do assess emissions from vehicles running on liquid fuels other than gasoline.
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Ian Schumacher (17:58:17) :
Efficiency, as [ _Jim (16:31:44) ] used, presumably means (energy extracted)/(energy available). I’m going to argue that is irrelevant 🙂
. . . For example consider nuclear power. The energy efficiency of nuclear power is abysmal (energy extracted)/ (energy available). Probably less than 1%?? I really don’t know.
Whoa there, pardna! Nukes are by a country kilometer the Most fuel efficient energy source we have, way over 99% for the reaction. As I recall, thermal efficiency is 1 minus your exhaust temperature divided by your peak temperature. Splitting atoms run upwards of 100,000,000 K, so your exhaust temp (the coolant temperature running out to your steam generator) is hardly noticeable in the equation. They say a years worth of nuke waste would fit under your desk. (Your desk, not mine)
_Jim did miss the power line loss, though. I once asked a utility exec how much that was, i.e., Mw out to the transmission grid – Mw billed to the customer, and got a lot of hemming and hawing. So I still don’t know.
Electricity is subsidized, but by the consumer thanks to govt regulation. When the power companies had to compete in Texas, rates went down. They’re drifting back up now that the companies have figured out the system. I’m sure cap’n trade will help.