Guest post by Thomas Fuller
Like mountain fruits enjoyed out of season and shipped long distance, there are climate pleasures I need to avoid, such as piling on with criticism of 10:10, Michael Mann, Joe Romm and my beloved late, great state of California.
It’s too easy and doesn’t get the job done. Summer is the silly season and we’re having a lovely fall in San Francisco.
It’s been a lovely fall in many parts of the world, and a less than lovely spring in many parts down South. But overall, be prepared for claims of the hottest month leading to the hottest year on record.
Let’s assume for the moment that it turns out that way (I think a sharp drop starting this month means we’ll miss that dubious distinction narrowly). What really should we think if this year is the warmest on record? And if, as I strongly suspect, next year is dramatically cooler due to the confluence of La Nina and a shift in the PDO, what should we make of that?
I don’t know.
I assume this world will continue to warm slightly. I assume that we will not agree to cut our energy usage drastically. I assume we will not make a whole-scale conversion to wind, solar and biofuels.
I assume, then, that the voracious appetite for energy in the developing world will mostly be satisfied with coal, and that in 40 years we will be consuming more than three times as much energy as we do today–mostly generated by coal.
I personally consider that a grave problem for the world, no matter what it portends for global temperatures.
But if you consider what we have not done, perhaps we have no right to complain. And I’m not talking about Kyoto, Cap and Trade, blah-blah-blah.
What we have not done is enable nuclear power to be used as much as it should, due to fears of nuclear waste. What we have not done is push combined heat and power, due to their lack of lobbying strength. What we have not done is finance Waste to Energy plants, due to the pressing need for cash for, I don’t know, financing Facebook and American Idol. What we have not done is push for uprating our hydroelectric facilities, clear the way for pumped storage for a not-so-rainy day, or invest in other utility-level storage technologies.
The Green Consortium that has been yelling at us about climate change and energy has ignored all of the technologies that could make a difference. And skeptics have been too busy noting all of their errors, personal quirks and logical absurdities to notice that yes, people, we have an energy problem coming down the road.
As I’ve written here before, I believe forecasts of energy consumption by the DOE and the UN are far too low. If I’m right, and the world’s energy needs triple before 2050, the amount of coal we will burn to satisfy those needs will make skies the world over as grey as the skies over most of China’s cities today. Whatever it does to temperatures (and I do believe it will do something, warming regional temperatures and causing further misery in the developing world), the normal pollution and black carbon will amount to a problem for the world.
I’ll repeat the simple math: We used 500 quads last year. A quad is equivalent to 36 million tons of coal being burned. A straight line continuation of consumption trends puts us at 2,000 quads around the year 2030, and maybe 3,000 quads by 2075. That’s a lot of coal.
There are days when I am optimistic about our ability to prevent such a firestorm. This is not one of those days. I read the news today and saw the foolishness of the green movement, the correctness of the skeptical criticism, and sat down to write this feeling like we’re all missing the point.
Richard Lindzen and Anthony Watts, John Christy and Steve McIntyre, all bright, sincere and honest people, are correctly noting the defects of the warmist arguments. And the warmists can’t seem to string two sentences together without making a huge mistake. They haven’t done anything right in a year.
But we’re still going to be burning a heckuva lot of coal in 2030. It’s really not a good thing to look forward to. I intend to be here in 2030, a lot greyer and more irascible, I’m sure. But I don’t want the skies to be as grey as my hair.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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As you’ve correctly surmised, whatever problems we face down the road, they can not be solved by distortions and lies. We need science. Desperately. And we need truth. Desperately. The Warmistas are standing in the way of that.
Meanwhile, we have problems today which are getting short shrift, again because of the Warmists and their lies. The sooner the Climate Warm/Change/Disrupt/??? monstrosity is defeated, the better off everyone will be, even Mother Earth herself.
We could also be drilling for oil in places (like AMWR) which have been off limits.
Tom Fuller,
Where is your CO2 science Tom?
Sarcasm starts:
Great timing. Really.
A truly timely strategy to try to pick up the support of the stressed 10:10 community and many some of the other similar orgs that have troubled foot soldiers in the carbon reduction area. And some floaters . . .
The name for your new carbon reduction org might be:
‘Tom Fuller’s Reduction of Carbon by Coal Cooperative Coalition of Concerned Cautious Courteous Curiously Circumspect Cute cuddly Children Saving Society’.
Or shortened that is TFRCCCCCCCCCCCCSS. All those C’s will remind everyone of the evilv CARBON! Clever isn’t it?
Where is your webpage?
We can nick name your group the Fuzzy-Wuzzy-Group. I can see your mascot and logo already. : )
Sarcasm ends.
PERSONAL NOTE: I was happy to see the Nuclear plug . . . that is job security for me . . . it has been the subject of all my formal education and my sole profession for nigh on 39 years, now working in the service part of it. Nuclear is in the mix . . . it isn’t the solve-all solution . . . it can be certainly be a major growth area . . . . shouldn’t put all our energy eggs in one basket.
John
What I find so stupid about scare mongering on nuclear waste is that we already have a 110% safe place to put nuclear waste. Any good geologist – i.e. not those working for governments – can tell you this.
We sink shafts, and then develop galleries, hundreds of metres underground into a few of the tens of thousands of the huge buried salt domes that exist worldwide.
These underground salt domes are: i) totally dry, ii) ‘plastic’, closing slowly around and thereby sealing any nuclear waste entombed in them, iii) they are completely unreactive (common salt NaCl, reacts with almost nothing), and iv) they are abundant.
Erosion may ultimately expose the buried nuclear waste tens of millions of years from now, lomg after radioactive decay has rendered it totally harmless.
Greenies, of course, don’t like this idea.
Why? Because it is too obviously sensible.
Bottom line: nuclear power is the only sensible solution to solve the world’s energy problems.
“But I don’t want the skies to be as grey as my hair.”
Good grief, have you ever seen the emissions from an American coal-fired power plant. No, because you CAN’T see them! Particulate emissions are on the order of 0.043 lbs/million Btu input (http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/ewr/pm_emissions_control/regs.html )If China would invest in more pollution control, you wouldn’t see them there, either.
Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of the light water reactor, once said:
“Nuclear waste is not a substance. Wasting valuable nuclear materials is only what stupid governments do.”
What’s known as “nuclear waste” or “enrichment tailings” or “depleted uranium” is pure stored energy. Convertible to usable energy with long known technology that has been sabotaged and hindered by the same people that cry “global warming” today.
With the reactors we use today we extract only 1% of the energy that could be extracted from the uranium we mine.
The future will always happen , its just that our ability to predict the future is very weak. If you tell me that” the sun will come up tomorrow”, I’m with you and “Anne” on that. I just don’t see a China brown haze or a China Syndrome 20 years from now (2030) let alone 40 (2050) or 65 (2075). If there is anything to learn over the last 3 days when Roy Spence observed that the sea temperatures have fallen and the satalite tempertures are rising, the disconnect between the two (sun heats water yielding evaporation and the greenhouse gas water vapor heats up the atmosphere. When sea temperatures fall, there is a lot less evaporation, hence atmospheric cooling) speaks loudly of our poor understanding of weather, climate, forcings and feedback, not withstanding some people’s beliefs. If we just put our hands in our pockets and say “ah shucks nothing bad is going to happen” are unaware of energic and committed individuals arriving on the scene and “tipping point” circumstances, which will alter our pathway to clean energy. Random walk anyone? Magnificent day today, go for a stoll.
Tommy says:
October 8, 2010 at 11:33 am
“Tax the rich to feed the poor.
Till there are no rich no more.”
Ten Years After
“One for you
Nineteen for me.”
Taxman by Beatles
Sometimes even artists get it right.
The grey China sky isn’t so bad, it’s the brown that sucks.
Henry Pool said:
I am pretty sure all of this reasoning wrong.
You see, water (vapor) is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
Nuclear power generates a lot of heat, which has be led off by cooling with water, usually from the oceans.
When all of that water vapor (from the process) condenses, the heat is released in the atmosphere. I assume 50% goes to space and the other 50% is directed back to earth.
That may be true for the Uranium fueled Nuclear power plant. There was a competing fuel source in the early Nuclear industry called Thorium. But because the military wanted fissionable material, Uranium won. The reactor design called LFTR (pronounced Lifter) is a liquid salt Thorium reactor that is self regulating and does not require vast amounts of cooling water. I’ve read that a power plant can even be located in desert areas with no issues. One benefit of Thorium reactors is that it can eat nuclear waste from Uranium fuels plants, plus it’s waste has a short half life. I’m no expert on Thorium reactors, but it looks like a good road to take. But because it has the word Nuclear in it’s name, it’s looked in the same light as our current reactor population.
Regards..
I agree with most of this. The point about clean air technology should probably be used to moderate the alarmism around the grey skies notion. Otherwise this all makes sense.
What more is there to say about the issue than in the resignation from the APS of one of the great physicists, Prof Hal Lewis. Read his letter at:
http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
He pulls no punches.
Douglas DC says:
October 8, 2010 at 11:00 am
“Split atoms, not birds.”
Heh, that would make a great bumpersticker (unless it already is one and I missed it).
Why no major research into Thorium reactors? Potentially a good part of the mix. Many fewer waste/safety/terrorist problems, potentially.
Because we’re wasting money on windmills!!!!
REPLY: We had a big article on thorium reactors here
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/09/finding-an-energy-common-ground-between-%E2%80%9Cwarmers%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cskeptics%E2%80%9D/
Anthony
“R. de Haan says:
October 8, 2010 at 11:37 am
“I assume, then, that the voracious appetite for energy in the developing world will mostly be satisfied with coal, and that in 40 years we will be consuming more than three times as much energy as we do today–mostly generated by coal.
I personally consider that a grave problem for the world, no matter what it portends for global temperatures”.
And what exactly is your problem with that?”
Exactly. Use coal to produce electricity for the people who don’t have it by now – China, India, Pakistan, Africa. This will solve far more problems than it can cause. The Chinese are doing exactly that, and they are the most successful nation on Earth ATM (In terms of growth).
Here in the West we have more and more dimwits who say “Growth is bad”, i beg all of these people to convince the Chinese first, and i wish them much fun doing that, or alternatively they may read Björn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist, where he outlines the relation between GDP per capita and pollution. You have near-zero pollution in pre-industrial civilisations, a lot of pollution during industrialization, and it drops again as people become wealthy enough to care for the environment.
Also, over the decades, with more advanced technology, the absolute levels of pollution for any given level of GDP per capita has dropped. IOW, the industrialization of China causes much less pollution per capita than the industrialization of Germany did in the 19th century. The power plants they build now are much more efficient than what we had back then, quite simple really.
(I don’t count CO2 as pollution. It’s biodegradable.)
Nuclear.
Not entirely without its achilles heel, ECONOMICS, one consumes the other quite nicely. Its been clear, for a while, that regulatory bodies can be captured by vested interests. When that happens, safe-gaurds diminish, accidents happen.
It’d be fair to say that the Nuclear industries are subject to the same unwholesome greed as any other. So whats to be done? How do we increase Nuclear energy use, but decrease the risk of political corruption undermining it? Do we create a watchdog to watch the watchdog?
The tech is there, no doubt, so its ceased to be an issue of failsafes and containment.
The weak link is, as always, Human self interest topping prudent caution.
While Nuclear could keep the Human race ticking over nicely for centuries to come, we would need a revolution in business/political and scientific ethics to safely use it.
Theres where the evolution needs to happen.
Who was it Hitler or some other well known dictator who said if you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one and tell it often because the more you tell it the more people will believe it.
Global warming advocates favor any means to satisfy their desires to save the planet. They offer predictions of global disaster to the point of being impossible in nature. And they have used movie stars, cartoons, fictional movies and politicians seeking taxes and company CEOs looking for business to promote a fear in man made global warming without an ounce of proof.
Is this the way we are to make life changing decisions, by advertisement, fear, taxes, fiction, opportunism, slander, and hiding proof. Well the list of their tactics is long and the proof is short.
We are going to be using a LOT of coal in the future – though not quite in the ways that we think.
Coal to liquids (Fischer – Topsch) can be used to crack coal and produce shorter hydrocarbons – synthetic diesel being a very desirable product. Essentially it is a refinery for coal. Do it correctly, and you can capture and sequester CO2 (up here, they are talking about reinjecting them into depleted oil reservoirs to enhance recovery). Once you crack the coal, you can recombine it into whatever hydrocarbon you’d like, though the shorter the output moecule, the more extra hydrogen you need.
The other thing available worldwide is a LOT of is natural gas – both in shale and in reserviours. There is also a significant amount in offshore hydrates that are not yet mined.
I could see a very long time with a combination of CTLs, GTLs, synthetic diesel, natural gas and nuclear as an energy future that is both robust and affordable, not to mention available for centuries.
India is also workign on a program for thorium-fueled reactors. The Navy beleives they have somethign with the Bussard-designed Polywell fusion Wiffleball testbed. We will see.
The point of all this is that there are energy sources that are clean, affordable and robust – and won’t run out for centuries. And I have come to believe that the world will migrate to synthetic diesel as the most economic liquid fuel, if for no other reason that won’t have to replace a century’s worth of transportation fuel infrastructure.
Fred says:
October 8, 2010 at 10:58 am
You don’t have to be smart to be a Warmista, you just have to be passionate.
No, just obedient.
I read somewhere recently (I can’t remember where, sorry) that China was now buying its coal-fired generating technology from Siemens of Germany, which is state-of-the-art as far as emissions are concerned.
And, Tom, this is the cogeneration plant, coal (40% AFAIK) and gas fired, in Braunschweig, Germany, where i get my heating and electricity from. Notice that it’s very close to the city center, population is 300,000. No grey skies here; flue gas desulfurization; no visible pollution.
close-up of the plant:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.278491,10.514587&spn=0.002491,0.008234&t=h&z=18
zoom out to see the city center appear to the south of it.
One of my guilty pleasures is reading. Today I read that Wegman is being investigated for academic misconduct.
Who will go down with him? Barton ; an unidicted co-conspiritor. Some plagerising PHD’s. McIntyre- too much invested in a false ” bad science” shriek. Cuchilleni: plagerised the plagerism. Watts.
Go Mike. Go John. Go Ray.
REPLY: Ah, more of your fine prose I see. You may wish to employ a spell checker before pressing submit. I’m not sure that you can fully understand the words indicted, conspirator, PhD, plagiarism, plagiarizing, or plagiarized if you can’t spell them properly. 😉 A review of your past comments here shows an equal spread of similarly misspelled foaming taunts. Actually, I think this issue is a good thing. The question is: was this intentional or accidental? Was it Wegman himself or an assistant? Meanwhile, the other issues of the report get more press. -Anthony
DirkH says:
October 8, 2010 at 12:51 pm
“No grey skies here”
Apart from the German weather, of course. Which means, often; but entirely natural.
No single site as done more for the skeptical viewpoint than WUWT. Reading this sites articles and comments leads one to the conclusion that we have been winning the battle. People should realize that here (WUWT), we are preaching to the converted. Many have been lulled by the comfort of commenting to “like” thinking individuals.
However, the battle for minds, and truth is not necessarily being won at other discussion forums. A major setback has been AccuWeather’s Global Warming blog, which once was mainly skeptical and then subsequently revamped to new moderators. Skeptic commenters have systematically been banned and hounded out of this forum until there is barely 3 left (including myself).
It would be nice if some people, who enjoy basking in the warm glow of peer approval here, would perhaps, risk a little heat, in the open forum there. There are so few “neutral” forums, I would hate to see this one lost. It may already be lost.
http://forums.accuweather.com/index.php?showtopic=22788&pid=1071705&st=80&#entry1071705
On this page, there is a vicious attack against Willis Eschenbach. Moderation seems to be applied only against skeptics. I have been moderated to death and can no longer defend such fine people. GK
FWIW, the issue with reprocessing is potential diversion to weapons which is why the US does not favor it. If you are interested in advanced reactors, Barry Brook’s Brave New Climate is a good place to find information as is his new book. You can find some useful links to other books in the comments at Rabett Run and you can find discussions of the pros, not so much of the cons, of the thorium reactors at nuclear green
Excuse Eli for the moment. He has some sputter to clean up after reading the post.
I am as worried about the problems for coal decades from now as I am about the projected whale oil crisis of the 19th century, and the projected horse manure disposal crisis of the early 20th century, and the predicted famine of the 1980s and 1990s, and the predicted global cooling crisis of the 70s.