Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
The lastest issue of Nature Climate Change to reach my mailbox has some startling news, particularly considering that it comes from a generally Warmist publication. One might say is is “topsy-turvy” (upside down) from a Warmist viewpoint, but quite in keeping with a Skeptic point of view.
1) Total emissions from biodiesel are WORSE than emissions from fossil fuels, when considering both Direct and ILUC (Indirect Land Use Changes) Emissions.
2) Natural gas is WORSE than that “filthy fuel” coal when considering the net warming effects due to leakage rates of methane associated with natural gas and the cooling effects associated with aerosols from burning of coal.
3) Pure electric vehicles are WORSE than petroleum-burning hybrids, considering overall lifetime cost/benefits.
Here are some of the details:
1) A BIOFUEL CONUNDRUM. Biofuels get their energy from the Sun and absorb CO2 from the Atmosphere, making them carbon-neutral. Right? WRONG.
The graphic (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n8/fig_tab/nclimate1265_F1.html, annotations added by Ira) shows total emissions, which is the sum of Direct and ILUC (Indirect Land Use Changes) Emissions. Note that all sources of biodiesel produce more total emissions than the equivalent amount of energy derived from fossil fuels. Also note that bioethanol, while better than fossil fuels in this accounting, are far from carbon-neutral.
The orange and grey dashed lines across the bars show the threshold for a 50% and 35% emission saving, respectively, compared with fossil fuels. Initially biofuels will have to deliver a 35% saving under EU law, but this will rise to 50% in 2017. Indeed, when policymakers talk about raising the threshold in the context of the ILUC debate, they are reportedly talking about raising it to 50% — this graphic shows that according to what we know about the scale of ILUC, this policy approach wouldn’t solve the problem. ILUC data is from a draft report of the International Food Policy Research Institute; direct emissions data is from the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, © European Union, http://eur-lex.europa.eu.
According to this research, bioethanol from wheat saves less than 50% of emissions as compared to fossil fuels. Other bioethanol sources are only about 50-60% carbon-neutral.
2. A NATURAL GAS CONUNDRUM. Natural gas (methane) produces only half the CO2 of coal per unit of energy, so it must be cleaner and greener. Right? WRONG.
According to research by Tom Wigley of NCAR [Climate Change, 108, 601-608 2011]. It turns out that burning of coal releases aerosols that have a cooling effect. Of course, that is not news to those of us familiar with the 1974 National Science Board report that warned of Global Cooling due to human-caused aerosols. In addition, it seems that up to 10% of methane, a potent “greenhouse” gas, leaks out into the Atmosphere. Leakage rates need to be kept below 2% to beat fossil fuels.
3. AN ELECTRIC CAR CONUNDRUM. Pure electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf and my golf cart, release no direct emissions, so they are “greener” than hybrids or conventional cars that burn gasoline or diesel. Right? WRONG.
According to research from Carnegie Mellon University [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 108, 16554-16558 2011] hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles that burn some fossil fuels benefit society over their lifetimes more than either pure electric battery-powered vehicles or conventional gasoline-powered autos. Hybrids have smaller battery packs than pure electrics and therefore cost less to build and maintain.
… The work takes into account, for example, the power plant emissions associated with charging a plug-in car, the direct cost of oil as well as the military expense associated with defending against disruption in its supply, the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions from exhaust pipes, and vehicle recycling and land filling. …
Oops. Greenleaf Biofuels is in New England. The company in San Diego is called New Leaf Biofuels.
Mark;
Regardless, a society that cares about the cost of pollution in terms of health, birth defects and premature death>>>
We currently enjoy the longest life expectancy in human history. Survival rate from birth to adulthood is the highest in human history. We are the healthiest we have ever been in history, as evidenced by the current population being taller and stronger than at any time in history. Our forefathers of just three or four generations ago were midgets by comparison. 6 feet tall was a huge man 100 years ago, today a 6 foot man is commonplace. Take a tour of a war museum and look at the World War 1 helmets, the average 14 year old wouldn’t fit into them today.
I’m not saying there is no such thing as pollution. But this notion that it is significantly altering the health of the human race as a whole is nonsense. Are there negative effects? Of course there are. But the fact of the matter is that the combined effects of industrialization, the good ones and the bad ones, are massively positive.
Premature deaths? Gimme a break. If premature deaths were an actual real problem, we wouldn’t have the longest life expectancy in history by several decades.
So distorted it’s impossible to disentangle. Let’s start with the FACT that CO2 is not a pollutant, but a resource to be valued …
Engineer of Brisbane:
At December 11, 2011 at 4:51 pm you say;
“I thought everyone already knew all this ?”
I thought everybody knew all this, too. But reading some of the above comments it seems we were both wrong. It seems that (as is usual in all things) it is a mistake to assume everybody knows the bleeding obvious.
Sigh
Richard
Mike Bentley wrote (December 11, 2011 at 3:55 pm):
As to “right solution”, I have one word: Thorium.
But I do take umbrage at the term “our pollution issues.” If you aren’t old enough to remember the pre-1970s atmosphere in our cities, you don’t know what pollution is. Every factory with industrial exhausts (those that still haven’t moved to China) has a scrubber, to burn the VOCs (volatile organic compounds – mainly sulfer oxides, nitrogen oxides, and carbon oxides). Our skies (at least in the US and Europe) are so much cleaner than before. The air deep inside Chicago now is as clean as rural air was 40 years ago.
How freaking clean does the air have to be?
Warmist answer: No matter how clean, we will still call it polluted. And because all those industries have scrubbers, their output that used to just be blown out at ambient temperature is now HEAT, so we can cry “global warming!”
Before mid-1970s: Temperature inversions, killer fogs in London, coal dust in your nostrils, horizons that couldn’t be seen, leaded gasoline cars spewing exhaust none of us have seen for 35 years, and lots of respiratory ailments. And cities no vacationer would visit.
After 1980: Cities started becoming vacation destinations, traffic jams with nary a hindrance to horizon visibility or breatheability, clean nostrils, no lead in car exhausts, and when was the last time London had a fog that endangered life?
Now, in the US we even make BAKERS, of all businesses, have “oxidizers” (formerly known as “incinerators”) on their roofs, because even bread ovens’ exhaust is considered pollution. Fresh baked bread is a pollutant? Oy VEY!
People today use the term “pollution” without having ANY idea what it was like – or they choose to pretend that today’s clean air is actually pollution.
It isn’t.
Such claims are laughable. And ignorant. Mike, do you really want to be repeating such warmist dogma?
@ur momisugly Mark
To answer your ‘why nots’, I can understand the point that you make but I think it is done much more that maybe you realize. Used fry grease is in hot demand and often ‘stolen’ before the suppliers of the collection bins can collect it. Freight moves on trains now. Insulation, windows; check out any building code. Motor efficiency, some needs require more than others; mountains, loads, towing, etc. Hydro electric, point that one at the very ones crying against nuclear and fossil fuels. How large of a solar water heater collector would be needed for that Vegas hotel? If it is feasable I’m sure someone will be doing it.
I doubt that you will find any viewers at WUWT that feels a need to waste energy. That is why there is a lot of dissent with regards to the government regulated policies (mandates) directing so much energy in both effort and source to failing policies.
You can or should be able to purchase any vehicle that meets your needs. No one should force me to allow another to dictate a vehicle that I must adapt to. I don’t eat french fries so I do not contribute to any perceived grease problem. Please feel free to order yourself a large order of fries if you wish.
One closing thought on efficiency, why would anyone support the conversation of food sources into ethanol? I takes more energy to produce it than it supplies. It will not produce enough energy to use a portion of that to produce itself. The EROI is negative. Put it in you car and the MPG in every case that I know of will drop 20-35%. It is another of the failed policies of the green agenda.
What irks me most of all about this whole discussion of “alternative” fuels, is that they are NOT, in fact alternatives. They are OBSOLETE alternatives for the most part. Consider the options:
Wind; Go back 150 years and wind was a major source of power. Shipping was wind powered, water was pumped by wind mills, wind did all sorts of work. We got rid of it in favour of fossil fuels. Why? Because it was erratic and inneficient then, and it still is. Wind power is obsolete.
Biofuels; There used to be a profession called a “wood cutter”. That was a guy who would go out and cut wood and bring it back so people could burn it to keep their houses warm and cook food. We got rid of biofuels. Why? Because as communties grew, the wood cutter had to travel farther and farther to gather enough wood, until one day, he met the wood cutter from the next town half way and had a fight over the one tree left between them. In the meantime, the land cleared by the wood cutter wasn’t being used anymore to grow more wood, it was being used to grow FOOD. If, in medieval times, one were to propose burning the food, you’d wind up swinging from a tree. Given the choice between food and fuel, food comes first. Biofuel is obsolete.
Solar; Don’t make me laugh. We built houses with fire places and later furnaces for two reasons. The first was half the planet isn’t warm enough to live in just from solar, and the other is that solar is intermittant and erratic. Not to mention that goal, I thought, of cutting back on carbon emissions was to reduce the amount of heat trapped on the planet, so instead let’s build solar cells that…trap the heat on the planet. Solar is obsolete.
Nuclear; This actually works. Oddly, the very people who don’t want fossil fuels, and advocate for obsolete technologies like biofuel, solar, and wind power, are also first in line to block nuclear as an alternate energy source. Nuclear is not obsolete, but the greeny grimey grinches don’t want us to use it. Hmmm. They want obsolete options, but not new options.
Hydro; This works too. Try and build a major damn however, and out of the woodwork come the same greeny grimey grinches that wouldn’t let us build nuclear power plants. They just turn their protest signs backwards and paint new slogans on the other side. They scream bloody murder about the harm to the environment. Oddly, when a beaver builds a dam, itz natural. When a human builds a dam, itz an ecological disaster. Odder still, many of them go every weekend to their cabin that the lake to enjoy nature…forgetting that the lake they are going to frequently exists because someone built a dam, and they can sleep well at night not worrying about bears breaking in and eating the children because someone built a less than natural cabin. They want obsolete options, but not practical options.
To make matters worse, they want to transfer money to the 3rd world. I used to give money to help fight starvation in Africa. The tyrants that ruled those countries siphoned off the funds, and I saved no one. Then they demanded (not asked, demanded!) money for educations and infrastructure. Through my taxes, I got to contribute to that too. The tyrants that ruled those countries siphoned off the funds, and I educated no one. Now they are beyond demanding, they are extorting money from me, and what will happen to it?
It will be well spent to make a better world for all of us to live in.
Yeah, right. If you’ll buy that, then I got some tundra in northern Canada that’s going to be worth a fortune soon because is it the last place that humans will be able to survive global warming. How many hectares can I interest you in?
@ur momisugly Philip Bradley December 11, 2011 at 3:08 pm,
Forests and jungles are all very nice and all that, but you may be forgetting the world population is predicted to peak out at double today’s population in about 2050.
All that fuss about Brazil cutting down forests, and now they are one of the biggest soyabean, corn, beef and sugar cane producers in the world. There is a similar story for SE Asia and palm oil.
And you can go out and grow rain-forest if you like. In 50 years you would not recognize that it had been gone (yeah, I know it’s not the same, biodiversity etc etc, but I have great confidence in our ability to preserve and restructure without locking up vas areas).
I believe most of that talk is related to economic hegemony strategies anyway, tying up third world agricultural land and countless mineral deposits.
there are many places on Earth where biodiesel from salt-tolerant feedstocks would be an improvement over what they have now. Like the Green Revolution and the Brazilian cane ethanol industry, it will require 2-3 decades of continuous crop breeding.
The problem is that much of the feedstocks will be grown on currently natural environments. Palm oil in SE Asia, Sugar Cane and soya beans in Brazil. Eucalyptus trees and whatever in Africa.
Perhaps 40% of the remaining forests in SE Asia have been destroyed to grow palm oil for biofuels.
The Warmists and Greens are are commiting environmental vandalism on a planetary scale, and forcing the rest of us to pay for it.
There is a spurious ‘methane leakage’ number floating around, and this sounds like it.
As I recall, someone looked at how much gas is delivered, vs. how much comes from the well. They assumed that the missing fraction simply leaked away. Besides being salable, the other thing about methane it is highly flammable.
So, if they can’t ship it, they have to flare it off, not leak it.
Also, I think some fraction of the gas is burned to operate the compressors that move the gas from wellhead to market.
The leakage numbers aren’t making any sense. Clearly the goal of the authors was to paint natural gas as a bad actor.
IMHO,
RR
Thanks for the data points showing the Volt as better overall than a pure electric or gas powered car. I’m sure I’ll hear dissenting voices in 3 … 2 … 1 …
Interestingly enough, maybe we should be dumping sugar into our cars instead of into our bellies. We’d have a dual benefit: we’d lose weight, and the biofuel would be friendlier. And, as we lost weight, our cars would go longer distances courtesy of lugging less of our wide loads.
Ira, it seems that you have not read my post about methane (click on my name and also look at the replies where there is additional information about a comment from Willis E). Methane on its own (from leakage etc) is a insignificant greenhouse gas -have a look at the absorption spectrum. Methane produces greenhouse gases when it is burnt -water vapor being the important one. The total equivalent as CO2 greenhouse gases when natural gas is burnt exceeds that of coal. As I state -burning of natural gas is not more friendly than burning coal and leakage of methane (from pipelines, coal mines, swamps or ruminant animals to the atmosphere has no significant affect on the atmosphere. The IPCC alarmist figure of methane being 21 times CO2 (copied by the US EPA) is a gross manipulation of data to discredit the use of coal. It is a figure oil companies approve to sell LNG and CSG and minimise the threat of coal companies. BP (Australia, Indonesia), Shell (South Africa, Australia), ESSO (Venezula), Mobil, Total and some other oil companies at one time owned coal mines but made a financial mess of it through poor management. The oil companies particularly BP and Shell have been financing green groups to further their agenda to dominate energy supplies.
As an engineer I consider that a combine cycled power plant using gas turbines and waste heat for a steam turbine (or for hot water eg in hospitals) is an efficient use of energy. However, Efficiency needs to take into account the total cost. There needs to be open competition with the supply of all methods of power production and energy conversion. The world is not better off if an energy source eg coal or nuclear energy from thorium, uranium, deuterium etc is restricted for pointless political reasons.
Leon Brozyna says:
Amazing.. . .http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-coals-bridge-future-might-lie-past-220642158.html;_ylt=ArLkAcFgZmO4k87pUBvkYous0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNsdnFtbmFxBG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBGUARwa2cDOGQ0YTNlYzctMDVlYy0zYWU2LTgxY2YtYjczYThiMDU5OTYxBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN0b3Bfc3RvcnkEdmVyA2MyNTZjY2IwLTI0NDQtMTFlMS1iZmNiLWU1NzFjZjMzY2RlMw–;_ylg=X3oDMTFvdnRqYzJoBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25zBHRlc3QD;_ylv=3
What’s amazing is the length of that url link.
(if you chop it off right after the .html part, it still works)
I keep forgetting that its uncommon sense not common sense. The old is new again ,antique energy systems R us? Is this the beginning of the Glibbering Climb Down by our Climate Authorities?
Mark – as to your ‘why nots’. I’m sure that most people will agree that a more efficient car, a better insulated house and a cleaner power source are all good things that should be pursued.
But here’s the rub : every choice has other choices that must be foregone to offset them. We individually live in fixed-pie worlds. Most people cannot freely expand their incomes at will. This is true at the micro-level, it is true at the government macro-level.
So while it’s a noble thing to want everyone to have more efficient houses and cars, the simple truth is that it’s simply not possible to just make this happen with the sweep of a pen. Every time you force a family to install insulation, the money that might have been spent on something else is diverted towards something that probably has a lower value to them. For the majority of the planet, and even the majority of most industrliased countries, it’s not a choice of foie gras or insulation, it’s a choice of insulation or some other basic need, like perhaps healthcare.
Given enough time and development, energy efficient vehicles and homes will filter down to the point that everyone has one. This is the natural way of the market, of development. The average suburban house is full of luxuries a Medieval king would have slaughtered a population to get, not the least the pill bottle full of penicillin and the blister pack of aspirin, and dare I say the bottle of little blue pills in the bedside table. You only need to go back 150 years and not even the president of the USA had an air-conditioned office.
If you try and force improvements on people by dictate, you do two things : 1) you entrench inferior technologies because of the lack of need to improve and 2) you impoverish people by forcing them to buy technologies that have not yet fallen into their natural ability to buy.
So to summarise, nobody is saying ‘no’ to hydro-electric power (except for the Green parties). Nobody is really saying ‘no’ to electric cars – if you want to buy one, more power to you. What people are saying ‘no’ to is tax money being wasted on windmills, massive subsidies on solar power and massive subsidies on electric cars. Taking the collective wealth of a country and wasting it on inefficient technology is as stupid as wasting the money on ridiculous military adventures that achieve nothing.
So the reason ‘why not’ is that there is no need to force good technology on people. They will adopt it when it makes sense for them to do so. Trying to interrupt this basic pattern results in imbalances in the technology development, and prevents other technological improvements due to lack of capital and lack of market. It’s otherwise known as ‘central planning’ and ‘picking winners by politician’ – both of which are rightly known as a Giant Waste of Time and Money.
Nothing counts since CO2 is not a pollutant, but a plant nutrient.
The terms “carbon footprint” and “carbon neutral” do not make sense if you take into account that CO2 is a plant nutrient.
Mike Jonas says:
December 11, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Lots of good comments here, so I will add just one point which I think has been missed: Direct CO2 emissions from biofuels don’t count, because all their C is recycled. [But the loss of food does still matter, of course.]>>>
You are assuming that biofuels are just as efficient as fossil fuels. As a rule of thumb, they are not.
Further, one has to ask what the productivity on the land would be if it were not being used to grow food-for-fuel. Yes, food is one option. Trees are another. And a tree would be… a carbon sink. Now if food, when eaten, does it get completely recycled like food-for-fuel? No, we humans ain’t that efficient, nor are our livestock. So…food is also a carbon sink.
You can’t make a blanket statement about something being neutral or otherwise without considering waht the “direct” results of NOT doing it are.
Phillip Bradley: Perhaps 40% of the remaining forests in SE Asia have been destroyed to grow palm oil for biofuels.
My reading was that most of the forests lost for palm oil had already been lost to logging. However, clearing undisturbed land for new palm plantations is occurring.
This is a gimmick at best. Yes it works but try scaling it up to run an entire transport industry. Even Americans don’t eat that many french fries.
Yet It amazaes me that some dude who puts used cooking grease in his deisel
eyesonu: Large scale solar and wind seems to have been proven to be a bad joke.
Not solar. Boeing uses solar to power its Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina:
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/SCE_and_G_and_Boeing_Flip_the_Switch_on_Large_Rooftop_Solar_Project_999.html
Solar even provides part of the power for two new PV fabrication facilities in the U.S., one in Arizona, one in Michigan. Where sunshine is plentiful and coal and gas are not, solar is a good source of electricity. I personally would like to see more construction of nuclear power plants, but I think that the the golden age of PV power is upon us.
Only the sources are old-fashioned: the harvesting technologies are new. Growing industries everywhere are bidding up the price of coal, oil, and natural gas. The U.S. has plenty, but even for us, PV power is commercially viable in some places.
eyesonu says:
December 11, 2011 at 5:47 pm
“. . . why would anyone support the conversation of food sources into ethanol?”
Because you can’t do just one thing.
Add lead.
Remove lead.
Add MTBE.
Remove MTBE.
Add ethanol.
Next. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether
Urederra – “Nothing counts since CO2 is not a pollutant, but a plant nutrient. ”
Quite correct, but I was putting it in the context of the paper (and trying to be brief).
davidmhoffer – “You are assuming that biofuels are just as efficient as fossil fuels. As a rule of thumb, they are not.”
I don’t think I am assuming anything about fossil fuels. All I’m saying is that all the direct CO2 from biofuels is recycled C, so is not a net emission (unless the original absorption by the biofuel crop is being counted separately).
NB. This does not mean that biofuels are carbon neutral, because there are indirect CO2 emissions too.
davidmhoffer – “one has to ask what the productivity on the land would be if it were not being used to grow [biofuel] ”
Yes one does, but surely it’s best to assess the effect of each other possible use and put it alongside biofuel for comparison. Maybe it would be legitimate to subtract the effect of doing nothing with the land, but for nearly all land that effect is close to zero in the long term – even the greenies’ favourite forests are carbon neutral because the total amount of C in a mature forest doesn’t change much. There are exceptions, such as forests in swamps (eg.) that are creating future coalfields, but these are rare I think. There are also other factors, such as biomass increasing as atmospheric CO2 increases, but the figures I have seen indicate that the effect is very minor on a per annum basis.
Septic Matthew – Algae farms are another form of solar power (I think the first one(s) are now in production??).
Thank you, Dr. Glickstein. Massive FAIL. We were working on mitigating natural gas leaks at the Gas Technology Institute, it is a daunting problem. With all the new hyrofracking production underway, I’m sure methane is venting from all over creation.
I read here a while back that in the winter, especially in the north, it sludges up worse than than normal diesel.