A Rapid in Time

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:06:40 -0500

I’m finding it a bit hard to fit regular blogging into my assistant professor lifestyle, so I’m going to try a different approach: Twitter, backed up with occasional exegesis here. So please follow me…

Is natural gas leaky enough to offset its carbon mitigation benefits?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:30:53 -0500

Nature News article on an in-press JGR story be Petron et al.:

Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

“If we want natural gas to be the cleanest fossil fuel source, methane emissions have to be reduced,” says Gabrielle Pétron, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and first author on the study, currently in press at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Emissions will vary depending on the site, but Pétron sees no reason to think that this particular basin is unique. “I think we seriously need to look at natural-gas operations on the national scale.”

Mitigating California's greenhouse gas emissions

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:50:00 -0500

Williams et al. examine the challenges of mitigating emissions of heat-trapping gases in developed economies, via a case study of California’s goal of reducing emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050:

Three major energy system transformations were necessary to meet the target (Fig. 2). First, energy efficiency had to improve by at least 1.3% yr⁻¹ over 40 years. Second, electricity supply had to be nearly decarbonized, with 2050 emissions intensity less than 0.025 kg CO₂e/kWh [compared to about 1 kg/kWh for traditional coal power generation]. Third, most existing direct fuel uses had to be electrified, with electricity constituting 55% of end-use energy in 2050, compared to 15% today.

Results for a mitigation scenario including these and other measures are shown in Fig. 1. 28% of emissions reductions relative to 2050 baseline emissions came from energy efficiency; 27% from decarbonization of electricity generation; 14% from a combination of energy measures including smart growth, biofuels, and rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV); 15% from measures to reduce non-energy CO₂ and non-CO₂ GHGs; and 16% from electrification of existing direct fuel uses in transportation, buildings, and industrial processes….

Some studies suggest that 100% of future electricity requirements could be met by renewable energy, but our analysis found this level of penetration to be infeasible for California (20, 21). We found a maximum of 74% renewable energy penetration despite California’s high renewable resource endowment, even assuming perfect renewable generation forecasting, breakthroughs in storage technology, replacement of steam generation with fast-response gas generation, and a major shift in load curves by smart charging of vehicles. Using historical solar and wind resource profiles in California and surrounding states, the electricity system required 26% non-renewable generation, from nuclear, natural gas, and hydro, plus high storage capacity to maintain operability. It would be possible to forecast higher penetration in cases with a higher resource base and/or much lower energy demand, for example due to lower population growth or lower economic growth….

In our model, the largest share of GHG reductions from EE came from the building sector, through a combination of efficiency improvements in building shell, HVAC systems, lighting, and appliances. EE improvements were complemented by other measures to reduce new energy supply requirements for electricity, transportation, and heating. EE in combination with on-site distributed energy resources in the form of solar hot water and rooftop PV reduced the net consumption of grid-supplied electricity and fuels in new residential and commercial buildings to zero by 2030 (25). Structural conservation in the form of “smart growth” urban planning to reduce driving requirements was responsible for 5% of total emission reductions in 2050….

Achieving the infrastructure changes described above will require major improvements in the functionality and cost of a wide array of technologies and infrastructure systems, including but not limited to cellulosic and algal biofuels, CCS, on-grid energy storage, electric vehicle batteries, smart charging, building shell and appliances, cement manufacturing, electric industrial boilers, agriculture and forestry practices, and source reduction/capture of highGWP emissions from industry (35)….

Because mitigation measures reduce fuel use by investing in energy efficient infrastructure and low carbon generation, a much higher percentage of energy cost will go to capital costs; our model indicates a cumulative investment of $400-500 billion in current dollars (figs. S35 and S36) for electricity generation capacity in the mitigation case, a factor of about ten higher than the baseline case (37)….

The central role of electricity in our results suggests the importance of electricity sector governance as a tool of climate policy, but this has received relatively little attention until recently (47). Although some argue that regulation impedes innovation and increases implementation costs (43), state-level electricity regulation has existing tools for pursuing many climate policy goals, through both market mechanisms and direct regulation: requirements that utilities procure renewable generation, limit carbon intensities, and implement customer energy efficiency and distributed energy programs; and set rates that encourage conservation and electric vehicle charging, internalize pollution costs, and allocate the costs of these policies equitably (7, 48). Given the political challenges of achieving comprehensive federal climate legislation, it is worth further exploring decentralized electricity governance as a climate policy mechanism….

Assuming plausible technological advances, we find that it is possible for California to achieve deep GHG reductions by 2050 with little change in lifestyle (although the potential for lifestyle change deserves further study). The logical sequence of deployment for the main components of this transformation is energy efficiency first, followed by decarbonization of generation, followed by electrification. This transformation will require electrification of most direct uses of oil and gas. In California no single generation technology, RE, nuclear, or CCS, can be used to decarbonize all electricity; a mixed generation portfolio is required. If it is true that the low-carbon path features electricity, then the question is how best to mobilize investment and coordinate R&D and infrastructure roll-out to achieve this end, and what climate policy modalities will be most effective. If the oil economy is replaced by the electric economy, it is instructive to consider the implications of the price of a decarbonized kWh replacing the price of a barrel of oil as a benchmark for the overall economy.

Milankovitch was right!

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:18:00 -0500

Peter Huybers statistically evaluates the contribution of the Earth’s ~20 thousand year precession cycle to deglaciations over the last million years, and concludes that both obliquity (how tilted the Earth’s axis is) and precession (the orientation of the tilt) play a role:

Ice sheets tend to collapse in response to unusually large maxima in insolation forcing that result from the coincidence of high obliquity and alignment of perihelion with Northern Hemisphere summer solstice, consistent with the models hypothesized by Milankovitch¹ and others^{5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10}. During these forcing maxima, summer insolation is as much as 40 W m⁻² greater at high northern latitudes (Fig. 3b). However, this consistency is not exclusive of all other orbital contributions to deglaciation. For instance, when perihelion aligns with the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice, aphelion occurs during the Southern Hemisphere summer, causing the length of the Southern Hemisphere summer to be longer (Fig. 3b) and, possibly, increasing the escape of CO₂ from the Southern Ocean into the atmosphere^{26, 27, 28, 29}. The climate system is thoroughly interconnected across temporal and spatial scales, and, just as neither obliquity nor precession act in isolation, no one region should be expected to exert exclusive influence upon deglaciation.

Synchronizing Antarctic and Northern Hemisphere ice retreat

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:03:10 -0500

Weber et al. examine the timing of the retreat of the Antarctic and Northern Hemisphere ice sheets at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM):

A long-standing hypothesis for ice-sheet synchronization invokes sea-level forcing of Antarctic grounding lines driven by fluctuations of NH ice sheets (41, 42), but until now the chronology of the Antarctic ice sheets has been too limited to evaluate this hypothesis, other than for the deglaciation where existing arguments for a 4- to 5-ky lag relative to the start of deglacial sea-level rise (5, 8, 23) would appear to contradict it. Where dating constraints for onset of the [local Last Glacial Maximum] exist, however, they support a sea-level forcing in placing the associated Antarctic margins at their maximum extent when global sea level was approaching or first reached its LGM lowstand (Fig. 3). In particular, we suggest that NH ice-sheet growth that occurred in response to decreases in insolation and Pacific SSTs (9, 30) caused the global mean sea level to fall, allowing Antarctic ice margins to advance across the continental shelf and reach their maximum extent. At the same time, the reduction in NADW formation (Fig. 3) and attendant heat flux would further contribute to advance of Antarctic marine margins.

The subsequent onset of NH deglaciation ~19 ka in response to boreal summer insolation forcing caused an initial rapid global mean sea-level rise of ~5 to 10 m (Fig. 3) (9, 43, 44). Although this sea-level forcing may explain the contemporaneous retreat of Antarctic grounding lines in the Weddell Sea and, perhaps, Amundsen Sea regions, the lack of a response at other dated Antarctic marine margins appears inconsistent with this hypothesis. This spatial variability in response may reflect different geometries of ice shelves, variations in subshelf pinning points, or differences in sedimentary wedges (size and stiffness) that stabilize grounding lines to a rapid sea-level rise of this magnitude (45). In addition, sea-level calculations indicate that gravitational, deformation, and rotational effects associated with the initial melting of NH ice ~19 ka caused enhanced sea-level rise around the Weddell and Amundsen Seas relative to eustatic, whereas it was equal to or less than eustatic around the Ross Sea and Mac Robertson Land margins (Fig. 4) (SOM). This regional enhancement may have been sufficient to overcome the stabilizing effect provided by sedimentary wedges at grounding lines in the Weddell and Amundsen Seas (45), causing early retreat, whereas grounding lines elsewhere remained immune to the lesser sea-level rise.

Carbon dioxide and Antarctic glaciation

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:44:39 -0500

Pagani et al., writing in Science:

The decline in the partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the [Eocene-Oligocene] climate event was substantial, but absolute CO₂ concentrations depend on the value of ε_f applied. Collectively, CO₂ estimates calculated by using U₃₇^K’ and TEX₈₆ SST estimates and a range of εf values indicate that CO₂ decreased ~40% from 35.5 to 32.5 million years ago (SOM). Application of reasonable εf values (25 to 28‰) indicates that the partial pressure of atmospheric CO₂ fell from 1200 to 1000 ppm to 700 to 600 ppm. Interestingly, the change in CO₂ determined from this study, as well as the boron-isotope methodology (11), is consistent with model estimates for a threshold CO₂ level required for rapid Antarctic glaciation (8, 29).

We conclude that the available evidence supports a fall in CO₂ as a critical condition for global cooling and cryosphere evolution ~34 million years ago. Whether CO₂ acted alone to cause the E-O transition or whether a threshold CO₂ level in combination with favorable orbital configurations (1) ultimately triggered glaciation cannot be determined from our results. However, during the E-O transition both CO₂ decline and enhanced ice albedo account for global temperature changes. Lastly, the long-term permanence of the CO₂ decline (10) and the impermanent inorganic carbon isotope shift (1) implicate the role of silicate weathering rates over the influence of short-term organic-carbon burial rates as the primary cause for long-term change in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Bruce Babbit, Geophysicist

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:47:16 -0500

Bruce Babbit, Geophysicist:

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, who is now apparently spending his time promoting road-less isolation of oil and gas production in the Amazon basin, has a master’s degree in geophysics, and did his thesis with Keith Runcorn, a paleomagnetist who played a key role in the establishment of plate tectonics. Who knew?

On the origin of animals

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:25:51 -0500

Erwin et al. review the fossil and molecular record of early animal evolution:

Molecular estimates suggest that the origin and earliest diversification of animals occurred during the Cryogenian Period. We estimate that the last common ancestor of all living animals arose nearly 800 Ma and that the stem lineages leading to most extant phyla had evolved by the end of the Ediacaran (541 Ma). Most phylum-level crown group divergences occurred coevally between the end of the Ediacaran and the end of the Cambrian (Figs. 1 and 3, large colored circles). This is the case both for taxa with robust fossil records (e.g., echinoderms, molluscs, arthropods) and those with sparse fossil records (e.g., nemerteans, nematodes). For taxa with robust fossil records, these coeval origination estimates are concordant with their first appearances in the rock record (Fig. 3), supporting both the general accuracy of our relaxed molecular clock analysis and the intuition of many paleontologists who argued that the known fossil record for crown groups of bilaterian phyla is largely robust (11)….

Much of this protein-coding repertoire—especially the developmental toolkit—is conserved throughout all metazoans and is even found today among single-celled opisthokonts (24, 52–54). The distribution of these genes in extant organisms (SOM text 3) implies that this toolkit evolved in a two-step pattern (Fig. 4, left): an initial diversification occurring at the base of the Metazoa before the split between sponges and eumetazoans deep in the Cryogenian (and possibly earlier), followed by a pronounced expansion at least in some families at the base of the Eumetazoa during the late Cryogenian (database S3). Thus, the last common ancestor of metazoans, and especially eumetazoans, was a genetically complex animal possessing all of the families of protein-coding genes used during development, save for the potential absence of Hox complex genes (55) needed to build the plethora of morphological structures found throughout the crown group….

Unlike the mRNA toolkit, which was largely established before the evolution of bilaterians (Fig. 4, left), miRNAs (database S4) seem to have been continuously added to eumetazoan genomes through time with very little secondary loss in most taxa (Fig. 4, right) (60). When loss did occur, it seems to have been associated with morphological simplification (20). For example, each of the extant animals put forth as putative biological models for late precambrian animals, including lophotrochozoan flatworms, acoel flatworms, and Xenoturbella (61), are characterized by extensive secondary loss of their miRNA complements as compared to more typical invertebrates like ambulacrarian deuterostomes, crustacean arthropods, and polychaete annelids (60). In contrast, large expansions in the number of miRNA families correlate to increases in the number of cell types and morphological complexity of animals, as seen, for example, at the base of the bilaterians and at the base of the vertebrates (60) (Fig. 4, right)….

Standard models of adaptive radiation (65) involve diversification from a single clade and cannot explain the polyphyletic nature, morphological and ecological breadth, or the extended duration of this event. Rather, we identify a suite of processes that facilitated the construction of biodiversity through positive feedback: ecosystem engineering of the environment, particularly by Cryogenian-Ediacaran sponges and later by burrowing bilaterians, and the formation of new ecological linkages including the evolution of zooplankton, which connected pelagic and benthic systems (64), and the advent of metazoan predation….

Predation was an important component of the growth of these ecological networks. The first appearance of predatory traces, and body fossils of predators, occurs near the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition (70). Animals evolved in response to predation pressures by developing novel defensive mechanisms such as biomineralized shells or developing new structures or capabilities that allowed movement into new habitats. The origin of predation can be assessed by mapping feeding modes onto the time-calibrated phylogeny (Fig. 3). Given the similarities between the sponge feeding cell (choanocyte) and choanoflagellates, the metazoan last common ancestor (LCA) was likely a microphagous suspension feeder, irrespective of whether sponges are monophyletic or not….

We see no evidence for a carnivorous lifestyle during the Cryogenian to mid-Ediacaran for any bilaterian lineage. Given that ecology and the physical environment are closely linked, it may be that the origin of animal carnivory, a metabolically expensive feeding strategy, was driven by increased oxygenation….

Our emerging understanding of early animal history shows that evolution is not always relentlessly opportunistic, taking advantage of evolutionary novelties as soon as they arise. Rather, the Cambrian explosion involved the construction of historically unique, and uniquely complex, feedbacks between biological potential and eco-environmental context, including the oxygenation of the ocean’s waters. These feedbacks relied on networks of gene regulatory interaction that were established long before the construction of metazoan ecosystems. Because of this long lag between the origin and eventual ecological dominance of clades, data on taxonomic occurrences alone are insufficient to understand evolutionary dynamics and must be accompanied by data on abundances and ecological impact, in addition to accurate and precise estimates of both evolutionary origin and geological first appearances. Macroevolutionary lags such as that which preceded the Cambrian explosion were not unique to animals, as similar dynamics seem to underlie plant evolution as well (24). Understanding both early animal and plant evolution requires an understanding of the processes that generate biodiversity and the expansion of ecological networks through deep time.

Don't count on air capture

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:43:32 -0500

House et al., writing in PNAS, suggests that directly removing CO₂ from the atmosphere may cost in excess of $1,000/tonne, based on their techno-economic analysis:

Our empirical analyses of operating commercial pro- cesses suggest that the energetic and financial costs of capturing CO2 from the air are likely to have been underestimated. Specifically, our analysis of existing gas separation systems suggests that, unless air capture significantly outperforms these systems, it is likely to require more than 400 kJ of work per mole of CO2, requir- ing it to be powered by CO2-neutral power sources in order to be CO2 negative. We estimate that total system costs of an air capture system will be on the order of $1,000 per tonne of CO2, based on experience with as-built large-scale trace gas removal systems.

They mention biomass combustion with CCS as an alternative approach that, while scale-limited, may be somewhat less costly (probably $150-$400/tonne).

The future of science

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:47:21 -0500

Colin Macilwain in Nature:

Those involved in science policy sometimes seem to me to be sleep-walking through the greatest crisis to afflict the West since the Second World War. True, from the point of view of the scientist at the bench, grants continue to flow and results continue to be published. Perhaps this is why wider discourse about science’s role in society has hardly budged an inch….

Some things remained unsaid at Budapest: no one criticized science’s failure to join engineering groups in highlighting the lack of solid, productive foundations for the two-decades-long boom that ended abruptly in 2008. Nor was there criticism of failure to expose the pseudoscience that underpinned the exotic financial instruments that played such a central part in both the boom and the bust.

But the forum did reveal the beginnings of a serious response by scientific leaders to the tumult ahead. Despite much cosy rhetoric about defending research funding, one uncomfortable but realistic scenario is for it to nosedive, perhaps by one-third in the United States and the United Kingdom in real terms, over the next five years. Even though other nations will spend more money, that sort of change will wreak havoc.

One great danger is that scarce funding will consolidate around single-discipline research — even though everyone knows that the most valuable work is now multidisciplinary. An associated danger, already revealed in the US Congress, is that the social sciences will be expelled from the temple — just when, as Llewellyn Smith pointed out in Budapest, the hard sciences need to invite them in to help public engagement.

But the political outcomes of the crisis aren’t yet clear enough to enable scientists to plan around them. That has led the International Council for Science (ICSU) in Paris, the global association of academies and scientific societies, to conduct a foresight exercise that explores how science as a whole might change shape over the next 20 years.

An ICSU task force led by physicist John Marks has been looking at all the drivers of global science and has consolidated them into two overriding forces: engagement with society and globalization (as opposed to nationalism). Plotting these two against each other, Marks told the forum, produces four distinct scenarios for the future — whatever the level of funding.

The first and most sunny, with more globalization and high engagement, would see a series of positive outcomes, including much more interdisciplinary research. The second — more globalization but low engagement — is rather like what we had before the crash, only worse. The ICSU PowerPoint slide for this showed bunches of vainglorious yuppies with mobile phones and portable computers, doubtless creating more gizmos and expensive drugs that most people in the world can’t afford.

The third scenario would have more nationalism, with high engagement. That might create a series of little Denmarks pulling away from each other to deal with their own problems, with their own research strategies and regulatory regimes.

Finally, and most ominously, there’s more nationalism, with less engagement. This predicts old-fashioned, stick-to-your-knitting, single-discipline science, aligned with resurgent nationalism. The slide for this one had a mushroom cloud at one stage, but Marks settled for a barely more reassuring image of some darkly lurking battleships.

Optimizing energy R&D investments

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:20:41 -0500

A new Harvard Belfer Center report makes four recommendations:

(1) The U.S. government should dramatically expand its investment in energy RD&D, focused on a broad portfolio of different energy technologies and stages of innovation.

(2) The U.S. federal government should implement policies that create market incentives to develop and deploy new energy technologies, including policies that have the effect of creating a substantial price on carbon emissions, and sector-specific policies to overcome other market failures.

(3) The U.S. government should take a strategic approach to working with the private sector on energy innovation, expanding incentives for private sector energy innovation, and focusing on the particular strategies likely to work best in each case.

(4) The U.S. government should strengthen its energy innovation institutions, particularly the national laboratories, by giving them clear missions and direction; considerable management authority and flexibility with clear accountability for results; stable funding; a culture willing to invest in high-risk, high-payoff projects; and opportunities to lend their insights to the design of the policies and approaches they are helping to implement, including public-private partnerships.

(5) The U.S. government should undertake a strategic approach to energy RD&D cooperation with other countries, to leverage the knowledge, resources, and opportunities available around the world, incorporating both top-down strategic priorities and investment in new ideas arising from the bottom-up.

Loan guarantees

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:39:27 -0500

The whole Solyndra pseudo-scandal is absurd. The DOE loan guarantee program is supposed to facilitate clean energy investments that are too risky for the private sector to undertake alone. It’s supposed to have a high-risk portfolio. DOE’s web site indicates that it’s currently supporting $36 billion of loans, so Solyndra constitutes about 1.5% of the total program. If even 5% of the loans were to fail, that strikes me as an unacceptably low rate of failure for a program intended to support a high-risk portfolio.

Ozone lesson: do your cost-benefit analysis better!

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:01:15 -0500

Today’s New York Times has a front page article on the White House’s decision to reject an EPA proposal to tighten ground-level ozone rules prior to the regularly scheduled 2013 update. The article insinuates that the White House decision was driven primarily by Bill Daley and secondarily by Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) chief Cass Sunstein, and primarily by political concerns. I don’t know what political considerations were involved in the decision-making process, but having looked at the draft regulatory impact analysis EPA undertook, I would venture to say that OIRA would have made the same decision in a political vacuum.

For the last three decades, essentially every proposed regulation has been required, by Executive Order, to have an accompanying cost-benefit analysis. That’s why this Administration issued the first U.S. government estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC) — even though there are good reasons to think that the Federal analysis underestimated the SCC, its values provide a way for the benefits of climate change mitigation to be included in regulatory cost-benefit analysis.

OIRA’s position has fairly consistently been that regulations should be set at a level that maximizes net benefits. This position is not necessarily shared by all the agencies, some of which believe that cost-benefit analysis have a tendency to underestimate benefits and overestimate costs, and that therefore regulations should be set in a manner that maximizes gross benefits subject to some sort of cost constraint. If you think cost-benefit analysis can’t be done well for some types of regulations, this is a reasonable position to hold; but no one who has been paying attention would confuse it with OIRA’s position.

As one example, the draft version of DOE’s new refrigerator efficiency standards (forged through a consensus agreements with industry and environmental/consumer advocates — so politics is unlikely to be a major issue here) did not sit well with OIRA because some of the efficiency levels were tighter than the level that the original analysis projected would maximize net benefits. DOE recognized that the costs in this analysis were not estimated well; following previous practice, the analysis assumed that the costs of increased efficiency would remain static — even though historical evidence indicated that they decline over time. DOE then went and fixed its methodology to include these cost trends — and OIRA let the consensus levels stand.

Looking at the cost-benefit analysis for the proposed ozone rules, one sees that EPA’s proposed standard of 65 ppb is not the level that maximizes net benefits, so I think it would be quite predictable that OIRA would not this tightened level through as proposed. EPA could have revised their cost-benefit analysis to better take into account those factors which led them to feel that their analysis was either underestimating benefits or overestimating costs. The political story told by the Times may be correct — but the Administration’s decision appears to me consistent with the judgement process OIRA has been using in many contexts.

Goodbye, Steve!

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:27:48 -0500

Via Nature News, Steve Koonin, currently DOE’s Undersecretary for Science, will be departing for the Institute for Defense Analysis on November 18. Koonin’s office just recently finished DOE’s first Quadrennial Technology Review.

Koonin’s departure leaves DOE with vacancies in both of the main Undersecretary positions, the Undersecretary for Energy and the Undersecretary for Science. (The actual roles of the two Undersecretaries is complicated, but to first order the Undersecretary for Energy oversees the applied programs, and the Undersecretary for Science serves as the agency’s chief research officer and oversees the director of the Office of Science.)

The last permanent Undersecretary for Energy was Kristina Johnson, who departed in November 2010. Johnson was succeeded as acting Undersecretary by Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Cathy Zoi, who departed in March for a VC firm. Zoi was succeeded by the current acting U/S, Arun Majumdar, the Director of ARPA-E. I believe U.S. law limits acting officers to 210 days, which should me Majumdar will be hitting his time limit soon. Perhaps there’s some exemption from the relevant time limit.

DOE does have a third Undersecretary, the director of the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA), Tom D’Agostino — but NNSA is essentially a separate world from the energy deployment/demonstration/research part of DOE. (That portion, by the way, is a minority of DOE’s total budget, even though it’s what most people associate with DOE.)

Key take aways from the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2011

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:08:00 -0500

I haven’t had a chance to go through the full report, but from the executive summary:

Consistent with the Oak Ridge CDIAC analysis mentioned earlier:

Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO₂ emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400 billion. The number of people without access to electricity remained unacceptably high at 1.3 billion, around 20% of the world’s population. Despite the priority in many countries to increase energy efficiency, global energy intensity worsened for the second straight year.

We need to act now if we are to have any significant chance of realizing the Copenhagen Accord’s 2 degree target (which the IEA’s 450 Scenario yields about a fifty percent chance of meeting):

Four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permissible by 2035 in the 450 Scenario are already “locked-in” by our existing capital stock (power plants, buildings, factories, etc.). If stringent new action is not forthcoming by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure then in place will generate all the CO₂ emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035, leaving no room for additional power plants, factories and other infrastructure unless they are zero-carbon, which would be extremely costly. Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided in the power sector before 2020 an additional $4.3 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

(Emphasis mine.) Note also the interest rates are extremely low right now, making it an excellent time to borrow in order to make these and other desperately needed infrastructure investments.

Despite advances in natural gas and renewables, the world is proceeding on a coal-heavy course:

Coal has met almost half of the increase in global energy demand over the last decade. Whether this trend alters and how quickly is among the most important questions for the future of the global energy economy. Maintaining current policies would see coal use rise by a further 65% by 2035, overtaking oil as the largest fuel in the global energy mix. In the New Policies Scenario, global coal use rises for the next ten years, but then levels off to finish 25% above the levels of 2009. Realisation of the 450 Scenario requires coal consumption to peak well before 2020 and then decline. The range of projections for coal demand in 2035 across the three scenarios is nearly as large as total world coal demand in 2009. The implications of policy and technology choices for the global climate are huge.

China’s consumption of coal is almost half of global demand and its Five-Year Plan for 2011 to 2015, which aims to reduce the energy and carbon intensity of the economy, will be a determining factor for world coal markets.

A turn away from nuclear energy will increase the challenge of decarbonizing the energy system:

In the New Policies Scenario, nuclear output rises by more than 70% over the period to 2035, only slightly less than projected last year. However, we also examine the possible implications of a more substantial shift away from nuclear power in a Low Nuclear Case, which assumes that no new OECD reactors are built, that non-OECD countries build only half of the additions projected in our New Policies Scenario and that the operating lifespan of existing nuclear plants is shortened. While creating opportunities for renewables, such a low-nuclear future would also boost demand for fossil fuels: the increase in global coal demand is equal to twice the level of Australia’s current steam coal exports and the rise in gas demand is equivalent to two-thirds of Russia’s current natural gas exports. The net result would be to put additional upward pressure on energy prices, raise additional concerns about energy security and make it harder and more expensive to combat climate change.

And alleviating energy poverty is a relatively low-cost investment with huge human welfare benefits but little negative impact on the ability to achieve climate goals:

We estimate that, in 2009, around $9 billion was invested globally to provide first access to modern energy, but more than five-times this amount, $48 billion, needs to be invested each year if universal access is to be achieved by 2030. Providing energy access for all by 2030 is a key goal announced by the UN Secretary-General. Today, 1.3 billion people do not have electricity and 2.7 billion people still rely on the traditional use of biomass for cooking. The investment required is equivalent to around 3% of total energy investment to 2030. Without this increase, the global picture in 2030 is projected to change little from today and in sub-Saharan Africa it gets worse. Some existing policies designed to help the poorest miss their mark. Only 8% of the subsidies to fossil-fuel consumption in 2010 reached the poorest 20% of the population…. Universal access by 2030 would increase global demand for fossil fuels and related CO₂ emissions by less than 1%, a trivial amount in relation to the contribution made to human development and welfare.

Making up for lost time (new carbon emission estimates)

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:39:00 -0400

Via Joe Romm, Seth Borenstein of AP reports on new preliminary estimates of 2009 and 2010 world emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel and industrial sources.

Some discussion after the fold.

Tom Boden and T. J. Blasing of Oak Ridge’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center note:

These estimates show that 2010 was by far a record year for CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and cement manufacture. Globally 9,139 Teragrams of oxidized carbon (Tg-C) were emitted from these sources. A teragram is a million metric tons. Converted to carbon dioxide, so as to include the mass of the oxygen molecules, this amounts to over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The increase alone is about 512 Tg-C, or 5.9%, over the 2009 global estimate. The previous record year was 2008, with 8,749 Tg-C emitted; the 2010 estimate is about 104.5% of that, or 391 Tg-C more.

Much of the 5.9% global increase from 2009 to 2010 is due to increased emissions from the world’s largest fossil-fuel emitter, the People’s Republic of China, where emissions rose 10% to 2.247 Tg-C.

Emissions from the United States were 1,498 Tg-C, up by almost 60 Tg-C, or 4%, of the 2009 estimates of 1,438 Tg-C. The record year for the United States was 2007, with estimated emissions of 1,589 Tg-C. The 2010 total is about 94% of that value, reflecting economic conditions.

Combining CDIAC’s emission estimates with World Bank GDP estimates and BP total energy consumption estimates, one notes some disturbing trends:

In this plot, you see normalized curves of the ratios of carbon emissions to GDP (i.e., amount of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar of GDP; red), carbon emissions to primary energy consumption (green), and primary energy consumption to GDP (blue). All three declined until about 2000, when the decline in energy intensity of GDP stalled out and the decline in the carbon intensity of energy supply reversed. Since 2008, the carbon intensity of the energy has stabilized, but we’ve experienced an upward trend in the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP.

Searching for extraterrestial light pollution

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:01:22 -0400

Via Nate Berg at The Atlantic Cities, a newly submitted study by Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Edwin Turner of Princeton University proposes searching for artificial lighting as a way of looking for extraterrestrial civilizations, though notes:

For this signature to be detectable, the night side needs to have an artiﬁcial brightness comparable to the natural illumination of the day side. Clearly, the corresponding extraterrestrial civilization would need to employ much brighter and more extensive artiﬁcial lighting than we do currently since the global contrast between the day and night sides is a factor ∼ 6 × 10^5 for the present-day Earth.

This techniques seem as thought it’d be best suited for the perhaps narrow niche of civilizations that have advanced to the point of tapping huge amounts of energy without developing a sufficient sense of priorities to avoid spending it uselessly lighting up places where it serves no purpose.

Law and probability

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:19:53 -0400

Norman Fenton on the use of Bayesian reasoning in legal arguments:

Proper use of probabilistic reasoning has the potential to improve the efficiency, transparency and fairness of the criminal justice system. Bayesian reasoning can help experts to formulate accurate and informative opinions; courts to determine the admissibility of evidence and identify which cases should and should not be pursued; and lawyers to explain, and jurors to evaluate, the weight of evidence during a trial. It can also help to identify any errors and unjustified assumptions in expert opinions.

There is still widespread disagreement about the type of evidence to which Bayesian reasoning should be applied and how it should be presented. There are ways to overcome these technical barriers, but cultural barriers still remain between the fields of science and law, and these will be broken down only by achieving a critical mass of relevant experts and stakeholders, united in their objectives. The international consortium is building towards such a consensus.

RTP on Keystone XL

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:25:02 -0400

Ray Pierrehumbert, writing at RealClimate:

Commentators who argue that the Keystone XL pipeline is no big deal tend to focus on the rate at which the pipeline delivers oil to users (and thence as CO2 to the atmosphere). To an extent, they have a point. The pipeline would carry 500,000 barrels per day, and assuming that we’re talking about lighter crude by the time it gets in the pipeline that adds up to a piddling 2 gigatonnes carbon in a hundred years (exercise: Work this out for yourself given the numbers I stated earlier in this post). However, building Keystone XL lets the camel’s nose in the tent. It is more than a little disingenuous to say the carbon in the Athabasca Oil Sands mostly has to be left in the ground, but before we’ll do this, we’ll just use a bit of it. It’s like an alcoholic who says he’ll leave the vodka in the kitchen cupboard, but first just take “one little sip.”

So the pipeline itself is really just a skirmish in the battle to protect climate, and if the pipeline gets built despite Bill McKibben’s dedicated army of protesters, that does not mean in and of itself that it’s “game over” for holding warming to 2C. Further, if we do hit a trillion tonnes, it may be “game-over” for holding warming to 2C (apart from praying for low climate sensitivity), but it’s not “game-over” for avoiding the second trillion tonnes, which would bring the likely warming up to 4C. The fight over Keystone XL may be only a skirmish, but for those (like the fellow in this arresting photo ) who seek to limit global warming, it is an important one. It may be too late to halt existing oil sands projects, but the exploitation of this carbon pool has just barely begun. If the Keystone XL pipeline is built, it surely smooths the way for further expansions of the market for oil sands crude. Turning down XL, in contrast, draws a line in the oil sands, and affirms the principle that this carbon shall not pass into the atmosphere.

America's decaying infrastructure

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:13:00 -0400

American Society of Civil Engineers president Kathy Caldwell weighs in on the need for infrastructure investment:

When the ASCE issued its 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, it gave the cumulative grade of “D” to the condition and performance of 15 of the country’s infrastructure systems. Among the worst were roads and drinking water. The United States not only loses about seven billion gallons of clean drinking water every day due to leaking water systems, but pipe failures and resulting floods have collapsed roads, destroyed homes, and endangered people. It would require an estimated $2.2 trillion over 5 years to raise the grade for all 15 infrastructure systems to an acceptable level. Sadly, the situation has not changed since the report was published. Earlier this year, the ASCE’s report Failure to Act, The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure determined that the deficient surface transportation infrastructure alone will cost U.S. businesses an added $430 billion (cumulative to 2020) in transportation costs. By 2020, it is projected that exports will be $28 billion lower, 70,000 jobs will be lost, households will lose more than $7000 in personal income, and the country’s gross domestic product will take a hit of $897 billion. Businesses will need to divert increasing portions of income to pay for transportation delays, wasting money that could instead be invested in innovation. Nearly all sectors will suffer, but those associated with technology and innovation would probably be the hardest hit.

To meet the many infrastructure challenges, more financing is needed. Now that the American Jobs Act has failed to pass Congress, there is discussion of breaking the bill into pieces that should be easier to pass. The proposed act includes $50 billion to modernize road, rail, and air transportation systems, and it would establish a National Infrastructure Bank to leverage public and private capital toward these endeavors. This level of priority and investment is needed, or the United States will continue its downward slide. Indeed, this year’s report from the Urban Land Institute warns that the United States has fallen behind Brazil, China, and India in bolstering transportation, water, and sewage infrastructure.

I dressed up as America’s decaying infrastructure for a Halloween last year.