19 thoughts on “Monday message board”

  1. Dr Karl has changed his criticisms of geosequestration from ludicrous to sensible. And demonstrates why he has more integrity than the entire global warming skeptic movement.

    It would be nice if the Climate Change Coalition could issue a press release on their site about this change.

    They have already corrected their site on the size of the cavity needed to hold Australia’s emissions (they have however, made a mistake with the density).

  2. I am going off to India until January 6th. If the readers of this blog are interested in any books or information more easily available in India than here, I can try to bring them. Regards,
    Swarup

  4. I’d like to do volunteer work on Christmas Day, but haven’t been able to find any relevant information. Does anyone know of any organisations/charities that need help of any kind on 25/12?

  7. I would say Dr Karl has re-Kanted. Philosopher and scientific dabbler Immanuel Kant would invoke ‘deepest subterraneous passages’ when pressed for a tricky explanation
    http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/kant_earthquake01.htm
    While I’m still keeping an eye out for those hydrogen cars to pass down the street I’m sure one day they’ll announce clean coal is a goer. It’s just we need something within the next twenty years.

  10. The Club of Rome published its first report, “Limits to Growth�, in 1972. This report came to the inescapable conclusion that growth cannot continue forever in a finite system. Business, government and the public at large ignored the fact that the earth is finite and we continued on an unabated growth path. As late as 2001, neo-conservative commentators were gleefully deriding “Limits to Growth� for predicting disaster by the year 2000. The implication was that the scientists were proven wrong once and for all, that faith in endless growth was justified and we could continue growing forever.

    In fact, what the Club of Rome report said was that if we did not start changing our ways by 2001 then a global disaster by 2051 was almost certain. Here we are at the end of 2007 and have we begun to change our ways? No, not at all! We are still on the same exponential growth path. Reality is now beginning to bite. Oil has hit US$100 a barrel. Global warming is upon us, driven mainly by CO2 emissions from automobiles and industry. Deplorably, we see responses like the subsidised lunacy of turning precious foods like corn into ethanol fuel.

    In “War and Peace�, Leo Tolstoy mentions a bizarre peasant migration caused by the peasants’ sudden and inexplicable belief in “hot rivers�. The peasants just upped and left their masters’ estates en masse and went looking for the “hot rivers�. Today, we are presented with public mass hysterias which are just as ludicrous. Now we believe in clean coal. It’s what you get when whitewash a serious problem. Clean coal is a dirty myth of course. The problem with the endless growth proponents is that they are scientific illiterates. Clearly they don’t comprehend something as simple as C + O2 = CO2.

    Sure, you can try to get fancy and make syngas, C + H2O = CO + H2. This takes some extra energy on the side we ought to point out. Then you burn the syngas and it is theoretically easy to capture the CO2 exhaust stream. Next you take the compressed CO2, pump it somewhere and geo-sequester it. Pardon me for asking the question but how much extra energy is all this going to take? Will there be any net energy left over to do useful work? I would like to see the energy accounting. I doubt that the end result would make economic sense.

    There are three “dead loss� break points in energy processes in the economy and in the world. The first break point is where a process becomes economically unviable relative to more competitive processes presuming there are no subsidies for any processes. The second break point is where it becomes unviable in terms of energy accounting. That is to say when it costs more than one unit of energy to recover, process, use and carry out waste disposals for a quantity of fuel which will only yields one unit of energy. There is a third “dead loss� break point. This is where the environment is irreparably damaged by the energy process.

    As the scientific consensus is that we must stop burning carbon based fuels, a first step would be to remove the massive subsidies which prop up the oil and coal industries. To avoid major economic and energy supply disruption this will take about a generation or 25 years. Frankly, I doubt we have 25 years grace but we ought to make the effort. We might just save ourselves from a total catastrophe.

    Solar power promises to be our best hope, supplemented by wind, wave, tidal and buried hot rock energy. We should not touch nuclear power with a barge pole. Once again, the energy accounting has to be done for all these technologies. The best way to enable efficient energy accounting to occur would be to allow an undistorted market to make the necessary adjustments and investments.

    Step one, implement a staged removal of all subsidies for energy production. Alternative renewables will lose their relatively small subsidies. Coal, oil and nuclear will all lose their massive subsidies. This will level the playing field and give alternative renewables the best chance.
    Step two, make all forms of energy production pay the true costs (as near as can be estimated) for pollution; that is to pay for what are currently negative externalities.
    Step three, ensure these pollution costs are paid in full as taxes to the government and that artificial instruments giving a right to pollute are not created. Do not allow such artificial instruments (dealing in negative externalities) to be traded. Only goods ought to be traded.

    It is a feature of modern technology that we can make almost anything we want IF we have enough energy. If we can get abundant, economical and non-polluting energy then we can solve many other resource shortages with both recycling and raw material substitutions. Coupled with a material steady state (a stable population and a materially stabilised economy) this would allow us to solve our global dilemmas. Economic growth after that point would have to be qualitative growth and not quantitative growth in terms of physically measureable quantities. Clearly growth could continue (almost indefinitely so far as we can tell) in knowledge and technology.

  11. Ikonoclast, while I disagree with a lot of what you’ve written, I’m all for at least steps 1 and 2. I’m not too religious over carbon trading or carbon taxes – whatever the economists think will work the best.

    However, I strongly suspect that implementing your steps won’t lead to a solar powered Australia. Rather you’ll see gas power get big.

  12. If gas power got big for a while that might not be a bad thing in the context. If we assume most of the compressed natural gas we are talking about is methane (CH4) then the product of combustion is CO2 + 2 x H2O so a good part of the energy generated comes from “creating” H2O not CO2. Of course, a full energy accounting would still have to be done because CNG and LNG have a lower energy density per unit volume than petrol or diesel for example and are more difficult to triuck around.

    But the key point is that once we start using natural gas heavily it too will run out quickly just as oil is doing now. (Refer to APSO – Peak Oil)

    The world may have plenty of coal for another century or so of burning but the plain fact of the matter is the atmosphere “Canna take it captain!” (Aplologies to Star Trek.)

    And let’s hope to heck that no idiots start trying to recover methane hydrates from the ocean bed to burn them. A mass methane release from the ocean bed would mean “game over” for homo sapiens.

    I still think when it all pans out solar power will prove the answer but not in the form that most people think. Rather than solar panel or mirror farms the way to go may be giant solar convection towers up to 500 m or even 1000 m high. These will generate power 24 hours a day. In fact, the temperature differential between the surface and 500m or 1000m is higher at night than during the day so these can generate even more power at night.

    We could get serious baseload power 24/7 out of such structures. To situate them we are not short of hot, open, empty plains in this country. The engineering is quite feasible right now and I doubt the capital costs would be any greater than comparable capacity in conventional or nuclear power station IF all negative externalities are properly costed for all energy projects.

  14. Iknonoclast – it looks like concentrated solar thermal will beat both solar towers and photovoltaics in the race to become price-competitive with base-load power from other sources.

    Photovoltaics have other advantages though -for building-integrated photovoltacis there’s no worries about loss of supply from the grid plus you avoid the transmission losses associated with centralised power generation.

  15. As I said, let the market decide BUT let it decide without the usual massive subsidies and tax holiday free kicks given to multinationals and big business by foolish governments bidding against each other for industry to site in their state.

    Why have the diesel fuel rebate? Why does the Qld govt subsidise petrol consumption by artifically lowering the bowser price out of govt funds? Why subsidise the Indy race (while our hospitals fall apart due to lack of funds)?

    That kind of stupidity burns me up so much it’s a wonder I aint giving off more CO2 than Bayswater Power station.

    As I also said or implied, an undistorted market will properly cost all inputs and thus it will do our energy accounting for us. That is to say, if all the full life-cycle energy inputs into mirrors or photovoltaics are lower than those for solar convection towers then the capital, start up and running costs are likely to be lower.

    If power generation is properly costed without distorting subsidies and with taxes for negative externalities (pollution, environmental damage) then the best possible environmental and economic outcome will be forthcoming.

    Let’s not forget that the economy is fully contingent upon the environment. No environment (or no sustaining environment) = no economy = no people.

    Right now extinction of the human species by 2100 is an even money bet. I wonder when people will wise up to how perilous these next few decades will prove to be?

  16. Has anyone read the following in Mark Latham’s article “Latham: Beware the Polls and The Swinging Voter” in today’s Australian Financial Review?

    I cannot understand why the government has not targeted the scale of Rudd’s spending promises – how Labor’s new outlays of more than AU$55million might push teh budget back into deficit and damage the economy.

    I thought Rudd had (rightly or wrongly) promised fiscal restraint in his election campaign launch. Have I missed something?

    I have to say I am not impressed with Latham’s article, for example, his one-sided labeling of the union movement’s campaign against Howard’s grossly unfair IR laws as a ‘scare campign’.

    Whilst he was treated shabbily by the Labor Party, and I still think “The Latham Diaries” are excellent, Latham’s article is, taken as a whole, indefensible.

  17. Ikon said;

    “Why have the diesel fuel rebate? Why does the Qld govt subsidise petrol consumption by artifically lowering the bowser price out of govt funds”

    How is petrol subsidised when close to a dollar a litre is tax? Isn’t the subsidy you refer to merely a lowering of the tax rate?

    Anyway solar/ hydrogen is the way to go. Get off the grid and away from the bowser.

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0315/p12s01-sten.html?page=1

  18. Funnily enough, I think solar/methane might be the way to go for transport. Solar convection towers for electric power. Use the electricity to make methane, CH4, out of CO2 + H2O which will scrub CO2 and release O2. Then burn the CH4 in current vehicles converted to CNG. The methane combines with oxygen and gets turned back into CO2 and H2O. Process is CO2 neutral. Methane is lot easier to put in a tank than H2 and has a higher energy density. Current internal combustion engine fleet can be easily converted to run on it. Might make economic sense when oil and gas run out.

  19. “Methane is lot easier to put in a tank than H2 and has a higher energy density”

    When water is split you end up with hydrogen and oxygen (the building blocks of rocket fuel.)You could compress the hydrogen and oxygen for storage.

    Would recombining the oxygen back in the combustion process give a high MJ/Litre rate than Ch4?

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