Category Archives: AGW

Can The Volt Save Windfarms? Can The Volt Save The Volt?

Posted on March 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

We often hear that renewable energy will reduce the US’s dependance on foreign crude oil.   Right now it’s difficult to see when that will happen. According to the DOE’s Energy Information Agency (EIA),  only about 1% of this nation’s electricity is produced by oil.

So its clear that displacing foreign crude oil will have to be done some other way than by reducing oil based electrical generating capacity.

If battery powered (EV) cars  become a significant part of our transportation sector,  then some substitution of electical energy for petroleum is likely.  But when?  Windpower installations are not economical and only are currently in the mix because of Federal and State subsidies. (see here for viability)  Further windpower needs electrical storage to be a viable supplier of electricity to the grid. (see here and here for storage)

So what is happening in the field of EVs?   The Poster child EV is the Chevy Volt. The second banana appears to be the Nissan Leaf.

The  Chevy Volt was named by Car and Driver  their “Car of the Year”.  But if the Volt presages the future for the battery powered car,  things  are not looking too strong at present.

Sales of the Volt in January were 321 cars and in February they sold 281.  Added to last years sales,  the total to date (throught February) is 928 cars.  Leaf, the Nissan hybrid has only sold 173 since they came on the market.

General Motors says not to worry.  They will make and sell 10k to 12k Volts this year.   They have not been helped by an underwhelming review by Consumer Reports. On 3 March, USA TODAY posted “Consumer Reports pans electric range of Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf”.  The posting opens with this:

Consumer Reports magazine offers its initial assessment of the two reigning wondercars of our times, the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf, in its April issue and finds both may not be such good deals after all.

Not only has Consumer Reports’ test car been coming in at the low end of the electric-only mileage range — 23 to 28 miles, not 25 to 50 miles as billed — before the gasoline power kicks in, but CR had to pay over list to the get the car. It says it had to pay $48,700 — full price plus options and a $5,000 windfall to the dealer.

It gets worse. CR figures the cost of recharging the Volt would work out to about 5.7 cents a mile for electric mode and 10 cents a mile for gas. Yet a Toyota Prius, which gets about 50 miles a gallon, would cost 6.8 cents a mile to operate. A Prius costs half as much as a Volt.

CR seems to feel a little better about the all-electric Leaf. It borrowed one from Nissan while it awaits delivery of its own. The $35,270 electric car had its range severely restricted by the cold weather that has gripped the East, much like the Volt. The range has been averaging 65 miles, not the 100 miles that Nissan bills. Plus the mileage gauge isn’t that accurate in the cold when electric heaters gobble up kilowatts. Instead of the 36 miles of range that the car said it had, one tester got 19.

Ok, the Volt is a brand new design and with time, and with increased production, the vehicle will get better and the cost should go down.  While the Volt that Consumer Report bought was $5000 over MSRP,  the price of the Volt with options was still near $44,000.  Even with the Government subsidy of a $7,500 tax credit for the buyer, this is still probably above most buyer’s range.

The Battery

I, for one, worry a bit about the battery warrany that GM is providing.  I don’t believe that there is anywhere near enough actual experience for a 100,000 mile battery warranty. If these batteries don’t live up to the 100,000 miles, it could become very expensive for both the buyer and GM.  From GMs website this is the battery warranty:

Chevrolet Volt Coverage

Propulsion Battery Warranty Policy Like all batteries, the amount of energy that the high voltage “propulsion” battery can store will decrease with time and miles driven. Depending on use, the battery may degrade as little as 10% to as much as 30% of capacity over the warranty period. A dealer service technician will determine if the battery energy capacity (kWh storage) is within the proper limit, given the age and mileage of the vehicle. Typical tests can take up to 24 hours.

Repair If possible, components will be repaired or replaced, and the original battery will be returned to the vehicle.

Replace (If Necessary) Under warranty, the high voltage battery will be replaced with either a new or factory reconditioned high voltage battery with an energy capacity (kWh storage) level at or above that of the original battery prior to the failure. Your Volt battery warranty replacement may not return your vehicle as an “as new” condition, but it will make your Volt fully operational appropriate to its age and mileage.

I have read that these batteries began to wear out from the repeated charge and discharge cycles.  The words in the warranty appear to support this where it says “the battery may degrade from 10% to 30%” as miles are put on the EV.  I have read that the owner is warned not to operate below 20% of battery capacity and not to charge above of 80% of capacity.  What are the consequences regarding the range of the EV between charges when it approaches the 30% degredation?

Charging the Battery

Facilities to recharge batteries are needed to make the new electric car practical and they are few and far between.  Yes, putting in a low voltage system for recharging might not be too complex but the charge time for bringing the battery pack back to a full charge may require more time than you can afford.

The following chart illustrates the required time to place a full charge on several EVs.  The time required is a function of the voltage applied to the charger.

Vehicle EVrange 

 Charge time120V Charge time220V Charge time440V
Nissan Leaf* 100 20 8 0.5
Chevy Volt* 60 10 4
Toyota Prius PHV** 13 3 1.5
Fold Focus Elect** 100est 12 6-8
MitsubishiI-MiEV** 100est 16 8

This information was from MSNBC posting and can be seen at these web addresses:

*  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40200899/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_energy
**http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/20/5500395-cars-take-the-road-to-electrification

MSNBC says that the cost for a 220V charging station for your home is estimated at $2,200.   The 440V systems are likely to be impractical for most owners.  EV charging stations, similar in function to the ubiquitous gasoline station, would use these because of the much more rapid charging rate.   Wikipedia says that very rapid charging stations (10 minutes) carry a certain level of risk.

In practice, the energy efficiency of ten-minute charging is likely to be somewhat lowered in any case due to the ohmic losses caused by the required high current inside the vehicle. The lost energy is converted directly to heat, which could be detrimental to the battery pack or surrounding electronics; additional power may be required for cooling equipment that removes the excess heat. Increasing the capacity of the battery pack increases the required power, current and heat loss linearly,[citation needed] which is why ten-minute charging may require new innovations as vehicles with increased range are developed.

The reason EV manufacturers are looking at a rapid charge is because they hope to duplicate the time to fuel that is typical of the gasoline and diesel stations today.   Can you imagine waiting in line for several hours to get your EV charged?

Wiki points out another issue with very rapid charge stations.

The high peak power requirement of ten-minute charging can also stress the local power grid and might increase the risk of power brown- or black-outs during peak demand if enough vehicles choose to charge at these times.

I wonder if the Volt and its cousins,  might not be a better bet for success than windmills.  The EVs would probably experience lower cost electricity without the windmills in the mix.

cbdakota

 


 





Leave a comment

Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Electric Vehicles, Environment, Windpower

Are Windfarms Driving the UK to Third World Status?

Posted on March 7, 2011 | 1 comment

It is alarming that the UK is on the verge of plunging into third world status because the political class are so set on eliminating carbon emitting electrical generation facilities and replacing them with renewable energy  (read windmills) generation facilities.   The Telegraph (UK newspaper) carried an article on March 2nd saying that UK electrical customers were going to have to get used to black-outs or brown-outs based on the replacement strategy just mentioned.   Lets look at the article:

Here we have Steve Holliday, Chief Executive of the National Grid telling the Brits that the days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end as wind farms become bigger suppliers of electricity.  He is quoted as saying “We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”  The National Grid is the electric power transmission network connecting power stations and substations and ensuring that generated electricity can be used to satisfy demand.  The Grid is where the “rubber meets the road” so to speak.  The grid system in the US has the same function.  But many industries cannot function profitable with intermittent power.  If you were a manufacturing company in the UK and you were to hear that power would become intermittent in the future, would you consider moving your business to someplace where zealots did not control the sources of electricity?

Is this the direction we want for the USA?   I think not.  But we have our zealots here as well.  Fortunately they have not gotten the degree of “say so” that is the case in the UK.

cbdakota

1 Comment

Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Energy Development, Environment, Windpower

Treasury: Few Renewable Energy Projects Deserve Funding

Posted on March 5, 2011 | 2 comments

The Treasury Department has been blocking many requests for renewable energy project subsidies.  They are doing this because there are so few that are technically or financially viable in their opinion.  The DOE has been complaining that the Treasury Department should back off.  So the President’s requested that his advisors look into this.  On 10/25/10 a memo from Larry Summers, Carol Browner and Ron Klain was sent to the President with their take on this squabble.

The memo was summed up in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) posting “Wind Jammers at the White House” on 11/12/10.

“The trio walks through an interagency dispute about Energy Department subsidies for wind, solar and other forms of “renewable” power, which DOE claimed were being held up by the joint Treasury and White House budget office (OMB) reviews.”

The WSJ notes that the DOE has a lot of moneys it wants to spread around.

“Recall that the stimulus transformed the government into the world’s largest private equity firm. The many tools now at DOE’s disposal include $6 billion to guarantee loans and another dispensation so that the department can convert an energy investment tax credit equal to 30% of a project’s cost into a direct cash grant to green developers.

The Summers memo notes that these two provisions alone reduce “the cost of a new wind farm by about 55% and solar technologies by about half relative to a no-subsidy case.” So taxpayers are more than majority partners in these private projects, except they get no upside.”

The last sentence is the kicker here,  “So taxpayers are more than majority partners in these projects, except they get no upside.”

The taxpayers not only get the downside because they pay  the capital cost but they then have to pay for the higher cost of electricity.  Now that’s a double whammy if I have ever heard of one.

The memo says that there are few viable projects to fund.   They said they found severe problems with “the economic integrity of government support for renewables.”  The WSJ continues with an example of the problem according to the  memo:

“Treasury and OMB singled out an 845-megawatt wind farm that the Energy Department had guaranteed in Oregon called Shepherds Flat, a $1.9 billion installation of 338 General Electric turbines. Combining the stimulus and other federal and state subsidies, the total taxpayer cost is about $1.2 billion, while sponsors GE and Caithness Energy LLC had invested equity of merely about 11%. The memo also notes the wind farm could sell power at “above-market rates” because of Oregon’s renewable portfolio standard mandate, which requires utilities to buy a certain annual amount of wind, solar, etc.”

“But then GE said it was considering “going to the private market for financing out of frustration with the review process.” Anything but that. The memo dryly observes that “the alternative of private financing would not make the project financially non-viable.”

“Oh, and while Shepherds Flat might result in about 18 million fewer tons of carbon through 2033, “reductions would have to be valued at nearly $130 per ton CO2 for the climate benefits to equal the subsidies (more than 6 times the primary estimate used by the government in evaluating rules).”

“So here we have the government already paying for 65% of a project that doesn’t even meet its normal cost-benefit test, and then the White House has to referee when one of the largest corporations in the world (GE) importunes the Administration to move faster by threatening to find a private financial substitute like any other business. Remind us again why taxpayers should pay for this kind of corporate welfare?”

Any questions?

cbdakota

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Energy Development, Environment, Windpower

Obama’s Administration Policies Wont Lower Gas Prices

Posted on February 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

Whenever the price of gasoline takes a sharp rise, I get a flood of emails that have some scheme to beat those wascally waiders of our pocket-book–the usual suspect is Exxon/Mobile.   The scheme calls for us to not buy from Exxon or who ever the scheme writer doesn’t like.   Then this narrative says that to get back into the market the target company will have to lower prices thus start a price war.  This scheme might lower prices a few cents per gallon over time but it would not be  significant.  A more effective scheme would be for automotive community to drive 10% fewer miles each month.  The recent recession did affect supply and demand enough to make a significant change in price.  But now that we seem to be climbing slowly out of this really bad economy, we are driving more and the  gasoline prices are moving up.

Along with more miles being driven, the crude oil traders, fearing loss of producing fields resulting from the turmoil in the Middle-East,  are trying to secure their supply.  Thus bidding up of the price of a barrel of crude is underway.  Couple those two issues with the declining value of the dollar, the price  of crude is now in the vicinity of $100 per barrel.  (Remember, oil trades are denominated in dollars US.)

If the citizens of the US really want to bring crude oil prices down (and thus pump pricing) then it will be necessary to implement a program that will be at odds with the current administrations policies.  The Heritage Foundation has a proposal for doing just that: “THREE POLICY CHANGES TO HELP WITH GASOLINE PRICES” on their WebMemo blog site. The thrust of these three policy changes is summarized here:

A Familiar Pattern. When petroleum and gasoline prices shot up during the energy crisis of  1970, the experts and pundits predicted imminent resource exhaustion, skyrocketing prices, and energy poverty. Instead, markets responded by searching for, discovering, and producing enough oil to provide over two decades of low prices. For instance, in the U.S. alone, the number of drilling rigs more than tripled between September 1973 (before the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Arab oil embargo) and December 1981. Now, imminent oil depletion and the futility of drilling are again supposedly on the horizon. However, increased drilling activity follows increased petroleum prices. Blunting this natural market response will drive up energy prices and reduce national income. This, plus the Keystone XL pipeline and scaling back EPA expansion of the Clean Air Act, would do much to stabilize gas prices and energy costs in general.

The three policy changes necessary according to the Heritage Foundation are:

1  INCREASE DRILLING

  • Relatively small changes in supply can have large impacts on price, especially when markets are tight. And tight markets are what caused the petroleum price spikes of 2008 and will cause them again if production is shut down while demand from a growing world economy squeezes the spare capacity the world has enjoyed for the past couple of years.
  • The first and most obvious place to drill is where there are already drilling rigs and proven reserves— such as the Gulf of Mexico. Despite the majority recommendation of its own scientific panel, the Obama Administration stopped virtually all new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. There have been recent signs that this policy might change. “Might” needs to be “will,” and soon.

2 SHELVE “LOW-CARBON FUEL STANDARDS”

  • The concept of “low-carbon fuel standards” is driving opposition to a petroleum pipeline from Canada.  With its oil sands, Canada has more proven petroleum reserves than any country other than Saudi Arabia. A consistent ally and long-time friendly neighbor, Canada is exactly the sort of supplier the U.S. should want to fill the gap in the petroleum it cannot produce on its own. But some policymakers want to put these vast reserves off limits to American consumers.
  • The Keystone XL pipeline would bring the U.S. over a million barrels of petroleum each day—more than it imports from either Saudi Arabia or Venezuela (the U.S.’s two largest suppliers after Canada and Mexico). Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be applauded for her statements in support of the pipeline.  However, other components of the Administration, notably the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have taken steps to slow or stop the pipeline.

3  STOP EPA ABUSE OF THE CLEAN AIR ACT

  • The EPA’s abuse of the Clean Air Act will drive up refining costs and, therefore, gasoline prices. Though the use of the act to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) would create large problems in many places, the EPA recently started the process to regulate CO2 emissions from refineries. This regulation goes beyond the gasoline reformulation mandates that balkanize gasoline markets with higher-cost boutique fuels.
  • The new CO2 regulation puts an additional burden on refiners’ costs and subsequently raises prices of gasoline, diesel fuel, and home heating oil. Further, it will increase the amount of refined product the U.S. imports and reduce employment in an industry with wages that are more than 40 percent higher than the national average.

To read the Heritage blog in full  click

cbdakota

Leave a comment

Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, cap and trade, Energy Development, Environment

WINDPOWER AND ELECTRICAL STORAGE-BOSTON CONSULTING REPORT

Posted on February 16, 2011 | 4 comments

Many readers of these posting are familiar with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). During the years I was active in a business management role, we used BCG to provide consultancy for some of our business ventures.  BCG describes themselves as:

BCG is a global management consulting firm and the world’s leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients in all sectors and regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their businesses.

I cannot speak to their specific claim to be the “world’s leading advisor on business strategy” but I believe that they are among the world’s best.

Why am I qualifying their expertise?   Because I want to use the report they issued in March 2010 as a reference: 1) to increase the reader’s understanding of the issues and 2) for demonstrating that without electricity storage, wind and solar can never make a real impact on electrical supplies.   Their report is titled “Electricity Storage—Making Large-Scale Adoption of Wind and Solar Energies a Reality”.   This report may be seen in total by clicking here.

A prior posting in this blog, “WINDPOWER WITHOUT ENERGY STORAGE DOES NOT COMPUTE” makes the case that these alternative energy sources are unreliable and thus cannot be scheduled as necessary to provide reliable transmission to customers.   Our government is offering large subsidies to make these alternatives “competitive”; however, the alternatives will never be truly competitive without energy storage.

These energy sources require something to compensate for the times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.   To compensate, the BCG report discusses four approaches for electricity storage:

  • Grid Extension
  • Conventional Backup Power
  • Demand Side Management
  • Large Scale Storage

Grid Extension “involves linking electricity grids from different regions and transferring power from one to the other to compensate for fluctuations” BCG discusses the problems with this approach and conclude that it “will likely make an important contribution. ……But grid extension is not a standalone solution for the long run.”

Conventional Backup Power is the use of primarily fossil fuel powered generation plants that are brought on line or taken off line to compensate for the swings in Wind and Solar power generation.  BCG’s report presumes that fossil fuel power is the backup and concludes that”…we do not believe conventional backup capacity will be sufficient on its own or sustainable as we move toward a renewables-dominated electricity system in the long term”. (My emphasis added).   There is great momentum for the replacement of fossil fuels, particularly in the political class, as they lust for the attendant taxing and regulating which the removal of fossil fuels from general use would entail.   There is great uncertainty in the science of man-made global warming and thus any taxing and regulating is premature in particular because we are beginning to see an unraveling of this concept at present.

BCG continues by saying “Still we believe that conventional backup capacity will be indispensable for achieving the integration of renewable energy sources into the current power system in the coming years.”

Demand Side Management is described as having customers that are willing to scheduling their production or drying their clothes or what ever around the availability of electricity.   BCG states that this will have limited value and cites studies carried out in Germany and the US  ”found that Demand Side Management offers a demand reduction potential of only approximately 2 percent of peak load.”

Large Scale Storage is the collection of excess power generated, for example, when the wind and sun are peaking.  BCG states the positives for storage “Unlike interregional compensation, storage provides a self-sufficient solution for one specific region and hence is not affected by increases in penetration of fluctuating renewables across the board.

As BCG says,  “The approach is not perfect, however.  All electricity-storage technologies are inefficient to a degree: part of the energy fed into the system cannot be discharged later on and is lost. “ BCG notes that the range of efficiencies ranges from 45% to 80% and BCG states this is a key weakness for storage.  BCG lists the following as possible candidates for commercial storage.

  • Mechanical storage which encompasses pumped hydroelectric               storage, compressed air, and flywheel energy.
  • Thermal storage encompassing hot water, molten-salt, and phase change material storage.
  • Electrical storage including supercapacitors and superconducting magnets
  • Electrochemical storage including flow and static batteries.
  • Chemical or hydrogen storage

BCG looks at the pros and cons of these candidates and you can read the full report and make your own judgment about which ones, if any, will be the winners.

BCG further says:  “While the business case for investing in storage is currently weak, that situation will necessarily change.  Today’s fluctuations in generation are compensated for relatively easily and cheaply by flexible conventional power plants, but the march toward a fossil-fuel free energy landscape continues:……”  and “Wind and solar PV are the most competitive and widely available renewable sources and will certainly account for the lion’s share of the renewable energy produced—-and they require storage to be viable.”

The report is a good source for background information and, and in my view, it supports the obvious conclusion that wind and solar are, at the current time, largely an unnecessary expenditures that the ratepayer must endure.  Two issues are yet to be resolved.  Firstly, to be technically and economically viable electrical storage facility will have to make their way into the system.  Hopefully not, as the BCG report supposes, through yet more subsidies but rather at a time when the market forces are such that these energies are the logical, economic way to go on their own merit.   The second issue is that question of man-made global warming (AGW) theory and the part it is playing.  In my view the time frame for these renewables to make their way into the market should not be predicated on being supported by such a slender reed as AGW.   I believe these renewables will take a hit that will set them back many years when the rate payer revolts against the high price and unreliable delivery brought about by non-economic, government mandates.

cbdakota

4 Comments

Posted in AGW, Alternative Energy, Energy Development, Environment, Windpower

BBC SCIENCE PROPAGANDA

Posted on January 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

Propelled by the Climategate email scandal, cooling global temperatures, total failure of the Copenhagen climate conference, many false and otherwise erroneous reports in the IPCC 4th report on Climate Change, etc. the public is becoming aware of the bill of goods that has been feed to them in recent years by the mainstream media, Al Gore, and politicians of all stripes who want to tax and regulate you. Polls show waning  support for draconian taxes and regulation  in order to cut fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

This past week, the BBC aired a program they produced titled “Science Under Attack”.   The objective of the program was to bolster the man-made global warming theory (AGW).

So how good was the BBC’s “Science Under Attack”?

A desperate and sleazy program according to Christopher Booker as told in his posting “How BBC warmists abuse the science”:

The formula the BBC uses in its forlorn attempts to counterattack has been familiar ever since its 2008 series Climate Wars. First, a presenter with some scientific credentials comes on, apparently to look impartially at the evidence. Supporters of the cause are allowed to put their case without challenge. Hours of film of climate-change “deniers” are cherrypicked for soundbites that can be shown, out of context, to make them look ridiculous. The presenter can then conclude that the “deniers” are a tiny handful of eccentrics standing out against an overwhelming scientific “consensus”.

The scientist picked to front the progamme was Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, now President of the Royal Society (which has been promoting warmist orthodoxy even longer than the BBC). The cue to justify the programme’s title was all the criticism which greeted those Climategate emails leaked from Sir Paul’s old university, East Anglia, showing how scientists had been manipulating their data to support the claim that temperatures have recently risen to unprecedented levels.

One of the two “deniers” chosen to be stitched up, in classic BBC fashion, was the Telegraph’s James Delingpole. He has spoken for his own experience on our website. Still worse, however, was the treatment of Professor Fred Singer, the distinguished 86-year-old atmospheric physicist who set up the satellite system for the US National Weather Bureau. We saw Nurse cosying up to Singer in a coffee house, then a brief clip of the professor explaining how a particular stalagmite study had shown temperature fluctuations correlating much more neatly with solar activity than with levels of CO2. This snippet enabled Nurse to imply that Singer’s scepticism is based on one tiny local example, whereas real scientists look at the overall big picture. No mention of the 800-page report edited by Singer in which dozens of expert scientists challenge the CO2 orthodoxy from every angle.

For those that attend to the Climate Change Sanity postings routinely  (see) will instantly spot how poor the programming was and how little about the subject, Sir Paul Nurse knows when your read the following Booker comments:

The most telling moment, however, came in an interview between Nurse and a computer-modelling scientist from Nasa, presented as a general climate expert although he is only a specialist in ice studies. Asked to quantify the relative contributions of CO2 to the atmosphere by human and natural causes, his seemingly devastating reply was that 7 gigatons (billion tons) are emitted each year by human activity while only 1 gigaton comes from natural sources such as the oceans. This was so much the message they wanted that Nurse invited him to confirm that human emissions are seven times greater than those from all natural sources.

This was mind-boggling. It is generally agreed that the 7 billion tonnes of CO2 due to human activity represent just over 3 per cent of the total emitted. That given off by natural sources, such as the oceans, is vastly greater than this, more than 96 per cent of the total. One may argue about the “carbon cycle” and how much CO2 the oceans and plants reabsorb. But, as baldly stated, the point was simply a grotesque misrepresentation, serving, like many of the programme’s other assertions, only to give viewers a wholly misleading impression.

You can read James Delingpoles discussion of the Nurse “gotcha interview” here.

For 10 years Peter Sissons was the BBC evening news anchor.   In his recently published memoirs, he says:

“The BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots, and I was treated as a lunatic for daring to dissent”.

The BBC and the Warmists desperation in producing a program like this is palpable and it argues strongly that the BBC has lost its integrity.

cbdakota

Leave a comment

Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Climate Models, ClimateGate, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, sun and climate, United Nations

COLLEGE STUDENTS LACK SCIENTIFIC LITERACY?-Part2

Posted on January 20, 2011 | 2 comments

In the previous posting, College Students Lack Scientific Literacy?, we took a quick look at the role of photosynthesis in the Carbon Cycle.  This posting  will examine the part that burning of fossil fuels play in the carbon cycle and how fossil fuel CO2 affects global warming.

There are those who believe that catastrophic heating of the Earth will result if fossil fuels use is not curbed or perhaps stopped all together.  They think that the extra increment of CO2 from fossil will cause the climate to reach a “tipping point” after which there may be no turning back.

So what is the argument about between skeptics and believers?

Broadly speaking the believers have looked for a cause of a temperature increase of something less than 1C  during the last century.   They say that the measured volume of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has gone up coincident with the temperature increase and that since CO2 is a known greenhouse gas, it must be the cause.   And they add that CO2 from industrial and transportation sources, a product of fossil fuel combustion,  is the reason for the atmospheric CO2 increase from the past “steady-state” measurements.

Skeptics, while accepting that the Earth’s temperature has increased in the last century, so has it for the last 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age.  And further,  this cold to warm and return to cold has been going on for hundred thousands of years, so the last century’s warming is probably due mostly to natural causes.   Skeptics say that the past history of temperature increases and CO2 variation as charted from the examination of ancient ice cores show the temperature change leads CO2 change both increasing and decreasing.  Stated in another way,  CO2 follows a change in temperature rather than leading the change. By the way, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie did show it the other way but it is widely agreed that was wrong as was so much  else of that science fiction documentary.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is very small, and the CO2 increment from fossil fuel burning is about 3% of the total atmospheric CO2 content.  If pressed the believers will agree that the primary greenhouse gas is not CO2, but rather water in the form of vapor and clouds.  From 90 to 95% of the greenhouse gas effect results from water in the atmosphere.

An interesting way to look at the CO2 versus water has been made by Art Horn  in his posting “The Utter Futility of Reducing Carbon Emissions”which can be seen by clicking here.  This  posting looks at the Carbon Cycle and it uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as the data source.  This panel is the believer’s bible.   Quoting from his posting:

“…….the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment showed that 3% of the atmospheric CO2 comes from man-made sources. Global gross primary production and respiration, land use changes, plus CO2 from the oceans totals 213 gigatonnes of carbon exchanged each year between the Earth/oceans and the atmosphere. The IPCC figure also shows man-made carbon emissions to be about 7 gigatonnes, bringing the total to 220 gigatonnes per year. So from this, we can see that making energy from fossil fuels is producing about 3% of the carbon dioxide added to the air each year. From that, the total human component of the greenhouse effect is therefore about 3% of the total carbon dioxide component of the greenhouse effect, which is 8%.

That gives us a value of .2% from man-made carbon dioxide. If you think that’s a small number you’re right.”

A little more simple science is necessary to get this picture.

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) effect

To begin with, the simplest view is that GHG is a study of “energy in =  energy out”.  The “energy in” is the radiation from the Sun—sunlight, infrared (IR) and ultraviolet  (UV)—that is absorbed by the Earth.  The Earth then radiates this energy back out into space.  On its way back out into space, some of it is delayed by interaction with trace elements in the atmosphere. This interaction increases the temperature of the atmosphere, and the Earth’s temperature rises. The greenhouse effect is real and it allows life, as we know it, to exist.  If the Earth had no atmosphere,  its temperature would be 255K (-18C).  The average temperature of the entire Earth averaged over seasons is, by measurement, about 288K (15C).  Thus the greenhouse effect results in an increase in temperature of about 33K (33C).

Lets look at GHG in more detail.  The Sun energy in the form of visable light, IR, and UV (shortwaves) pass through the Earth’s atmosphere and are absorbed by the ocean, the land, the trees, concrete, road surfaces, etc.  Not all of the Suns energy  makes it to the Earth’s surface due to clouds and surface reflection, along with atmospheric scatter that represent a blockage.  When the Sun’s input ceases, at night for example, these Earth objects begin to emit electromagnetic radiation.  This radiation is in the infrared range but because the temperatures of the objects are much lower than that of the Sun, the wave lengths are different.  They are much longer.  For our purposes the Earth’s radiation will be called the longwaves.

The interaction of the trace compounds in our atmosphere with the outgoing longwave radiation is dictated by atomic absorption.  Each compound  in the atmosphere has a specific wave length band(s) that it absorbs.  If the compound’s wave lengths correspond to the wave lengths of some of the IR radiated from the Earth’s surface, the IR waves can be absorbed. Those IR waves are converted to heat causing the compound to emit IR of a different wave length. The compound is transparent to other IR wave lengths.

Water, CO2 and Methane will absorb IR wave lengths emitted from the Earth.    Of the emitted IR waves that are absorbed, it is estimated that some 4%to 6% are by CO2.  The CO2 greenhouse effect is limited because the wave lengths that CO2 absorbs only represent a small part of the wave length ranges of the reemitted IR from the Earth. In fact, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has only limited significance because the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere is nearly sufficient to absorb those particular Earth originated IR waves.

Well, why do the believers think that CO2 will cause the very high Earth temperatures they trot out frequently to scare all the rest of us.  They agree that water is the primary greenhouse gas.   They think that the little upward bumps in temperature that are possible if more CO2 is added to the atmosphere will result in more water vapor in the atmosphere.  They know that CO2 can’t do the deed so they have programmed their computers models (GCM) to  gee-up lots of water vapor to do the deed. This amplification of the total greenhouse gases (GHG) is called positive feedback. Using this positive feedback, the GCMs forecast climate out some 100 years or more and conclude that global temperatures will rise dramatically.   The problem is that this positive feedback is difficult to impossible to demonstrate in the real world.  (Basically the world abhors positive feed back.) Meanwhile a negative feedback has been shown to exist in real world, making run-away global temperatures quiet unlikely.

In summary,

Very little of the CO2 in the atmosphere is due to the burning of fossil fuels.

The  GHG effect is primarily due to water as vapor or clouds

CO2 can only absorb  a limited portion of  the Earth’s radiated IR

The Believers proclamations of catastrophic weather conditions are based computer programs. Those computer predictions that were done sufficiently long ago to be meaningful as a predictions,  have been notorious failures.

And the concept of Positive Feedback  increasing water in the atmosphere resulting in large increases in the Earth’s temperature is a fiction of the computer program as it has not yet been proved in real experimental work.

cbdakota

2 Comments

Posted in AGW, Climate Models, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, United Nations

COLLEGE STUDENTS LACK SCIENTIFIC LITERACY

Posted on January 13, 2011 | 1 comment

Last week was one of lows and highs.  I went back to South Dakota to say my goodbyes to my sister. She passed away some 7 hours after I got to the hospital. The highs were the young people that gathered for the funeral.  Mainly grandchildren and other kin of my sister. The children ranged from grade school to Grad school to graduated and off to work.   After spending time with them, it seems clear that we will be putting our nation into good hands.

Some probably do not share my political philosophy, However, I am hopeful that Winston Churchill’s view of the stages of life will play out when he said,  “If you are young and not a liberal, you have no heart.  If you are growing old and are not a conservative, you have no brain.”

But brains they do have no mater their political philosophy.   And those that have thought about Climate Change have open minds.

After reading the result of a recent Michigan State study, which concluded that College Students lack scientific literacy, I wondered if there are college students or grads, unlike my Sister’s kin, that do not have open minds and need a little background to begin formulating their own opinion about climate change.

Quoting the MSU researchers:

The researchers assessed the fundamental science knowledge of more than 500 students at 13 U.S. colleges in courses ranging from introductory biology to advanced ecology.

Most students did not truly understand the processes that transform carbon. They failed to apply principles such as the conservation of matter, which holds that when something changes chemically or physically, the amount of matter at the end of the process needs to equal the amount at the beginning. (Matter doesn’t magically appear or disappear.)

Students trying to explain weight loss, for example, could not trace matter once it leaves the body; instead they used informal reasoning based on their personal experiences (such as the fat “melted away” or was “burned off”). In reality, the atoms in fat molecules leave the body (mostly through breathing) and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and water.

Most students also incorrectly believe plants obtain their mass from the soil rather than primarily from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “When you see a tree growing,” Anderson said, “it’s a lot easier to believe that tree is somehow coming out of the soil rather than the scientific reality that it’s coming out of the air.”

The oxygen we breathe is primarily released from plants when photosynthesis takes place breaking the CO2 molecule, recombining it with water to produce a sugar.  The excess oxygen from the photosynthesis reaction is now a waste product and expelled to the atmosphere.

The above Graph is a product of  Onimoto.com

Without atmospheric CO2, there would be no plants.  Without plants there would be no life on this planet.   It offends me when I read media articles that call CO2 a POLLUTANT.

Because the Researcher’s objective for this work is to gain acolytes to the Church of Man Made Global Warming, my next posting will be to show that CO2 is not a big factor in the Greenhouse effect.

To read the MSU press release click here.

cbdakota

1 Comment

Posted in AGW, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, sun and climate

SUN AND CLIMATE PART 3: SOLAR FLUX & Ap INDEX

Posted on January 2, 2011 | 3 comments

In the two prior postings Sun and Climate,Parts 1 and 2,  we have talked about Solar Activity and how it relates to climate.  In Part 1, the discussion was primarily about Solar Insolation, and Part 2 began the discussion about solar activity using Sunspots as a proxy.   Sunspots are popularly used to indicate Solar activity due to their longevity.  Galileo began noting and recording them in the sixteen hundreds.

Ok,   now lets look at some more physical evidence that shows a strong correlation with solar activity/climate change.

Two much newer and probably better proxy measures are Solar Flux and Average Magnetic Planetary Index (Ap index).

SOLAR FLUX

The former is a measure of noise or flux that is emitted at a frequency of 2800 MHz (10.7cm).  This measure is typically referred to as F10.7.  This proxy measures ionization in the ionosphere’s F region.    The solar wind from the Sun contains many atomic particles.  The Earth’s geomagnetic field deflects the majority of the protons and electrons being expelled from the Sun toward the Earth.  But the as the Sun’s activity increases more particles are expelled and more break through into the Earth’s ionosphere where F10.7 measures the increase.    Continuous F10.7 measurement and record maintenance began in 1947. As can be noted from the shape of the current (Nov. 2010) monthly summary chart of F10.7,   it is lagging the same point on the red line where the experts had predicted it would be at this time in Cycle 24.

And as we noted in Sun and Climate Part 2,  the forecast Cycle 24  has been  scaled down several times in the last few years in order to match actual real world results which have consistently come in below each new forecast.  Note that the level of F10.7  at the peak of Cycle 23 in 2001 and 2002 reached nearly 240.

AVERAGE MAGNETIC PLANETARY INDEX –Ap

The Sun’s magnetic field extends far out into space.  It not only surrounds Earth, it also extends well beyond Pluto.  The more powerful the Sun’s magnetic field, the more it alters the  Earth’s geomagnetic field.    The Ap index is measure of this alteration.   The Ap index measurements began in the 1930’s.   The chart  that follows shows the Ap index beginning in 2000 through most of  2010.  The peak in the 2003 -2004 time frame is Cycle 23.  The Solar activity was high during that time, reaching an Ap index of 35 at its peak.  In October 2005,  the Ap Index dropped significantly and has remained very low since then.

The  following chart shows the Ap index from October 2010  through the end of December 2010.  Note that the index has bottomed out at zero on several occasions.  This chart also illustrates the how well the Solar Flux, the Sunspot Number and the Ap Index  correlate.

(This chart was prepared by Jan Alvestad)

No one knows exactly the mechanism that causes the Earth to cool when these proxies are low or warm when they are up.  No one knows exactly why the Sun has 11 (+-) year cycles.  Maybe we will never learn enough to be able to predict accurately the future state of the solar activity.  If so,  we will never be able to accurately predict the Earth’s future climate.  But we can reasonably predict that the Earth’s climate will cool as long as these proxies stay low (below normal), indicating low solar activity.
Moreover, we can’t control solar activity.  We can’t control Earth’s orbit around the Sun.  The Sun is in charge of our climate.  Man has precious little control of the climate in the big picture.   Attempts to moderate the Earth’s climate through reduction of CO2, for example, will have limited to no effect on climate although it will have a profound negative impact on our economic well being .

Our efforts should be directed toward adaptation to what every the Sun dishes out.

For more on this topic see posting Part 1 and Part 2 of Sun And Climate.

cbdakota

3 Comments

Posted in AGW, cap and trade, Climate Models, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, sun and climate

Sun and Climate Change -PART 2: Sunspots

Posted on December 29, 2010 | 3 comments

Following up from the previous posting, Sun and Climate Change Part 1-Solar Activity, we will continue to examine the connection between the Sun and the Earth’s climate.

Sun’s Magnetic Field

On average, the Sun’s magnetic field is thought to be only about twice as strong as Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field is generated by the rotation of the Sun acting like a giant electromagnet.  But it has local fields of enormous strength, something in the range of 8000 times greater that Earth’s field.  It is believed that the cause of these local fields is the differential rotation of the Sun’s latitudes.  The observed rotation at the equator is 25 days and near the poles about 35 days is due to the fact that the Sun is made up of plasma and hot gases.  This results in the magnetic field becoming twisted and erupting from the surface in these local fields.  Where this enormous magnetic force exists, you find Sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections (CME). The Sun has a cycle of about 11 years from minimum to maximum and back to minimum magnetic activity.  This cycle can be observed by the numbers of Sunspots formed on the surface of the Sun.   During a cycle, the Sunspot number increase until the Sun’s polarity “flips”.  The Sun’s magnetic polar north flips and points south.  This usually is the point at which the so-called solar maximum is reached. The activity on the Sun begins to decrease.  The cycle eventually reaching a point where very few Sunspots are observed.  This is the completion of a cycle.

Sunspots

Sunspots are the product of the enormous magnetic fields (thousands of times stronger than Earths magnetic field) created on the Sun. They appear as dark spots.   The Spots are cooler than the surrounding surface of the Sun.  NASA says that the Spots are about 3700K versus 5700K for the surrounding photosphere.

Sunspots are probably not the best indicators of the Sun’s activity but the better indicators have little history where as Sunspots have been recorded for hundreds of years. What make them especially interesting is that the Earth’s climate and Sunspots have a high degree of correlation.   Periods where the Earth’s climate has cooled off appear to coincide with periods of few Sunspots and periods of warmer climate seem to coincide with periods of high Sunspot counts.

Chart Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The telescopic recording of Sunspots began  with Galileo using the newly invented telescope to observe the sunspots in 1610.  He and later others began to count the sunspots.

When a solar cycle is forecast, the y-axis is usually Sunspot numbers and the x-axis is time.   The current solar cycle is 24.   On the chart below, the blue line is the monthly average of Sunspots. It shows  cycle 23 declining from its high and then cycle 24 as it begins to rise.  The orange line was the predicted shape of cycle 24 by NASA experts but the actual Sunspot numbers are lower than forecast. The experts have found it necessary to continue to reduce the numbers (height) of the forecast monthly Sunspot numbers.  In 2006 they forecast a height of cycle 24 at a sunspot number of 156 to 180. The following chart is from a posting by Anthony Watts on his blog,  WattsUpWithThat and can be seen here.

The following chart shows the latest  (Dec 2010) prediction of NASA and how they have found it necessary to continue to lower their expectations over time to new “high Sunspot number” of 64!!!  Although some people think they have a system that allows them to predict these numbers, its clear that no one knows enough to make any forecast that’s good enough to bet on it. The NASA forecast has been downgraded four times since the March 2006 prediction.

(The chart courtesy of Ira Glickstein on WUWT blog and can be seen here.)

There is one additional factor that the reader needs to be aware of, and that is comparing Sunspot counts of old and those of today could be problematic.   The pinpricks that are counted on the sun today with the high-powered equipment were probably not even noticed in years past.   So when it is reported that the sunspot count during period of the Maunder Minimum in lower than today, you cannot be sure we are comparing apples and apples.   Some discussion about this variable can be found here.

But no matter how you count them, the cycle 24 sunspots are out of the norm. Cycle 24 is being compared to Cycle 5 which occurred at the time of the Daulton Minimum.  The indications are Earth’s  climate is in for a period of cooling.

cbdakota

 

3 Comments

Posted in AGW, Climate Models, Environment, Global Temperatures, IPCC, sun and climate