Monday, August 25, 2014

EV NV


I'd love to save the world
but I don't know what to do
so I leave it up to you
    - Ten Years After

We were waist deep in the big muddy
And the big fool said to push on
    -Pete Seeger
 -----


Greetings
      If you are thinking about getting an electric car, in order to help slow climate change, like I am,  it's worth taking a look an this interview. (Below) .  It helped me think about it in a different way. 

     Here's what I'm thinking.. As everyone knows, our situation isn't too good.  We've got a small carbon budget (perhaps smaller than we think), and we need to reduce emissions immediately., and probably  by 10% each year for ten years, in order to have any chance is staying under 2 degrees.

    So should I buy that EV, and cut my annual  emissions substantially?  Would that help?   

      Let's use the numbers from this study  (rounded to make the math easier)  The ICE has a life cycle footprint of 24 tons,  the EV 19.. The emissions associated with production of the vehicles (including mining and smelting) are 6 tons for the ICE and 8 for the EV.   The emissions associated with operation of the vehicles are about 1 ton /yr for the ICE and .5 tons/yr for the EV.       (If someone has a better study let me know)    

     So, over the life of the car, the EV has a lighter footprint.  That's good.    But, when you buy a new EV, the carbon is "front loaded". Half of it comes in the first year.    So, in year one,  my carbon emissions will not go down , but will rise from .5 tons  to 8 tons - by 1600 %!    , In fact, the EV wouldn't start saving carbon until year 15!.  (Assuming I could keep my  6 year old ICE running another 15 years.)    If I was a first time buyer, the math would different - but because of the EV's higher emissions in making the car, it still wouldn't do better than an ICE until year 8.

     So, what?  The EV is still better isn't it? Yes, but...  The problem is, we don't need to reduce carbon emissions  in year 8 or year 15, we need to do it now. 

    Probably switching the fleet to electric would have been a good policy 20 or 30 years ago.  Then we had plenty of carbon to spend , because our carbon budget was bigger.  But we spent all the carbon.  And there is very little in the bank.   

 I'm not sure we can afford an EV

      So, as my friend Dorthy says about her Prius, " The only thing green about this car, is the paint job"

     
     
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Power Shift Away From Green Illusions

Monday, 08 April 2013 09:25By Steve HornTruthout | Interview


Every day, the news about climate change and the harms that are sure to accompany it gets worse and worse. To many environmentalists, the answer is simple:power shift. That is, shift from fossil fuels to clean, green, renewable, alternative energy. Well-meaning concerned citizens and activists have jumped on the bandwagon.
The problem with this simple solution: Things aren’t as simple as they seem, and "there's actually no such thing as a free lunch" when it comes to energy consumption and production. Further, what we're often sold as "green" and "clean" is actually neither. In the spirit of these inconvenient truths came a timely and provocative book, perhaps missed by many, titled, "Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism," by Ozzie Zehner.
As Zehner writes in the book's opening pages, "...this certainly isn't a book for alternative energy. Neither is it a book against it. In fact, we won’t be talking in simplistic terms of for or against, left and right, good and evil ... Ultimately, this is a book of shades." The book does show some of the "shady" sides of the clean energy hype and in so doing, dampens the hype around it.
Having recently read the book myself, I decided to contact Ozzie and ask him follow-up questions. Below is a transcript of our email conversation, which unfolded over the past few months.
Steve Horn for Truthout: If you had to give an elevator pitch to someone about what's wrong with the current US environmental movement, what would you say and why?
Ozzie Zehner: I would say that the environmental movement has relegated itself to cheerleading and mindless chants and that it's time for us to step away from the pom-poms. I encounter a boundless enthusiasm for creating positive change when holding dialogues with environmental groups. Unfortunately, the mainstream environmental movement is channeling that energy into an increasingly corporatist, and what I call a "productivist," set of priorities.
Now I admit, it's difficult to say we've ever had a truly transformational environmental movement, but if you go back 50 years, activists were at least on a far better path. Prominent environmentalists were living modestly, challenging dominant economic assumptions, and imagining durable strategies for human prosperity that were more in tune with the non-human planet. That humility has largely eroded.
The modern environmental movement has rolled over to become an outlet for loggers, energy firms and car companies to plug into. It is now primarily a social media platform for consumerism, growth and energy production - an institutionalized philanderer of green illusions. If you need evidence, just go to any climate rally and you'll see a strip mall of stands for green products, green jobs and green energy. These will do nothing to solve the crisis we face, which is not an energy crisis but rather a crisis of consumption.
Can wind/solar ever actually replace the fossils or is that the wrong way to think about the energy/climate conversation to begin with? If so, what are some of the right ways to start thinking about this conversation and what can be done to salvage what looks to be increasingly horrific runaway climate change?
There is an impression that we have a choice between fossil fuels and clean energy technologies such as solar cells and wind turbines. That choice is an illusion. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels through every stage of their life. Alternative energy technologies rely on fossil fuels for mining operations, fabrication plants, installation, ongoing maintenance and decommissioning. Also, due to the irregular output of wind and solar, these technologies require fossil fuel plants to be running alongside them at all times. Most significantly, alternative energy financing relies on the kind of growth that fossil fuels drive.
Take, for instance, President Obama's new Energy Security Trust. It aims to expand offshore oil-drilling operations in order to provide a tax base for alternative energy technologies, which will in turn lead to economic growth. The irony in the President's proposal is that it exposes how alternative technologies rely on economic arrangements that are themselves reliant on fossil fuels. And, if they work as advertised, these energy technologies will spur the kind of growth that will increase pressure to extract and burn fossil fuels well into the future.
There's a misconception that once alternative energy technologies get off the ground, they can fly on their own. But alternative energy technologies are better understood as a product of fossil fuels. It's notably more expensive to build a wind turbine today than it was a decade ago. Biofuels rely on petrochemical fertilizers and energy-intensive agriculture. And even though subsidies are driving a perceived rapid drop in solar technology costs, the larger expense of an installed solar system lies in installation, cleaning, repair, insurance and other low-tech costs, according to the largest database of field data from California.
The high cost of wind and solar technologies brings to light the fossil fuels behind the curtain. If we want to address climate change and the many other consequences of energy production, there's no evidence that lower energy costs and growth are a step in the right direction. The answer is straightforward, really. We'll need to greatly reduce both consumption and the number of people consuming over time.
You mention "productivist" and "corporatist" both here and in your book. By that do you mean neoliberal? Is the problem that the current green movement, if you want to call it that, has little understanding of the fundamentals of the current socio-economic order?
Neoliberalism, the idea that unfettered markets of privatized resources leads to prosperity, is just one human arrangement that falls under the larger umbrella of productivism. It's tempting to simply focus on critiquing markets and wealth accumulation.
There are many injustices in that realm, to be sure. But we might also talk about human procreation, the work ethic, alternative energy production, or numerous other productivist pursuits. Within these narratives runs a common theme - that which is produced is good, and those who produce it should be rewarded. This creates problems on a finite planet, to put it mildly.
Our planet has bounded resources and limited ability to absorb the impacts of human activities. Challenging the dominant neoliberal model can help to justly share those resources and risks. However, the precarious stories around growth and productivism are larger than just neoliberalism or capitalism.
Libertarians and Tea Partiers subscribe to the free-growth mindset, but so do Democrats and Republicans. Even Greens and Socialists are not immune to the seductive language of productivism. I know of one political candidate in the US who has run on a platform of slowing down the machine in order to preserve long-term prosperity only: Dave Gardner, who ran for mayor of Colorado Springs and directed a movie about it called Growthbusters.
We've seen material growth and prosperity walking hand-in-hand for so long that we don't know what they look like separately. That will have to change. Perhaps we'd better reorient, or at least recognize, our productivist inclinations now. Otherwise, Mother Nature may force us to reckon with our unsustainable belief systems in a less agreeable fashion.
Guy McPhersen uses the term "fossil fuel derivatives," which fits into your assessment. Is that a better way of framing the debate: fossil fuels vs. fossil fuel derivatives? There is no "clean energy" then, right? Any "silver bullet" fuel source, or is the "silver bullet" creating a different world?
The silver bullet is to envision a prosperous, yet smaller and less-consuming populous. In the modern energy system, alternative energy ends up being an alternative way to burn fossil fuel, which incurs alternative side effects and limitations. I wish it weren't so, but that's where the evidence leads.
Since wind and sunlight are free, why are wind and solar power so expensive? Solar and wind energy technologies should be very cheap - much cheaper than fossil fuels.
But they are not cheap at all. Even with massive subsidies, we see firms going bankrupt trying to sell them. And then we still have to figure in the cost of building batteries, redundant power plants or other infrastructure that arises from their low quality intermittent energy. Finally, we have to consider the mining, health, pollution and waste problems of renewable technologies. For example, we are now learning that the solar cell industry is one of the fastest growing emitters of virulent greenhouse gases such as sulfur hexafluoride, which has a global warming potential 23,000 times higher than CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
There's no such thing as clean energy, but there is such a thing as less energy. Every energy generation technique has side effects and limitations. The best way to avoid these negative consequences is to use less energy overall. That strategy also has side effects and limitations, but at least those can be addressed within the laws of physics on our finite planet.
Do you believe more so in the "end of growth" point of view, espoused by Richard Heinberg and others in that school of thought?
Our future success will rest upon our ability to bring the population down over time as we also reduce per-capita consumption. How do we do that while maintaining life satisfaction?
That's the question that Richard Heinberg, Curtis White, Albert Bartlett, Paul and Anne Erhlich, Jeff Gibbs and I are asking along with theorists in the French de-growth movement and others. We certainly don't have all of the answers - far from it. There's not even much room to discuss these topics within the existing progressive movement, but I invite everyone to come join us in creating that space. The first steps are to shed our green energy illusions and to start thinking more critically about perpetual growth. Afterward, I suspect we'll be able to ask clearer questions and maybe even imagine what a truly advanced civilization might look like.
What about something like biomass or biochar, the latter of which has been touted by some environmentalists as a form of "black gold"? Will that save our asses or is there hype here?
I recently visited a new tree-burning plant on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The university brags about burning trees to fuel their rather inefficient campus buildings. The practice of burning trees goes by many carefully branded names these days: biomass, biochar, sustainable forestry, selective logging, combined heat and power, and others. Biomass proponents in Vancouver told me their plant is 1) CO2 neutral and 2) only burning waste - two of the central talking points that profit-minded industry officials leverage to bring citizens on board. But, as with other forms of marketing, they are engaging in a practice of misdirection.
It takes a minute to incinerate a tree in a biomass plant, but it takes decades to grow one. And how can that seedling grow back if you've removed the so-called "waste" materials from the forest? Research shows that forests do not grow back to their original state, of course, and that biomass plants exhaust far more CO2 than natural gas or coal plants.
If you live on an infinite planet and have a time machine, maybe biomass could be sustainable. However, on our finite world, forests are a depleting resource just like fossil fuels. They are also our lungs. That's why burning them is the fastest route to civilization collapse.
Electric cars? You devote a decent amount of space in your book explaining why they're not the answer. Why not? There have been twovery prominent documentaries which conclude that they're the saving grace.
Building a heavy box with wheels and then shoving it thousands of miles down a road requires a lot of energy. There's no physical way around that. Electric car companies haven't found a way around the physics. But they've created an illusion that they have.
Electric cars can seem clean if you're wearing some pretty substantial blinders. And if you read reports by industry, political groups, and academic departments at UC-Davis, MIT, Stanford, or Indiana University, who have partnered with industry, that's what you'll get - narrow questions that measure easily obtainable data that can be quantified within a semester. On their own, they might be a curiosity, but electric car proponents leverage these fractional studies into the spotlight to paint the whole industry green.
Fortunately, we have another point of reference to consider. Researchers at The National Academy of Sciences took a step back. They investigated the entire life cycle of an electric car and painstakingly compared its impact to epidemiological data from every county across the United States. They determined that electric cars merely create a different set of side effects. It's just that those side effects don't come out of a tailpipe, where we are accustomed to looking for them.
Overall, the researchers found no benefit to an electric car once you account for the broader array of harms - most notably those arising through manufacturing. The National Academies report is showing its age, but it's the best we've got so far because it's comprehensive and independent. It was commissioned by Congress - we paid for it - and it's co-authored by 100 of the nation's top scientific advisers. A more recentCongressional Budget Office report came to similar conclusions.
Why has the mainstream green movement gone in this direction that you describe? Is it a case of corporate funding interests behind activist groups and an accompanying case of well-intentioned activists "drinking their Kool-Aid?"
Mainstream environmental groups are exchanging their principles for power at a suspect rate of exchange. It's not just the alternative energy technologies that rely on fossil fuels. The environmental groups do, too. They rely on funding from the excess wealth accumulated as froth on the top of the fossil fuel economy. But it's not just money. There are other influences too.
Mainstream environmental groups seem transfixed by technological gadgetry and have succumbed to magical thinking surrounding their pet fetishes. The last thing you want to give to a growing population of high consumers is more "green" energy. Even if it did work as advertised, who knows what we would do with it, but it almost certainly wouldn't be good for other species on the planet or, for that matter, long-term human prosperity.
In addition to the money and magic, there are silo effects. That is, asking narrow questions that can be answered with the methods at hand. We've seen a decline in the social science and humanities as ways of knowing something about our world, as if the human spirit and the natural world were materials to be titrated in a test tube. We are afraid to ask questions that can't be answered by the clever methods we've created.
Finally, there's the influence of media, which I spend a whole chapter dissecting inGreen Illusions. Green media has become a war of press releases - a contest of half-baked models and glorified science fair experiments. It doesn't have to be this way. We can change it all if we are willing to think and inquire differently as concerned citizens.
What exactly would "de-growth" look like as a movement? Are there examples of communities/nation-states taking part in it now? And do you see any examples of it within the US itself, say, within the Occupy movement?
I can't say exactly what de-growth will look like, but I suspect it will start with a different conceptual landscape. We've built up stories around green technologies and we make comparisons that are bound to satisfy those preconceptions. As a result, we have an environmental movement that is asking the wrong questions about growth, economy, equity and global risks.
Take, for instance, the practice by mainstream environmental groups of vilifying petroleum cars in order to promote electric cars. No doubt, gas cars are expensive and dirty. They kill tens of thousands of people annually. But using them as a benchmark to judge a technology as green is a remarkably low bar. Even if researchers at the National Academies are wrong - even if electric cars someday pass over that low bar - there's another problem. How will electric cars stack up against the broader array of transportation options at hand such as transit, cycling and walking?
Subsidies for electric cars are ultimately a subsidy to car culture and the infrastructure that goes with it. Car culture is not sustainable within the limits we face to growth. The more durable transportation options are cycling and walking. But the United States Congress has nearly eliminated bike lane and pedestrian funding - even while it pays out thousands of dollars to every wealthy electric car buyer. And Congress staged this tragic national embarrassment with the full support of the nation's leading environmental organizations.
We are so far from finding solutions. We first have to change our questions. We have to stop touting green growth, green jobs, green buildings, green business, and start to interrogate assumptions that undergird the belief that material growth will lead to long-term prosperity. British Columbia's Work Less Party, along with the French de-growth movement, are shifting to different kinds of questions. Occupy, as a political ideal, is building foundations, too. As the green illusions start to unravel over the coming years, we will find opportunities to create a new environmentalism, or perhaps a rediscovered environmentalism, which I am guessing will be both frustrating and exhilarating.
Ozzie Zehner is the author of Green Illusions and a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley.
This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication 

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Friday, August 22, 2014

Greenland and Antarctic maps reveal “unprecedented” ice loss


Cold as ice
Someday you'll pay the price
    - Foreigner

I have lived here before, the days of ice,
And of course this is why I'm so concerned,
And I come back to find the stars misplaced
and the smell of a world that has burned.

      -Jim Hendrix

Greetings

      Interesting goings on up in Greenland.  Ice is  melting.   (see below from Carbon Brief) This, of course is somewhat concerning, as it will "eventually" result in a problematic sea rise.

    As usual with climate science, this recent melting is proceeding "faster than anticipated".  And it seems to be accelerating.  As reported by Robert Scribbler

   "It was an extraordinary rate of melt now 4.7 times faster than in the period from 1997 to 2003 and 2.5 times faster than during 2003 to 2009. But, likely, it is but one more milestone on the path to even faster melt."
    
     What does this mean?


   Perhaps its useful to look at at the geologic record .  Here's a summary from a new report from David Spratt, author of Climate Code Red

  • "During mid-Miocene climatic optimum  [16-14 million years ago] CO2 levels were similar to today, but temperatures were ~3–6C warmer and sea levels 25 to 40 metres higher than at present… When CO2 levels were last similar to modern values (greater than 350 ppmv to 400 pmv), there was little glacial ice on land, or sea ice in the Arctic, and a marine-based ice mass on Antarctica was not viable… Lower levels were necessary for the growth of large ice mass on West Antarctica (~250 to 300 ppmv) and Greenland (~220 to 260 ppmv)" (Tripati, Roberts et al., 2009).
  • “We estimate sea level for the Middle Pliocene epoch [3.0–3.5 million years ago] – a period with near-modern CO2 levels – at 25±5 metres above present, which is validated by independent sea-level data” (Rohling, Grant et al., 2009).
  • Likewise, “during the middle-Pliocene … we find sea level fluctuations of 20-40 metres associated with global temperature variations between today’s temperature and +3°C” (Hansen, Sato et al., 2013).

 
   But of course, humans,  being creatures with hyperbolic discount rate, we aren't that concerned about events that might happen at the end of the century, but do worry about things in our lifetime.   Our first question is ; When?

     It seems the future is coming at us at an accelerating rate.   Back to Robert:

"It is likely that mass rate losses will continue to increase until some kind of break or negative feedback comes into play. Similar rates of melt increase would mean an annual 5-8 millimeter sea level rise by 2035 due to Greenland and Antarctic melt on top of a 2-3 millimeter sea level rise from thermal expansion of the oceans and from other melt sources. But even taking into account the cooling effect at the ocean surface from ice melt and fresh water floods, one could easily envision the feared 1-3 foot sea level rise by sometime near mid century and the even more concerning 3-9 foot sea level rise amidst a very intense battle between hot and cold weather systems through to century’s end."


Fun facts about sea level rise from here:

• Thirteen of the world’s 20 largest cities are now located on a coast.
• Nearly 25% of the world’s population lives within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of a shoreline, and this figure is likely to increase to 50% over the next 25 years as people flock to coastal cities.
• More than 600 million people live in coastal regions that are less than 10 meters above sea level.
• Two-thirds of the world’s cities have populations of five million or more living in at-risk areas that are less than 10 meter above sea level. (Source)
• Thirteen of the world’s fifteen largest cities are on coastal plains. Many smaller cities, such as Alexandria, Egypt’s ancient center of learning, also face a severe risk of inundation with a 39-inch (1m) rise in sea level. 
• Low-lying coastal regions in developing countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and China have especially large populations living in at-risk coastal areas such as deltas, where river systems enter the ocean. Both large island nations such as the Philippines and Indonesia and small ones such as Tuvalu and Vanuatu are at severe risk because they do not have enough land at higher elevations to support displaced coastal populations.
• Some island nations risk the danger of losing their fresh-water supplies as sea level rise pushes saltwater into their aquifers. For these reasons, those living on several small island nations (including the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific) could be forced to evacuate over the 21st century. (Source)
• With sea level projected to rise at an accelerated rate for at least several centuries, very large numbers of people in vulnerable locations are going to be forced to relocate. If relocation is delayed or populations do not evacuate during times when the areas are inundated by storm surges, very large numbers of environmental refugees are likely to result. (Source)

For visual representation of such a rise see here.    

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Greenland and Antarctic maps reveal “unprecedented” ice loss



A series of maps published this week show Greenland and Antarctica are losing more ice than at any time since satellite records began.
Scientists found the two vast ice sheets are losing a total of 500 cubic kilometers of ice per year, contributing to rising global sea levels.
Ice loss
The researchers used data from the European Space Agency's CryoSat - a satellite that passes over the earth at 700 kilometers above the surface and measures the thickness of polar ice.
The satellite was launched in 2010 and has been collecting data on sea ice and ice sheets ever since. By comparing data with other satellite missions, scientists can see how quickly the ice sheets are changing.
The study, just published in the journal The Cryosphere, reveals that since 2009, the volume of ice loss has tripled in West Antarctica and more than doubled in Greenland. This is the highest rate of ice loss since satellite records began 20 years ago.
Regional differences
The maps show that Greenland is losing around three times more ice than Antarctica, including thinning of the entire western ice sheet and further losses in the southeast and northwest ice sheets. You can see where the greatest losses of ice are occurring in the red areas in the maps below.
In Antarctica, the maps show thinning of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Peninsula. East Antarctica shows some increases in thickness (shown in blue in the maps), though this doesn't outweigh the losses elsewhere. Overall, more ice is being lost than gained.
The Cryosphere _Greenland Elevation Change _Aug 14

The Cryosphere _Antarctic Elevation Change _Aug 14
Elevation changes in Greenland (top) and Antarctica (bottom) between January 2011 to January 2014. Areas in red show loss of ice; blue shows gains. Source: V. Helm et al.(2014)
Satellite measurements
CryoSat collects data at 200 million points in Antarctica and 14.3 million in Greenland, as aBBC article today notes. Satellites can measure ice sheet heights by firing a radar pulse at each point and recording the time it takes for the signal to bounce back.
The data is used to create digital elevation models that provide a 'snapshot' of the state of the ice sheets covering the two land masses. You can see how the ice thickness varies over the surface of the earth in the figures below. The areas in red show thicker ice towards the middle of the land mass and the blue areas show the thinner ice around the edges.
The Cryosphere _Greenland Elevation _Aug 14

The Cryosphere _Antarctic Elevation _Aug 14
Elevations of ice in Greenland (top) and Antarctica (bottom) in 2012. Red shows areas of thicker ice; blue shows thinner ice. Source: V. Helm et al. (2014)
New imagery
These aren't the only new satellite images to be released this week. A Canadian collaboration, including the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Space Agency, released a satellite 'mosaic' image of the whole of Antarctica.
The image, shown below, is made up from over 3,000 satellite images taken in 2008.
Uni Of Waterloo _Antarctica Image _Aug 14
Mosaic satellite image of Antarctica. Source: University of Waterloo
Yesterday's Mail Online covered the new research, featuring some of the satellite's images - such as the one above - including a close-up of an individual ice shelf.
The team behind the image also produced an equivalent version from images taken in 1997 and hope that being able to compare the two could help scientists identify changes in the ice sheets over Antarctica.
The next steps for the team include providing more regular updates to the Antarctic image, and creating a similar mosaic image for Greenland.

V. Helm, A. Humbert, and H. Miller (2014) Elevation and elevation change of Greenland and Antarctica derived from CryoSat-2, The Cryosphere, doi:10.5194/tc-8-1539-2014

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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Wind hits 2.5 cent/kwh



I will gladly pay you Tuesday
for a hamburger today

-Wimpy

Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today
And don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey

-The Grassroots (1967)

Greetings

     Looks like wind is getting cheaper and cheaper.  The big question is : Will this cheapness encourage investors to put up the money for more turbines?

    Perhaps

    One of the commentors to this post, makes an interesting point about investment, and the discount rate. See here   Even if wind were cheaper than coal or gas plants in the long run, the timing of investments may affect  the analysis.  That's because with wind, you need to pay it all up front (except some minor maintenance).  With gas, the initial cost is lower, and you get to string out the rest of te costs (fuel), over the life of the facility.     That make a difference to investors.  With wind, they are either tieing up more capital (and losing out on alternative investments), or they are borrowing  more money and  paying more  interest .

    Its the whole problem of the discount rate.    Which shows up again in the climate change debates. People can be rational, and take measures now for the future,  But, it goes against their nature.   People value the present much higher than the future.  see here
   .  

"DANIEL KAHNEMAN is not hopeful. “I am very sorry,” he told me, “but I am deeply pessimistic. I really see no path to success on climate change.”
"Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics for his research on the psychological biases that distort rational decision-making. One of these is “loss aversion”, which means that people are far more sensitive to losses than gains. He regards climate change as a perfect trigger: a distant problem that requires sacrifices now to avoid uncertain losses far in the future. This combination is exceptionally hard for us to accept, he told me.
.....


"Discussions about economics, meanwhile, invariably turn into self defeating cost-benefit analyses. Stern offers a choice between spending 1 per cent of annual income now, or risking losing 20 per cent of it in 50 years’ time. What sounds like an easy choice (a ‘no-brainer’ we could say) to him is actually disconcertingly similar to the language used in Daniel Kahneman’s famous experiments into temporal discounting. And, not surprisingly it produces the same result: phrased as a choice, people are innately biased to postponing action and taking a gamble on the future. What is more, politicians and business leaders are especially to prone to what Kahneman would call the ‘optimism bias’ – the tendency to overestimate their own luck and skill- and are all too willing to take this gamble. "  




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US Wind Hits Record Low Price of 2.5 Cents Per Kilowatt Hour; 9-12 Gigawatts of Renewable Energy Additions Ramp up for 2014

The excuses for failing to rapidly adopt renewable energy systems grow thinner and more contorted with each passing day…
During 2013, costs for wind energy plunged to record low levels as both wind and solar set to make substantial new capacity gains in 2014 and 2015, according to a recent report from the US Department of Energy.
PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) pricing for wind during 2013 plunged to the very low range of 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour after levelized costs were included for new wind energy projects. For comparison, the average range of PPAs for all new energy sources in 2013 was 2.5 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour and included wind, solar, natural gas and coal. This made wind energy the least expensive source for new energy in 2013 following a long trend of overall falling prices.
Price of Wind at all time low
(Price of wind hits all time low in 2013 at 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Image source: US Department of Energy.)
Solar prices also fell to within competitive ranges, leading to record adoption rates for that energy source for the US in 2013.
New wind generation is expected to hit between 4 and 6 gigawatts in 2014 and between 5 and 9 gigawatts in 2015. Overall, 13 gigawatts of new wind energy capacity is now under construction, with the bulk focusing on the wind-rich region of the central US.
Solar is also expected to make strong gains in 2014 by adding between 5 and 7 gigawatts of new capacity. Rapidly increasing US growth in solar energy installations has been led by a combination of factors including plummeting prices and a rising adoption of home solar energy through rooftop leasing arrangements targeted to save consumers money on their power bills.
By end of 2014, total installed wind capacity is expected to hit around 74 gigawatts in the US. Meanwhile, US solar capacity is likely to climb above 18 gigawatts by year end. Altogether, these combined energy sources, when taking capacity factor into account, will have produced about 5% of the US’s electricity.
US renewables forecast 2
(US renewable energy net electrical generation from 2013 [historic] through 2018 [projected]. Image source: SUN DAY Forecast using US Energy Information Agency sources.)
With new construction projects continuing, total US renewable energy generation is expected to exceed 13.4 percent by the end of 2014 and 16.11 percent by the end of 2018.
Strong Gains Necessary to Mitigate Human-Caused Climate Change, Barriers to Adoption are Now Chiefly Political
Though the combined continued net price drop and cumulative substantial renewable energy generation gains are encouraging, they will need to advance at ever faster rates if we are to have much hope for rapidly mitigating the worst effects of human caused climate change. US generative capacity additions for renewables should probably be in the range of 2-4 times their present rate of adoption and goals should be set for the total replacement of US ghg emitting generation capacity by or before 2050.
With prices for renewable electricity generation now at levels competitive with traditional fossil fuels, and, in the case of wind, far less than fossil fuels, the primary barrier to adoption is now political. Fossil fuel related organizers have, through lobbying and media related efforts, worked on a number of fronts to water down renewable energy incentive legislation and slow or block policy measures that would speed their adoption. Many of these groups are aligned with conservative members and climate change deniers in Congress, but also include a broad array of outside organizations.
These groups represent a final, but strong road block to adoption of permanent mitigations to climate change with broad ranging benefits such as practically unlimited base fuel sources and freeing economic systems from the specter of energy scarcity and insecurity. Given both the lurking risks of human-caused climate change and the prospective benefits of widespread renewable energy generation, the time for a broad push for rapid adoption of renewable energy systems is now.
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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Burning Rubber



You gassed her up, behind the wheel
Your arm around your sweetie
In your Oldsmobile 


- Tom Waits ( Heart of Saturday night)

I'm riding with lady luck
Freeway cars and trucks
      - Eagles



Greetings

       For years the American experience has been entwined with cars.  Americans are always talking about freedom.  What does that mean?   Getting in your car, burning rubber, and getting on the road!  

      So, it's a little sad to see that after all these years of more, we've hit " peak miles" .  As is nicely analyzed below, its a result of falling wages, higher gas prices, and stagnant MPG.   

       How about the EV?   Can EV's turn  that around?   Bring back the good old days?    There's a lot of talk about new battery technology, coming down the pike.  Due to arrive in 2016 or 2017.   Interesting timing.  2016 may also mark the year that oil production begins in descent from the plateau.  Even the optimistic EIA seems agree with that.  So, one scenario is a rise in gas prices giving the EV sales a boost, moving us into the new era.

       One has to wonder, though, whether the car buying public will be able to afford these new EVs.   The average Joe/Jane has seen his/her income drop by about 7% since it peaked in 2002.     Those who can afford to buy, still prefer trucks and SUVs over cars.

        Of course the key question is decline rates.  If the decline rate is slow, the EV technology with have a chance to "mature" and bring down costs.  A more severe decline rate, may cause  economic disruptions, reducing sales.   Here is an interesting analysis of the "giant" oil fields.  These 507 fields.  provide 60% of the total world production.  Approximately 80% are past peak, and have an average decline rate of 6.5%.  The addition of various technical solutions, such as additional drilling, can put off peak, but result in a steeper decline.  Fields that peaked in the last decade have a decline rate of 10%.

      The Hirsch report makes it clear that it is very difficult to handle the transition off oil, if you wait and start after the decline starts.    Here is one scenario that puts that in stark terms.    First she  figures out the rock bottom amount needed to run essential service - agriculture, rail, trucking, ambulance, police etc.  She puts that around 20% of our total use.   Then makes an  estimate of the decline rate.  She assumes it will start out slow and pick up to around 10%.  Then see how long it takes to get us into trouble.   Hmm.....

    "With a 4/5/6/7/8/9/10/10 /10/….. decline rate scenario, we’ll dip below the essential transportation fuel needed 16 years from now."


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This graph, from “economonitor,” is very interesting because it contains so much relevant information. (However, note one detail: the title of the graph, “Miles Driven” is somewhat misleading; it should be “mileage”, as the text of the post clearly says.) The relation of mileage to hourly wages is a parameter worth examining because it tells us a lot about the “systemic” efficiency of road transportation. What kind of efficiency can we actually afford?
Now, the graph shows a clear “peak mileage” which occurred around the year 2000, when Americas could afford the highest mileage from their cars in history. It was an efficiency peak of the road transportation system. But then, this efficiency diminished. How can we explain that?
The data of the graph depend on three factors 1) the cost of gasoline, 2) the average hourly wage, and 3) the average mileage of cars. Let see first the behavior of oil prices, which determine gasoline prices.
You see how oil prices spiked twice during the past 50 years, with the first and the second (ongoing) oil shocks. Amazingly, after the start of the first oil crisis, the mileage per hour worked increased, despite the steep price increases. But the opposite took place with the second oil crisis, mileage per hour worked rapidly decreased. Something must have compensated the price increase during the first crisis, but that is not occurring during the second. Why?
Of the other two parameters involved in the mileage curve, hourly wages play only a minor role. In real terms, wages have remained more or less constant in the US since the early 1970s, as you can see in this graph (source: income inequality)
What changed a lot in this period is the technology of cars. The first oil shock in the 1970s was, indeed, a shock. People reacted by actively seeking for technological solutions which would increase the mileage of their cars. And these solutions were easy to find: simply reducing the size and the weight of the monster gas guzzlers of the 1960s did the job. Look at these data (source):
You see how quickly mileage increased throughout the 1970s – it nearly doubled in less than 10 years! And you can see how quickly people forgot about the oil problem once prices collapsed in the second half of the 1980s. The graph also shows that, with the second oil crisis, mileage restarted to increase, but by far not as fast as in the 1970s. There is a reason: it is difficult to optimize something already optimized. This we call ‘diminishing returns of technological progress.”
In the end, it looks like the “peak mileage” of the late 1990s is the real one. In the future, the a combination of factors which led to the peak will never return. Oil depletion is destined to make oil less and less affordable, even though market oscillations may hide this phenomenon. Wages are unlikely to grow in real terms after having been static for the past 40 years. And technological miracles are unlikely. Even the Toyota Prius, technological marvel of our times, can only bring us back to where we were 15 years ago in terms of mileage per hour worked. As long as we remain within the paradigm of “road vehicle powered by a combustion engine” we have reached the limit of what we can do.
The result of the reduced overall efficiency of transportation we can see in this last graph (fromadvisorperspectives). In the US; people are driving less. Perhaps there are behavioral factors involved, but “peak mileage” suggest that they are doing that because they can’t afford to drive more.
h/t Giorgio Mastrorocco

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Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Tell the truth


And my best friend my doctor
won't even tell me what it is I've got

      - Bob Dylan 

Tell me lies, 
tell me sweet little lies

     - Fleetwood Mac



Greetings

     Just stumbled onto this info on the conference on "radical emissions reductions" put on by Anderson and   Bows.  You have to hand to those folks for telling it like is .  They say the "developed" nations have to go first, and do the most,  having gotten most of the gains from the fossil era.  !0% per year reductions, each year until 2030.   Tough medicine, but no tougher than the alternative.

      Another guy who is coming out and saying what needs to be said, is the glaciologist Jason Box.   In his comment on the recent research by Stockholm University, reporting methane plumes escaping for the sea floor, he made the  "tweet heard round the world" saying: 

  “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're fucked.”

 See more here
  
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From Climate code Red

On 10-11 December 2013, a Radical Emissions Reduction Conference was held at the Royal Society, London under the auspices of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. The conference's purpose was described as:

Today, in 2013, we face an unavoidably radical future. We either continue with rising emissions and reap the radical repercussions of severe climate change, or we acknowledge that we have a choice and pursue radical emission reductions: No longer is there a non-radical option. Moreover, low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions – they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption – the rationale for this conference.
Prof. Kevin Anderson and Dr. Alice Bows-Larkin, both from the Tyndall Centre, were instrumental in in framing the challenge for the conference. In 2010, they noted in aresearch paper that: 
…while the rhetoric of policy is to reduce emissions in line with avoiding dangerous climate change, most policy advice is to accept a high probability of extremely dangerous climate change rather than propose radical and immediate emission reductions.
And in 2012 in “A new paradigm for climate change”, Anderson and Bows call for academic rigour in elaborating the scientific and economic choices:
    … academics may again have contributed to a misguided belief that commitments to avoid warming of 2°C can still be realized with incremental adjustments to economic incentives… as the remaining cumulative budget is consumed, so any contextual interpretation of the science demonstrates that the threshold of 2°C is no longer viable, at least within orthodox political and economic constraints…
    
     At the same time as climate change analyses are being subverted to reconcile them with the orthodoxy of economic growth, neoclassical economics has evidently failed to keep even its own house in order. This failure is not peripheral. It is prolonged, deep-rooted and disregards national boundaries, raising profound issues about the structures, values and framing of contemporary society… This catastrophic and ongoing failure of market economics and the laissez-faire rhetoric accompanying it (unfettered choice, deregulation and so on) could provide an opportunity to think differently about climate change… 

    It is in this rapidly evolving context that the science underpinning climate change is being conducted and its findings communicated. This is an opportunity that should and must be grasped. Liberate the science from the economics, finance and astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable. But this is still not enough. In an increasingly interconnected world where the whole — the system — is often far removed from the sum of its parts, we need to be less afraid of making academic judgements. Not unsubstantiated opinions and prejudice, but applying a mix of academic rigour, courage and humility to bring new and interdisciplinary insights into the emerging era. Leave the market economists to fight among themselves over the right price of carbon — let them relive their groundhog day if they wish. The world is moving on and we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.
Their writings which underpin the conference's rationale, include: A new paradigm for climate changeBeyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world, and Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends. More recently, Anderson's Avoiding dangerous climate change demands de-growth strategies from wealthier nations more explicitly lays out some of the key assumptions.

So to the conference itself, and many thanks to Shane White for wading through the conference videos and taking extensive notes which form the basis of these blogs.

Anderson's presentation was entitled "'Avoiding dangerous climate change’: Why we need radical reductions in emissions", and it kicked off the conference. The video ishere plus slides.

Anderson starts with the proposition that stabilisation at 2°C remains a feasible goal of the international community, just. [Readers of this blog will know well that at less than 1 degree of warming, there is a good deal of evidence that climate change is already dangerous and of the view of leading scientists that 2°C hotter is not an acceptable climate target but a disaster.]

Anderson makes the point that radical mitigation has economic benefits, not financial. He says it is time to wrestle economics away form the financiers. The word economics originates from the Greek oikonimia, meaning stewardship of the household; no mention of money. The word financial comes from the Greek chrematistic meaning the making of money. If making money is our priority then 2°C is not viable. If we’re interested in the wellbeing of our lives and the planet, then 2°C is viable with a successful economy. 

The science message contained within latest IPCC report hasn’t changed in the last 20 years. This science is mature. But what has changed, says Anderson, is that:
  • Since IPCC AR4 in 2007, an additional 200 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) has been released;
  • Annual emissions are ~70% higher than at the time of the first report in 1990;
  • Atmospheric carbon dioxide  levels are higher than during past 800 thousand years.
The world says it is still committed to make a fair contribution “To hold the increase in global temperature below 2°C, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity”. (Copenhagen Accord 2009).


So why do we need to concentrate on energy demand rather than supply? Because, says Anderson,  in 2013 it’s too late to only rely solely on the supply side. We need to focus on the demand side now too.

So what of future emissions? Everything built today based on fossil fuels is locking ourselves into a high carbon future: power stations, large scale infrastructures, built environment, aircraft and ships. All this infrastructure will be in place for 30 to 100 years.



Emissions in the above chart are higher than emissions in IPCC’s highest emission pathway (RCP8.5), with 2% a year growth from 2020.  Are such rising emissions scenarios realistic? They are certainly viable, says Anderson,  since UK is considered a leading country on climate change and the UK has made extensive fossil fuel investments.

Current pathway leads to emissions of greater than 2500 GtCO2 for the period 2000–2050, and 5000 GtCO2 for 2000–2100. Yet for a 66% chance of less than 2°C, we can emit only 1000 GtCO2. Along our current pathway all of that will be emitted by 2032. There is nothing left for emissions by 2032.



The carbon dioxide trend, says Anderson,  is “perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6°C, which would have devastating consequences for the planet” as IEA chief economist Faith Birol has noted. Whether it is 4, 5 or 6°C doesn’t mean too much; they’re all devastating.

There is nothing we can do significantly in the wealthy parts of the world to get emissions down with just low carbon supply in the short term. The only thing we can do now is reduce our demand. The supply side is a pre-requisite in the long term to holding temperature below 2°C.



This analysis is global. But premised on the basis of equity, poor countries shouldn’t be forced to suffer by reducing their emissions demand by the same rate as us in the short term.

So let’s assume non-Annex 1 nations (developing nations) collectively peak their emissions by 2025 (which a a big ask) and reduce emissions thereafter by 6 to 8% per year. Then what emissions budget is left for the rich, developed Annex 1 nations? The answer is that Annex 1 nations require at least a 10% reduction in emissions year on year (this is based on analysis a few years old so 10% is a bit low now). That means a 40% reduction by 2018 (c.f 1990), 70% reduction by 2024, and 90% by 2030 (remembering that these these are radical emission reductions but provide a 66% chance of less than 2°C.

Asks Anderson: Is above viable? Is 4, 5 or 6°C a better option? No.

Radical emission reductions on the basis of equity are viable by:
  • Equity: Small group of people make radical and early reductions (40-60% of emissions are from 1-5% of the population) i.e. those in Annex 1 countries.
  • Technology: demand side can deliver early and large reductions (why are low efficiency products on the market when high efficiency products are available?)
  • Growth: There are alternative measures of a good life. Above a certain threshold GDP is a poor proxy for welfare.
So in summary, a radical plan looks something like this:
  • Low carbon energy supply is pivotal in the long term but can’t be built fast enough in order to solely be relied upon for 2°C, so;
  • Radical reductions in energy demand from now to ~2030. Radical reductions in energy demand over one decade are possible if carefully planned. This extends the window to get the low carbon energy supply in place.
  • A Marshall plan to build 100% low carbon energy supply by 2030–2040.
Anderson concluded by quoting Robert Unger that“at every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different.” He said the paradigm he had outlined will be dismissed as not being practical, but 4, 5 or 6°C is impractical and certainly not equitable.

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