Back to the Garden

Inna Godda da Vida

    -Iron Butterfly

You can have it all

My empire of dirt

     -Nine Inch Nails

Greetings

       I've been spending the last few days shoveling dirt.  Which is pretty elemental.  This dirt has a lot of cow poop in it, so, there is no avoiding  the basics of the basic biological realities of life on the planet.   Which has got me thinking about sustainability   My garden is far from it!  

       I suppose we all want "the good life" and the long-term sustainability of the ecosystem, (which is to say -  the Holocene, but without the 6th extinction ).

      We continue to argue about whether it is, in fact, an oxymoron - a contradiction, that lets us paper over the fact that we really want two contradictory things.

      One data point emerged last month.   A study of the sustainability of various countries and their ability to provide the basis to their population. .  Study here

      

"Their answer is uncomfortable. After looking at data on quality of life and use of resources from some 150 countries, they found that no nation currently meets the basic needs of its citizens in a sustainable way. The nations of the world either don’t provide the basics of a good life or they do it at excessive cost in resources, or they fail at both.

To Dr. O’Neill, an economist, this was something of a surprise. “When we started, we kind of thought, ‘surely, out of 150 different countries, there will be some shining star’” with a high quality of life and moderate resource use. “We really didn’t find that,” he said, pointing only to Vietnam as coming close to meeting both measures.

He did not say, however, that these findings doom humanity to poverty or environmental ruin. “It doesn’t tell us what’s theoretically possible,” he said, noting that the study only projects the results of continuing with business as usual. 

      

 So, it may possible, but we really have no existing  model to point to.

So, what about theoretically?   For instance what about CO2,?  Is  100% renewable power possible?.

There seems to be some disagreement on that question

Here's a good summary of the controversy comes from radio Ecoshock.

MIT Professor Mark Z. Jacobson published a paper in December 2015, outlining how the United States could power up with just wind, water, and solar. The title is “Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes“, PNAS.

Two years later, Caldeira along with others, including lead author Christopher Clack, issued a very negative rebuttal paper, also in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper is “Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar”, PNAS, February 24, 2017. You can read the full text here.

Mark Jacobson pushed back with this article, published in the same issue of PNAS: “The United States can keep the grid stable at low cost with 100% clean, renewable energy in all sectors despite inaccurate claims”

Jacobson appears to have taken criticism of his model as an insult to his science. In a move very unusual for debate in science, Jacobson sued C. Clack and the National AAcademy.That suit was dropped this year. You can read Mark’s Tweet about the lawsuit ending here, and his full statement here. To dig into this further, Mark says “a total of 30 peer-reviewed scientific papers located at [here at Stanford] support the contention that the grid can stay stable with 100% or near 100% renewable energy.”

This Jacobson lawsuit sent a too some scientists wanting to add to this debate. You can read all about these “fisticuffs” here in the New York Times. It came to the point where one article rebutting Jacobson was passed on to Ken Caldi because the author worried about being sued. Caldeira published that articles blog.

In November of 2014, Mark Jacobson described his plan for all-green power here on Radio Ecoshock. But he did not talk about his heavy reliance on a projected renaissance of hydroelectric power. The problem is that Jacobson’s plan assumed nearly ten-fold increase in hydropower much of it by adding more generators to existing dams. You can find Ken Caldeira’s criticism of that hydro reliance here.

     

                Here is an interview with Ken Caldera, where he explains his view.  Basically, he finds that there are certain times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.  Jacobson assumed that more hydro could be developed to provide backup during those times.  Caldera and his co authors concluded that most of the good hydro sites had already been developed and further expansion would be minimal.  They conclude that 100% renewable power is not achievable, and that only 80% could be supplied reliably.   Calderra notes in the interview that the batteries currently used by TESLA, and used in Australia and Puerto Rico are useful to make up for short term power losses, including overnight , but that they are not able to handle  other   longer term events (several weeks).  Arguably these could be handles by massively overbuilding the wind and solar facilities, but in Caldera's view,  it would be cost prohibitive.

          Here is the paper, Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States

'We analyze 36 years of global, hourly weather data (1980–2015) to quantify the covariability of solar and wind resources as a function of time and location, over multi-decadal time scales and up to continental length scales. Assuming minimal excess generation, lossless transmission, and no other generation sources, the analysis indicates that wind-heavy or solar-heavy U.S.-scale power generation portfolios could in principle provide ∼80% of recent total annual U.S. electricity demand. However, to reliably meet 100% of total annual electricity demand, seasonal cycles and unpredictable weather events require several weeks’ worth of energy storage and/or the installation of much more capacity of solar and wind power than is routinely necessary to meet peak demand. To obtain ∼80% reliability, solar-heavy wind/solar generation mixes require sufficient energy storage to overcome the daily solar cycle, whereas wind-heavy wind/solar generation mixes require continental-scale transmission to exploit the geographic diversity of wind. Policy and planning aimed at providing a reliable electricity supply must therefore rigorously consider constraints associated with the geophysical variability of the solar and wind resource—even over continental scales.

Of course, there are many ways to be unsustainable.   At least seven according to the study mentioned above    One way, is to emit carbon dioxide.   Any carbon dioxide

       Basically, we have already emitted all the CO2 that we can afford.   The nations of the world agreed in Paris that 1.5 degrees was too dangerous .   And there is no budget left for that .  in fact it is likely that we have used up the budget for 2 degrees.   As discussed here,   recent studies indicate that ,  thanks to   reflective sulphate pollutants (aerosols) produced from the dirty burning of coal,   2 degrees is basically "baked in" , even if we stopped all CO2 tomorrow

In other words, going to zero emissions with CO2 at ~420ppm would result in a warming of around 2°C at equilibrium, if the level of short-lived gases was constant. Not going to zero emissions would be worse in the short term: other recent work shows warming would be 2.2-2.4°C by 2050 if we continue on the current high-emissions path.

And there is a consensus that 2 degrees is no longer a global warming guard rail. see here

“Limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius will not prevent destructive and deadly climate impacts, as once hoped, dozens of experts concluded in a score of scientific studies released Monday…With only one degree of warming so far, Earth has seen a crescendo of droughts, heatwaves, and storms ramped up by rising seas. Voluntary national pledges made under the Paris pact to cut CO2 emissions, if fulfilled, would yield a 3C world at best.

       

  It's hard to grasp how quickly things a re changing. An interesting article from. Eric Holthaus, notes that the last official report of the IPCC came out in 2013, and its already out of date.

The climate models used in these reports grow old in a hurry. Since the 1970s, they’ve routinely underestimated the rate of global warming. Some of the most recent comprehensive assessments of climate science, including last year’s congressionally-mandated, White House-approved, Climate Science Special Report, include scary new sections on “climate surprises” like simultaneous droughts and hurricanes, that have wide-reaching consequences. .....

“Positive feedbacks (self-reinforcing cycles) within the climate system have the potential to accelerate human-induced climate change,” says a section from that Climate Science Special report, “and even shift the Earth’s climate system, in part or in whole, into new states that are very different from those experienced in the recent past.” None of this was included in the last IPCC report."

"Actually, a helluva lot has changed in our understanding of the Earth’s climate system since the 2013 IPCC report. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Sea-level rise is going to be much worse than we thought. Like, potentially a lot worse. In the last IPCC assessment, the worst case scenario for sea-level rise this century was about three feet. That’s now about the midpoint of what’s expected; the worst-case has ballooned to about eight feet. That’s largely because …
2. Antarctica’s massive ice sheets could collapse much more quickly than we thought. Newly discovered mechanisms of collapse in some of the planet’s largest and most vulnerable glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are beginning to capture the attention of the scientific community. Should these mechanisms kick in over the next few decades, they’d unleash enough meltwater to flood every coastal city on Earth.
3. Extreme weather is here and can now be linked to climate change in real time.From the Arctic to the tropics, wildfires, intense storms and other extreme weather events have been increasingly fierce in recent years, and climate change has played a measurable role. A 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences opened the floodgates, so to speak, of the burgeoning field of extreme weather attribution. From last year’s Hurricane Harvey to last month’s nor’easter-linked floods in Massachusetts, nearly every weather event now bears a traceable connection to human-caused climate change.
4. Global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius is pretty much locked in. A forthcoming special report of the IPCC will say that meeting the 1.5-degree target — one of the most ambitious commitments of the Paris Agreement — looks “extremely unlikely.” Humanity’s shift to zero-carbon energy sources is moving about 10 times too slowly. At this point, it would probably take geoengineering to prevent it. Researchers have started testing ways to do that.
5. We’ve already lost entire ecosystems, most notably coral reefs. During a record-breaking El Niño event in 2015, the world lost massive swaths of coral in a global bleaching event “unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.” More than 90 percent of the world’s coral will surely die by 2050 without rapid emissions reductions. That means one of the richest stores of biodiversity on the planet is already in jeopardy.

So, where does that leave us?

Professor Jem Bendell suggests that we have moved into a new world.   In the old world, one could hope that if we were to just live "sustainably"  we could hope to stop dangerous climate change.  Now, that appraoch is no longer an option.  Sustainability, whatever its beefits, will not stop dangerous climate change.  Bendell pulls no punchs in describing what the future looks like  " we are set for disruptive and uncontrollable levels of climate change, bringing starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war."

     He suggest a new approach is needed, one he calls "deep adaptation"

A deep adaption agenda will involve increasing resilience, relinquishment and restoration Resilience involves people and communities better coping with disruptions. Examples include how river catchments can better cope with rains, or how buildings can better cope with floods. What I’m calling relinquishment, involves people and communities letting go of certain assets, behaviours and beliefs where retaining them could make matters worse. Examples include withdrawing from coastlines or giving up expectations for certain types of consumption. Restoration involves people and communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life and organisation that the hydrocarbon-fuelled civilisation eroded. Examples include re-wilding landscapes so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, or increased community-level productivity and support.

See also The End of Sustainability

The difference between a sustainability approach and one based on resilience can be seen this way.

Sustainability starts with a functioning system, and then looks at how long that system can operate without wearing down. It also takes into consideration how a system’s component functions can be improved so that the system can run continuously on its own.

Resilience starts with a disaster, and then looks at how to clean up afterward. It then considers how to prevent or minimize a future disaster, or at least minimize the negative effects of the disaster. The end result may or may not be sustainable, although a sustainable outcome is ideal.

Generally, many of us take the implicit view that  we can "have it all" - material progress for billions, as well as an intact ecosystem, perhaps through "sustainable development", perhaps through some other mechanism (degrowth?)     But is it a hope, a dogma, or merely an assumption?  An illusion? What happens if we come to the conclusion that it isn't so? 

Here is some interesting food for thought.

Paris: Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism

Towards Deep Hope

   As for me, I find I do my best thinking with my hands dirty.  Back to the garden!