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The Triumph of King Coal: Hardening Our Coal Addiction
Despite all the talk about curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the world is burning more and more coal. The inconvenient truth is that coal remains a cheap and dirty fuel — and the idea of “clean” coal remains a distant dream.
This year’s UN climate negotiations are in Durban, South Africa. Many delegates will already be looking forward to the chance of going on safari after their labors, visiting Kruger National Park or one of the country’s other magnificent game reserves. But I have another suggestion. Visit the enemy. Just two hours’ drive up the Indian Ocean coast from Durban is Richards Bay, a huge deep-water harbor that is home to the world’s largest coal export terminal.
When the current round of climate talks began half a decade ago, 25 percent of the world’s primary energy came from coal. The figure is now 29.6 percent. Between 2009 and 2010, global coal consumption grew by almost 8 percent. Anyone seduced by the conference exhibition halls in Durban, filled with the latest renewable energy technology, will get a rude awakening at Richards Bay. For it may tell the real story of our energy futures — and it is scary.
King coal is extending his kingdom. So dysfunctional is the world’s response to climate change that every year, the dirtiest fuel of them all is generating a growing proportion of the world’s energy.
All the talks in Durban will be of how to kick the coal habit. But as the climate talks have dragged on — from Nairobi in 2006 to Bali to Poznan to Copenhagen to Cancun and now to Durban — we have been hardening our addiction.
When the talks began half a decade ago, 25 percent of the world’s primary energy came from coal. The figure is now 29.6 percent. Between 2009 and 2010, global coal consumption grew by almost 8 percent.
South Africa may enjoy green plaudits for hosting the Durban conference. And, to be fair, it has offered to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy. But the fact is that today the would-be midwife of a global climate deal has rich-world emissions in a predominantly poor-world country. Per head of population, its CO2 emissions are higher than those in the UK, while its GDP per capita is only a sixth as much. It is responsible for about 40 percent of Africa’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning.
The reason is coal. Making energy by burning coal produces twice as much CO2 as by burning natural gas. And South Africa is one of the most coal-dependent nations on Earth, generating 93 percent of its electricity from the black stuff, compared to China’s 80 percent, India’s 70 percent and the U.S.’s 45 percent.
Besides its domestic reliance on coal, South Africa also helps maintain the rest of the world’s ruinous carbon fix. It is the world’s third-largest exporter of power-station coal. Its giant mines in Mpumalanga province feed a constant convoy of coal trains headed for Richards Bay. Recently expanded, the export terminal there can now handle 91 million tons of coal a year — enough to produce more than 200 million tons of CO2. Mining giants Anglo American and BHP Billiton ship that coal to Europe, and, increasingly, to the new industrial powerhouses of Asia.
The world is in the middle of a coal rush. That is why last year — despite much political posturing about curbing greenhouse gas emissions — the 5.8-percent rise in global energy-related CO2 emissions marginally exceeded the global rise in energy consumption. Thanks to coal, the world’s economy is becoming more carbon intensive.
Cynics who said tougher carbon controls in rich nations might increase global emissions by outsourcing energy-intensive industries to poorer nations with laxer standards are, for now at least, being proved right. While many Western economies stall, many developing economies are growing fast. And the continuing heavy dependence of many of them on coal is pushing up the global economy’s reliance on the dirtiest fuel.
China may be the world’s largest producer of wind turbines and solar panels, but its coal consumption has doubled in the past eight years. In 2010, an amazing 48 percent of all the coal burned in the world was burned in China. The country’s roads are clogged with coal trucks headed from mines to power stations. Earlier this month, there was a 40-mile traffic backup out of the major coal-mining region in Shaanxi province. Trucks were taking a week to get down the main highway, which carries 160 million tons of coal a year. Last year, 10,000 vehicles were stuck for days on another coal road, out of Inner Mongolia.
Meanwhile, India’s coal consumption has doubled in 12 years. It is expected to have three times as many coal-burning power stations by the end of the decade. India, like China, has huge coal reserves of its own. But its economy is growing so fast that its miners cannot dig the stuff out of the ground quickly enough, causing a surge in imports. South Africa’s Richards Bay is a major supplier, along with Australia and Indonesia, which is likely to become the world’s top coal exporter before the decade is out.
None of this excuses the West. The U.S. remains the world’s second-largest coal burner, after China. Japan is the world’s largest coal importer, and Germany is the biggest producer of brown coal. The sad truth is that Germany’s plan to shut down its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima accident in Japan is already resulting in resurgent investment in coal. Analysts Point Carbon predict that the switch will increase German CO2 emissions during the coming decade by around half a billion tons.
Why doesn’t the world care? One reason is expediency. The inconvenient truth is that coal remains the world’s cheapest fuel for electricity generation and industrial heat and power. Another is coal’s PR.
“Clean coal” is its cleverest piece of sophistry. Lobby organizations like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — sponsored in the past by BHP Billiton, Duke Energy and others — use the phrase to foster the idea we can have both our coal and our climate. Most insidiously, the industry has persuaded many policymakers that dirty coal today can pay for clean coal tomorrow.
Clean coal is a distant vision, which could someday be possible through a technology known as carbon capture and storage — in which CO2 is stripped from stack emissions, liquefied and buried underground. But large-scale deployment of what would be a massive new industry is at least a couple of decades — and tens of billions of R&D dollars — away. And industry will only do it if forced.
Moreover, since the economic downturn in the West, investment in the necessary R&D to develop the technology has dried up. In September, the International Energy Agency warned that government support for CCS around the world was waning. “With current policies, CCS will have a hard time being deployed,” the agency’s deputy executive director, Richard Jones, told a high-level meeting in Beijing. Steve Chu, Barack Obama’s green-minded energy secretary, warned at the same meeting that “we are losing time. It is very important that we get moving.”
In the U.S., the FutureGen clean-coal pilot project has been stalled since the Bush administration pulled the plug and ordered a re-evaluation in 2008. Under Obama, a test well is being drilled in western Illinois, but the first carbon won’t be buried until 2016 at the earliest.
In Britain, once in the vanguard of action on climate change, the government is scaling back its green energy investment. An early casualty was its flagship $1.6-billion CCS project in Scotland, which was canceled earlier this month. That represented four wasted years. Denmark also canceled a pilot carbon storage project this month.
Nobody expects a UN climate deal in Durban this year — nor next year, nor the year after. But meanwhile the coal keeps burning. Global production is set to rise by 35 percent in the coming decade, according to industry analysts. The cheapest, most abundant and dirtiest of all the fossil fuels is extending its grip on the world’s energy supply system. And nowhere more so than just up the coast from Durban.
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Show AllThere you have it. All the major criminals listed. And all of them are gathering, yet again for this annual talk. Maybe "Occupy Coal" and "Occupy Tar Sands" should be high on the agenda as soon as enough people see it's in their own interest to join these protests.
This is so desperately needed. Unfortunately, it seems people will make the sacrifices involved in demonstrations and occupations when their own livelihood is at stake--not their children's future. I so hope to be proven wrong here. We need some kind of serious action to begin perhaps at multiple locations as soon as Obama announces approval for the XL pipeline.
Right on!
Funny that we never see anything like the same level of vitriol being sprayed about fossil fuel that we see about nukes, despite the vastly different implications for Earth's —and our!— future.
I have to think PJD is right: it's a class thing.
I'm not sure why nukes are the only answer worth discussing to our suicidal fossil fuel addiction. Perhaps you could elucidate.
My point was only to highlight the difference in response: fossil fuel, ho hum; nukes, goddamn you to hell.
Because of the difference in the real costs to Earth and all living creatures, the responses should be exactly the reverse, if anything: fossil fuels are definitely killing us all, by the MILLIONS - nameable millions, every year - whereas the two nuclear disasters (Chernobyl and Fukushima), the near-disaster (TMI), and all the little accidents have had only a small (not for the victims, for whom they were unspeakable tragedies, but for Earth) effect apart from the statistical estimates.
The one thing that anyone who trains in social and clinical psychology learns is that effects that can't be seen with the naked eye aren't very important. They might qualify for publication, but they'll never make an identifiable difference in someone's life, which is what it's all about. Or should be.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi just died recently at the age of 93, of cancer. We look at that and say, well he had a very good innings, I hope I live that long. But he was the only person officially recognised as having survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombings. He was in Hiroshima on business when the bomb was dropped, and he'd just got out of hospital and made his way home to Nagasaki when that bomb was dropped! It's fairly certain, but not absolutely so, that the cancer that killed him was a result of his exposure to those 2 bombs. Yet he lived to age 93.
So I don't care about nukes. Hansen and Lovelock, who aren't by any stretch of imagination stupid or industry shills, both think that nukes are our best chance. So I'm happy to take their word for it since the little I do know suggests that they're likely correct. Someone else has good information that we can solve all our problems with windmills or solar panels or whatever? That's okay by me, I'll march in that parade and carry a banner too. Just show me the numbers.
I'll support damned near anything short of mass murder to stop what we absolutely know is the ongoing, creeping extinction of all life on Earth via fossil-fuel combustion.
So I feel a great sense of disgust when I see the anti-nuke crowd sliming people, while ignoring fossil fuels. I can't help but wonder whether it's money or stupidity driving them.
I fully understand your disgust and your points ~Mairead~,
Coal is far worse than nukes in so many ways and there should be far more protests about coal than nukes, or at the very least, just as many.
There should also be farrrrrr,,, farrrrr more protests about nukes than for geothermal, solar, tidal and wind power... We honestly don't need coal, oil or (*nuclear*) electrical power plants.
And the savings not only to the enviroment, but also financialy, would be far more beneficial for the 99%.... Just one example: Production of a KwH from a geothermal power plant is less than 2 cents.. For nuclear it is far more costly.
If there is an earthquake or a tsunami, sabatoge, an explosion, a fire or a power outage at a georthermal power plant, it won't destroy thousands of acres of land and pollute a lot of people with radiation poisoning, who later in life develop cancers from that... Hope you understand my points too.
Maybe we know different anti-nuke folks. The ones I know want us out of fossil fuels; they just don't think that putting us INTO nukes is an answer. As for outrage, I've seen plenty of it vented by many of these same folks at the fossil-fuel industry and its shills.
Maybe we know different people.
I agree ~corvo~ a problem is, coal issue protests are usually not well covered by the MSN, where a nuclear accident or a lot of people protesting after a leak from a nuke plant is given more coverage.
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Mairead, I've replied below, in a separate post, as the width is getting narrow here:
Alcyon - Nov 1 2011 - 12:56pm
The U.S. has plenty of nukes. Disarming a few means removing 5 bullets from a minigun's full ammo.
Shutting down all 104 nuclear (power plant) reactors is just fine however and all of the coal fired power plants as well.
WayneWR, which would you like to see go FIRST: coal or nuclear? And if you are ready to shutdown both coal and nuclear right away, I hope you have looked at the numbers and are prepared for the implications.
For the enviroment, the atmosphere and oceans, coal is worse... With a massive program to develop clean enegy, we could have all fossil fuel and nuclear power plants shut down within ten years... Then all we have to do is (safely) store radioactive wastes for a million plus years.
the bottom feeders, the death eaters, we call them the "elite" who have brought us peak oil and encroaching desertification, have run into a little snag. fracking in south texas has been confounded by extreme drought. the corn and peanut crops, the hope for alternate fuels, die on the stalk and vine utterly parched. now, i see an actress, a bubble-headed bleach-blond, who reads her script which promises salvation from "clean" coal burning.
---"Recently expanded, the [South African] export terminal there can now handle 91 million tons of coal a year — enough to produce more than 200 million tons of CO2."---
USAn's can't pick on them too hard, there are single strip mines in Wyoming's Powder River Basin that produce this much coal per year.
I live in West Virginia, where the "clean coal" jive has been oxymoronically tossed around for years--but I notice there is less of it lately. Why? Because it has become clear that there is no real need for that shell game--in which TALK of the essentially impractical CCS is used to justify full-speed-ahead coal mining and burning. No, they don't need that posturing, which necessitated an annoying extra expense at the showcase plant where they spent millions and reduced the efficiency of the coal burned, just to capture 3% of the CO2 emissions. Why bother when it's become clear that most people are in such a drug-induced haze that they can't manage to care that our only planet is being used up and tossed aside like a disposable Kleenex? In the US a fourth of the population is on antidepressants and/or antianxiety drugs, and more than 90% on television. So our rulers don't even need to pretend. We can just ignore the most serious threat humanity has ever faced.
But just in case anyone thinks CCS is practical: consider that it would take a whole new expensive infrastructure to pipe the emissions from the power plants (IF they were fitted with capture technology), to the underground storage spaces (IF sufficient appropriate space underground could be found at all on that scale, which is highly doubtful), and that the use of the technology reduces the efficiency of the coal burning such that an additional 25% or so would need to be burned to produce the same power--and that investing in this infrastructure at a time of declining economies, largely due to irrevocable oil depletion, likely means we'd be putting our remaining resources into that basket, rather than investing in something clean and renewable...when coal is ALSO approaching its depletion point, albeit not quite so soon--and you can see that CCS simply makes no sense. They have no intention of sinking precious resources into something so useless. "Clean coal" is a magic phrase--wave it around, solemly intone it, and it makes some critics of coal burning disappear! But that's all that cheap trick is good for. It can't make CO2 disappear, unfortunately. Not unless we instead invest in the one proven means of sequestering not only the CO2 but also the mercury and other toxins in coal--LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND. All we have to do for this investment is take subsidies off fossil fuels and direct them toward solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and above all storage technologies.
SUPERIOR post, mwildfire. I always and especially love reading posts by people who not only know from direct observation (proximity) what they are talking about but have clearly kept themselves informed on the issue under discussion. And by the way, I could not be more in agreement with your commentary here. Absolutely beautifully articulated. All this "Clean Coal" messaging is a damned smokescreen (no pun intended.) It is a DISGRACE given our current pressing reality. Thank you!
Coal is only "cheap" if social costs, 'externalities,' are ignored. Otherwise, it is far more expensive than, say, wind, or solar. Here is a modest underestimate of some of the hidden costs: http://www.desmogblog.com/true-cost-coal-half-trillion-dollars-year ... This is really not 'addiction' because 99 percent of us have no say in the use of coal. Indeed, we cannot ask our utility provider to provide us with a higher-priced alternative--the very least one might expect if we lived in a 'free-market' economy. Instead, we are FORCED to use coal if we use electricity and cannot afford our own windmill or solar panels. One course of action would be for ordinary people, consumers of electricity, to demand utility companies offer renewable energy sources so people can opt out of coal. And, of course, coal should be taxed to pay for restoration to health and environment--COAL COMPANIES ARE LIABLE FOR DAMAGE TO HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT.
Excellent rant, agroos! But I agree, completely. A switch to renewable energy is necessary, but conservation, big time, should be at the top of the agenda. People don't want to hear about simple solutions. As in just stopping wasteful, destructive activities and consumption especially when they are not essential for life. Some activities may need alternatives that would require some collective action - such as in transportation. But others are much easier for the individual: to give up or drastically cut down on meat and dairy, to not buy energy-guzzling gadgets, to boycott corporate sporting events and so on. These are within the power of the individual, and the impact can be enormous when a large number of people decide to use this power. And you don't even have to get beat up by the cops!
Speaking of simple, passive solutions, it'd be quite interesting to know how few or many people would choose to live in a luxury flat rather than buy a detached house, if the choice were theirs.
A huge part of our energy problem is the lack of insulation in most dwellings, but a luxury apartment building could be built to Passivhaus standards or better, making energy-use for heating/cooling go to near-zero.
Another big drain is the Capitalist demand that we buy things we rarely use, or, if we don't even have the space because we're living in a flat, buy ready-mades instead of doing our own making.
By "luxury flat" I have in mind a flat that's spacious, secure, private, all amenities, with garden allocations, pool(s) and purpose-fitted common rooms (e.g., a woodworking shop, a gaming room), vehicles to share, etc. Everything in common owned in common. A village-in-a-box, as it were.
I agree with your analysis of the true economic costs of coal. But you kind of lost me at "99 percent of us have no say in the use of coal". If citizens were outspoken in their willingness to pay more for non-carbon sources of energy, and voted overwhelmingly for the candidates and measures and taxes necessary to wean us off of coal, we could get off coal. (In fact, a number of western states have already passed citizen initiatives requiring that xx% of electrical energy come from renewable sources by 2020, 2030 ... a good start, but not enough). But I'm not convinced that your average soccer mom or NFL dad is ready to shell out more dollars for the same amount of goods and energy in this down economy. My point being, I guess, is that it's easy to blame everyone but ourselves for our carbon-intensive, highly consumptive lifestyles. Once people wake up, and lead, the "leaders" will have to follow. Go OWS.
Privatize the profits and socialize the consequences.
Hell generates the power sustaining the gated community wherein sing the winged choir soothing the souls of the faithful. If only we could burn ignorance there would be power eternal.
Yale Environment 360 has been a great source of environmental news. This article on the hole mankind is digging with coal is a fine example:
Cynics who said tougher carbon controls in rich nations might increase global emissions by outsourcing energy-intensive industries to poorer nations with laxer standards are, for now at least, being proved right.
Since Kyoto, all the international negotiations with cap-and-trade mechanisms have only succeeded in oursourcing emissions to developing countries. Coal-burning is increasing 8% per year.
The economic incentive people have to foul the planet stems from cheap fossil fuel energy. The only reason fossil fuel energy is cheap is because those who use it don't have to pay for using the atmosphere as an open-air sewer. The only way to reduce carbon emissions is to make people pay.
If a fee is assessed to discourage the use of fossil fuels, it has to be for the long haul. It can only work if it stays in place, and that can only happen if people approve of the fee. The only way a carbon fee could be publicly tolerable would be if 100% of the proceeds were returned to the people. Nothing like this has ever been done before. Fee and Dividend is not a tax in the sense of a source of government revenue - it's a fee for the use of the atmospheric commons, where the funds belong to the people, not the government.
Because it has a potential for real traction, Fee and Dividend is most strenuously opposed by the forces of disinformation seeking to maintain the spectacularly profitable fossil fuel status quo. Want to stand in the way of any substantial progress in addressing the climate emergency? Oppose Fee and Dividend.
Want to make a difference? Want to concentrate on the most productive contribution you can make to work toward reducing worldwide carbon emissions? Get together with people in your community who are working with the Citizens Climate Lobby on Fee and Dividend legislation.
Carbon Fee and Dividend FAQ
>>Aleph Null: "The only reason fossil fuel energy is cheap is because those who use it don't have to pay for using the atmosphere as an open-air sewer."<<
And THAT is possible ONLY because the biggest criminal nations can get away with it, as they have the military might that a Bangladesh or a Maldives or a Pacific island can do NOTHING about!
Imagine that it's a poorer, weaker country that is burning a lot of coal and it's the richer, more powerful countries that want the coal burning to stop. How long do you think it would take to stop the poorer, weaker country burning coal? You think the poorer, weaker country can claim national sovereignty, or cite economic justifications or even a lack of alternatives, in the face of objections (which would be more like threats, actually) from more powerful nations?
A repeat of what ~pjd4112~ posted,,, ("---"Recently expanded, the [South African] export terminal there can now handle 91 million tons of coal a year — enough to produce more than 200 million tons of CO2.")..... Not good,,, what's worse?
As the armospheric Co2 level continues to rise at near 2 ppm a year,, we will see near 400 ppm by 2015... By 2015 many top scientists of the world are now certain the Arctic will be ice free all summer long.
Beneath the shallow Arctic Ocean there are more than a (*TRILLION TONS*) of methane (CH4), which is safely locked in permafrost, or ice... An ice free Arctic means rapidly thawing permafrost and the methane will no longer be safely locked in the ice.
Many top scientists state emphatically,,, that if (only) 2% of the Arctic's mehane releases into the atmospher, a "runaway" global warming will be a certainty.
"Runaway" means "runaway", there will be (*absolutly nothing*) that we then can do to reverse it, no matter what we may try to do to reverse it... In other words "we" will be screwed,,, like incurable cancer and the doctor says,"get your affairs in order"... And "we" means (every human) on the planet.
It has also been discovered,,, and again by some of our top scientists,,, that methane is 72 times as potent as Co2 is as a greenhouse gas, for the first 25 years it is in the atmosphere and it slowly drops to only 25 to 30 times a potent over a 100 year time span.
So we have 200 million tons of Co2 entering our atmosphere in a year, just from burning the coal from the (one) South African terminal... Add in billions of tons of methane at 72 times more potent as a greenhouse gas.. So for ever ton of Co2 emmitted into our atmosphere, add an equivelant 72 tons of greenhouse gases for each ton of methane released .. 200 million tons of Co2 times 72 = 14,400,000,000 tons of greenhouse gases added a year.... Not good... Not good if no methane is added.
How significant is that 72 times as potent? __ Well; if we were traveling in our car at 65 mph and another car pased us going 72 times as fast, it would be zip by us at 4,680 mph... Not good.
As an "intelligent" human race,,, we have (two) choices)... One,,, we continue to burn coal to produce electricity... Two ,,, we replace (burning coal) to produce electricity with (solar, geo-thermal and tidal) power and do that (right now) soon, and have it done within the next five years time... Those are our two choices... That's it.
If we choose (numer one) choice, we are all going to die and kill the plant too... So what choice will be decided upon at the next climate conference?__ Most likely,
whatever the Professional Global Warming Deniers decide,,, as they have managed to do so far.... Ignorance was "bliss" 3,200 bc, and it still is.
"WayneWR" wrote:
An ice free Arctic means rapidly thawing permafrost and the methane will no longer be safely locked in the ice.
There is a small grain of truth in what "WayneWR" asserts here, and scraps of various articles can be pasted together to support that small grain. Many authorities expect that an Arctic which is virtually ice free in the summer is only about 5 years away. But not a single scientific opinion can be cited to support the apocalyptic view that runaway climate change will more or less immediately be triggered by an ice free Arctic.
Frozen methane is a clathrate. "WayneWR" seems fixated on a discredited form of the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis:
In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming in a timescale less than a human lifetime, and might be responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last ice age. This is now thought unlikely.
However, there is stronger evidence that runaway methane clathrate breakdown may have caused drastic alteration of the ocean environment and the atmosphere of earth on a number of occasions in the past, over timescales of tens of thousands of years; most notably in connection with the Permian extinction event, when 96% of all marine species became extinct 251 million years ago.
Paleoclimate indicates that self-reinforcing methane clathrate releases have unfolded over many thousands of years, mainly because it takes so long for the vast deep ocean to warm just a few degrees Celsius. The last time the clathrate gun discharged, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), the Earth heated up 5 C in 10,000 years. For perspective, 5 C of warming is about what's expected from business-as-usual CO2 emissions this century - a rate 100 times faster than PETM warming.
Things are bad enough. The "most extraordinary October snowstorm in over two centuries" which just knocked out the Northeast U.S. is a harbinger of another Snowmageddon, Texas is stuck in a worse drought than previously thought possible, dust storms have swallowed up Phoenix, and flooding has been widespread elsewhere. Not to mention climate change devastation in other countries. There's no need for a fantasy apocalypse.
Yes indeed, as ~Aleph Null~ wrote, frozen methane is termed a "clathrate" and other terms .. And those frozen "clathrates" are in the frozen permafrost on land and beneath the Arctic Ocean's sea bed.
As the permafrost thaws due to warmer ocean water and warmer air, the frozen clathrates become gaseous methane and burst out into the atmosphere... Currenty methane is escaping from the Arctic region at a rate of near a billion tons a month.
Some of our most highly qualified scientists who have been studying the Arctic methane issue for many years,, term it a "Ticking Time Bomb"..They say if only fraction, or 2% of the methane in the Arctic escapes, it will cause (*runaway*) global warming and there then will be nothing at all that we could do to prevent a world wide catastrophic disaster.
And we do not need a lot of "links" to support what I wrote,, but there are many availabble by Googling (arctic methane).
Here is just one I previously posted this for Mr.Null but apparently he did not see it so I will post it again with some additions..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3340633/Arctic-ice-melting-faster-than-predicted.html
From the article…. (“Dr Martin Sommerkorn, one of the report's authors and Senior Climate Change Adviser at WWF International's Arctic Programme said: "When you look in detail at the science behind the (*recent*) Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic.
Conmtinued,,,, "This is (*extremely dangerous*), as some of these changes have the potential to substantially increase the warming of the Earth,,, beyond what models (*currently*) forecast.").
Continued....("Dr.Sommerkorn added,,, ("The pace at which both the Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet is melting has "severely accelerated" and could bring about rapid and unstoppable change in natural systems across the world.")
And the scientist's added,,, ("The melting of the Arctic ice is happening (*quicker than predicted*) and may now be close to its ('tipping point'), when the changes (*cannot be reversed*).")... End quotes
"The changes cannot be reversed",,, or no "do-overs", no turning back,,,, (runaway) global warming.
Mr Null and I disagee on the issue, he quoted some GW events of the past, where it took millions of years for (runaway) GW to occur... But we have accompplished in less than 200 years what nature took millios of years to accomplish.... Null has a few problems comprehending what many of our top scientists are reporting now.
Finally; one more link. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2010/03/04/205600/science-nsf-tundra-permafrost-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/
From the article,, ("Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,” much of which would be released as methane. Methane is is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!
Continued from the article,,, and this one is (*very important*)... ("Recent studies) have examined two possible cases of how surface air temperature could respond to release of only 2 per cent (50 gigatonnes) of the total amount of methane preserved in arctic continental shelf hydrate deposits if this amount is released quickly over approximately 5 to 10 years the maximum temperature increase is higher by about a factor of three... This greater temperature response is more likely to produce (*irreversible*) consequences.")... End quotes.
Gotta go,,, on vacation for a few days.
At the heart of the matter, it is a moral issue. Powerful nations can burn all the coal they want, treating the atmosphere, a resource common to all of mankind, and all of life actually, as a giant sewer, ignoring the fact that this ruptures the delicate balance that nature had maintained. This is what powerful nations have done all through recent history, in their rush for dominance over others. The so-called industrial revolution was less about "development" and much more about gaining the advantage over others.
"Stiv" says, "This is really not 'addiction' because 99 percent of us have no say in the use of coal." But only if you do not accept that this is a moral issue. Only if you think it's perfectly legitimate for one group of people to consume far more resources and pollute far more, per capita, than the rest of humanity, even after the effects of such pollution have been documented and warnings have been sounded.
Technically, it might have been possible to continue to burn coal at a much smaller level, while using that power to develop more sustainable technologies and systems. But that would have required some real intelligence and extreme restraint to take only what we need from nature. And capitalist greed made sure that such a thing would not happen, with active sabotage by corporations to prevent the emergence of more sustainable systems and even to dismantle more efficient systems such as public transportation.
People took all kinds of monstrosities that consume vast amounts of energy and produce vast amounts of pollution as a natural part of "development". Overcooled or overheated malls and supermarkets, escalators running non-stop, freezers left open in supermarkets "for convenience", the monstrosity called ice hockey in places that don't get natural ice even in winter, patio heaters, and so on.
If people realize that this is a moral issue at heart, they can take a stand and refuse to consume or use certain wasteful things and boycott things that can be boycotted with absolutely no loss in quality of life (if anything, there will be a tremendous gain). They can force the system to be more efficient, or even set up competing systems that can be sustained by a population with a conscience.
The very fact that the USA has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that called for a most modest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by about 6% below 1990 levels, the FACT that Al Gore, who signed the treaty, but did not send it to Congress for ratification, and the fact that even otherwise "progressive" politicians cannot really bring themselves to talk about the imperative to stop burning coal all show that there is a distinct lack of conscience and a distinct lack of qualms about our actions. The ONLY way any proposal for change can be talked about is by talking about its economic advantages and not so much as a moral issue. (Unless it is about bombing other countries to "liberate" some people from tyranny.) No politician questions the "need" for this continuing mindless consumption because they KNOW where a large part of the population stands on this issue.
How easy it was for "Christian" nations to capture, transport and use other human beings as slaves, while any moral compunctions were easily dismissed or suppressed or rationalized? That was possible only because of a weak conscience in the whole of society, from top to bottom, of course with varying degrees of culpability. Today it's not just the "Christian" nations, of course, but the same lack of conscience is at play. And that is what must be confronted, along with the system that is the end product of it all. Once it is realized that this is a moral issue, how to manage without burning coal can be worked out very easily.
Alcyon,
I strongly agree with you that morality is at this heart of mankind's climate problem. Morality is essentially group-oriented - entailing moral obligations to other members of the group. The moral comparison with slavery is compelling, because slavery was indispensable to slave economies, just as cheap fossil fuel energy is indispensable to industrial economies.
The Christianity of slaveholders excluded from the group of moral concern those humans bought and sold as property. Industrial capitalism excludes from moral concern other species, people in poor nations, and people of the future. The intergenerational injustice committed by today's adults against children and future generations is at the center of James Hansen's moral concerns:
It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice. The blame, if we fail to stand up and demand a change of course, will fall on us, the current generation of adults. Our parents honestly did not know that their actions could harm future generations. We, the current generation, can only pretend that we did not know.
Loudly and clearly, eminent scientists have explained a technically feasible route to a healthy, sustainable Earth. Our failure to chose the sane route shown to us is a moral failing, not a technical problem.
Thanks for that James Hansen quote, Aleph Null. After I made the above post, I remembered that there were some objections to the use of the words "moral" and "morality" in some other article recently - I believe it was by Chris Hedges. So I was thinking that the word "fairness" would work just as fine. But then again, if someone is going to object to the word "morality" without regard to the context, what's the point?
Those who live in rich nations and consider themselves "left wing" or "socialist" should really open up their hearts and minds and realize that a truly fair society is going to look A LOT different in terms of the kinds of technologies used and the amount of resources consumed per capita. That is, if we are truly fair, meaning, we truly agree that all human beings have a right to the basic necessities of life and have a right to live, without their lives and livelihoods threatened by other people's excessive consumption. I suspect that many people who consider themselves "socialist" have not confronted the numbers involved and what they would mean for our lifestyle.
("Carbon Fee and Divide") __ Fine... So a person pays more for the electrical power they receive from a utility corporation which burns coal to produce their electricity and that extra fee is returned to them... That means the power plant will burn less coal to produce their electricity... Now I get it... Really?
And I suppose if that (Fee and Divide) law was adopted in the United States, it would also apply to China, the UK, India, Africa, Australia, Germany, Russia, South America and Canada?
In some parts of Canada, the citizens now pay a 15% tax on home heating and cooking gas to reduce Co2 emissions... The ctizens are still heating their homes and cooking their meals with gas, they just pay more for buying the gas to heat their homes cook their meals and Co2 emissions are not lowered.
"Fee and Divide" is much better.. we pay the extra fee and it is returned to us so we use less electricity... Yeah, that sounds reasonable,,, for someone in a mental institution maybe.
We have to STOP burning coal and reduce our Co2 emissions by at least 40% within the next five to ten years,,, WORLD WIDE! .And doing that may be too late to prevent (*runaway*) global warming... But we must at least try to prevent it.
We have (2) choices... That's it.
Fee and Dividend is the most straightforward implementation possible of the simple idea that there should be an economic disincentive for carbon emissions. The sentiment "WayneWR" voices here is what the most profitable corporations in the history of profit - the multinational fossil fuel corporations - would like you to believe: that Fee and Dividend is not feasible in some way.
Does "WayneWR" have a more practical suggestion as to how to implement the emission reductions he pretends to advocate? I haven't heard it. To strike this pose that we must "reduce CO2 emissions by at least 40%" while shooting down the only practical means of doing so reveals a shallow commitment to solving our environmental emergency.
"Fee and Divide" is Dr. James Hansen's proposal and to reduce Co2 emissions by 6%.... All of Hansen's proposals combined may reduce our Atmospheric Co2 level to the 350 ppm range by the year 2100 if implimented, according to Dr. Hansen and ~Aleph Null~.
My argument is, (fee and divide) and the other Hansen's proposals combined will not reduce Co2 emissions by 6%, because it will not stop burning coal and oil by 6%, if any %.... As the article states, coal burning will increase dramatically over the next ten years alone.
So Dr. Hansen's proposals are not (near good enough) and ~Aleph Null~ insitst that is ALL that is required to prevent runaway global warming. He is wrong and I disagree with him on that point.
We have to reduce our Co2 emission by at least 40% very soon to prevent runaway global warming... And I do not know how that is possible, (*except*) to have a massive (world wide) program initiated, to have clean energy, (no nukes) and enough clean produced energy to replace all fossil fuel burning power plants. That would be possible, but it isn't at all likely.
And no, I do not have any delusions that it will be done, which is too bad for all of us, because if we don't do that, very soon, we are all royally screwed.. That is MY opinion, which is based entirely upon what many of our most highly qualified scientists have said.
What the mega King Coal and oil barons want, is to rape the planet and sell coal and oil... I want to stop burning coal and oil,,, and uranium,,, to boil water to produce electricity and replace those with clean energy... But I'm not the King.
"WayneWR" wrote:
And no, I do not have any delusions that it will be done, which is too bad for all of us, because if we don't do that, very soon, we are all royally screwed.
In that case, I don't understand what such verbose messages are intended to accomplish, other than discouraging constructive action. Why not just advise folks to kiss their asses goodbye and leave it at that? The philosophy offered here is that of a dead man walking. No thanks. I've still got some fight left in me, and there are some others ready to join the fight - people with a little self-respect. No whiners need apply.
For the same case you should have no delusions that Dr. James Hansens' proposals will work Null.
I dream about saving the planet and you dream about an ice free Arctic so big oil can drill there.
~Aleph Null~ writes,,, Wayne wrote,,, Then pastes a paragraph I worte... I wrote a lot more than that paragraph... A jerk is a jerk.
Your President, all of his major opponents and 90% of the Congress do exactly what the oil, coal, gas and nuclear industries have paid them all to do. Most of the other world governments do the same. Just because a country is a tinhorn dictatorship doesn't mean that the oil companies can't buy the tinhorn too, or have him invaded.
Your government does not care about solar, except as a funnel for money flowing from the government to big oil. Your government believes that you're a stooge and that you will actually believe them when they say how much they care. They also are in favor of jobs. At that you're lucky. Fox News assumes that when they make up their version of climate science out of whole cloth, you'll believe that too. Many people do.
I agree ~PaulK~,,, except when you use the words "you and you'll in reply to me, because I don't believe fucks news or our now Fascist government with the 536 brain damaged elected.
If our government would take the lead with a massive nationwide effort to produce clean enegy, solar, tidal, geothermal right away quick and stop mining and burning coal, absolutly outlaw it,,, other nations may follow our lead.... Maybe not.
Will that happen? __ When aardvarks stop eating termites and waterfront pimps stop wearing fur coats.
Well, I did say "your" government and "our" government. Multiple Presidential elections were recently stolen, and the U.S. Constitution was permanently subverted by declaring property to be human beings. Sorry for my use of "our".
If the current government wants to negotiate with the 99%, one thing they could do is make "our" government ours again, without wanting to admit half of their crimes of course. So the government right now is in the twilight zone between "ours" and not ours at all.
I knew what you meant ~Paul~, was trying to be humerous... You are absolutly correct... As some others have rightfully stated here, we must have a mass protest and get the true message across... Educate the public is quite difficult however due to the damage the professional Global Warming Deniers have done.
Burning coal is also very deadly for our ocean life due to acidification of the water. The coral reefs are now in very serious jeapordy of all bleaching out and dying and the coral reefs are the beginning of ALL life on this unique water world... When the coral reefs are gone the planet will very possibly die and join Venus as another dead planet... We human's won't be around to witness that tragedy however.
As long as you grid which uses coal to create electricity to provide energy for your homes, you will be be-trodden to king coal. Get off the grid and start collecting energy of sun and wind that falls on your roofs and back yards...there is enough of it to satisfy all your energy needs and you can store in in cheap large battery for when the sun does not shine and wind does not blow.
Time to take care of our own energy needs by collecting it where we live and work rather then getting it from far away place where they burn tons of coal in large power plants and keep loosing energy in transmission, not to mention power outages when the weather is bad. Diffusion of power collection, both energy and water collection is the key to empowering ourselves to take care of our basic energy, water and food needs. Then all those large fossil fuel corporations will become irrelevant and will go out of business.
All those discussions and expectations that government and industry are going to go renewable is just creating more hot air. When your utility bills are ZERO, you do not have to work very hard to make a living and can have more meaningful lives. I have been doing it for 2.5 years.
We can rant all we want about saving the environment. When it comes to a small
inconvenience on our part, suddenly we didn't say anything. Funny, right?
Be sure to tell your children and grandchildren we are very very sorry. I am sure they will understand.
Reply to Mairead - Oct 31 2011 - 6:06pm:
Mairead, even though I respect Hansen and Lovelock greatly, my position on nuclear power is slightly different. I also think that these two people, great as they are, both in terms of their knowledge as well as their authenticity and passion, they are still talking largely as westerners used to a certain way of life without questioning how it all came about. For example, I have no doubt that the so-called industrial revolution could not have come about the way it did, and the pace at which it did, without the conquest of the "New World", with all the accompanying horrors, including slavery and slave trade (which funded some of the early investments in technology development of that period).
An analogy to consider is that of chocolate: assume (actually no need to assume) that chocolate would cost a hell of a lot more if the people who are involved in cocoa production were to be paid wages on par with western farmers, especially when they truly ban child labor. Assume that the countries that grow cocoa allocate only surplus farmland to grow cocoa after they have taken care of their own food requirements adequately. Moreover, assume that they insist on payment in currencies that have a higher value and don't want to accept fiat currencies of questionable real value (we all know what happened to those idiots who were talking of such a thing for their oil, but play along, anyway).
Suddenly, chocolate would cost a hell of a lot more and it would become a rare commodity, reserved for special occasions. They will disappear from near the supermarket checkout counters next to the tabloids. And there's no way that kids will get chocolate when they go trick-or-treating. In other words, lots of people cannot take chocolate for granted when their countries don't produce cocoa.
The same thing will happen if oil-exporting nations were to have complete control over their resource. And coffee-producing nations. And so on.
Basically, a lot of our everyday habits will have to change - habits that came about in the last century or so, anyway.
My problem with with Hansen and Lovelock, much as I respect them and quote them to no end, is that they don't go far enough to question western lifestyle and its underpinnings, and that is probably why they resign themselves to the "necessity" of nuclear power.
My own preference is to do an extreme budgeting. Extreme energy budgeting, that is. It is not easy. But if people truly confront the numbers without coal and without nuclear, what's left will be a greatly reduced availability of electricity. People will then have to figure out how to ration this electricity.
If a rationing of electricity were to be implemented (there is NO OTHER WAY, if both coal and nuclear have to go), then lots of frivolous use of electricity will have to go, forthwith. I can list 50 things, in an instant, of things that **I** would ban right away. My challenge to the anti-nuke advocates is to face up to these numbers boldly. That is, numbers without coal and without nuclear.
We are talking of almost 65% of current generation from coal + nuclear in the U.S. and similar high percentages in all major countries. I have to wonder if people have thought about the implications of shutting down all coal and nuclear power plants in one go.
That is why I question, and challenge, the sincerity of the anti-nuke advocates about the ranking of coal and nuclear - WHICH do they think should go FIRST? And why? Because I think I can spot NIMBY-ism lurking just beneath the anti-nuke mindset. Even a supposedly "progressive" country like Germany is no exception. While the green movement is obviously powerful there, that is, powerful enough to force Angela Merkel to announce an end-date for all nuclear power plants, the German public has been surprisingly quiet regarding the proposals for building NEW coal power plants to offset some of the nuclear power capacity. How moronic is that?
It won't be easy to shut down nearly 65% of generative capacity in the U.S., hoping to replace it all, or even much of it, with renewables, in short order. Especially if we consider all the electric vehicles that would be necessary to replace fossil-fuel burning IC-engine vehicles. Even for public transportation. It won't be easy and it won't be pretty.
That is why my own thinking is that we should start by closing down coal power plants, let the existing nuclear power plants continue operating, especially if a thorough, transparent safety audit shows no immediate danger.
I am against the building of new nuclear power plants though, because they take up a large amount of resources and energy to build, and the net efficiency on a life-cycle basis, including mining and everything, is highly questionable. And on top of that, the insurance part will have to be provided by the public.
So, no new nuclear power plants, close down existing coal power plants, plan and implement a transition towards all renewable, and gradually phase out all nuclear power plants: that is my proposal.
Oh, and be prepared for some serious rationing, like in war-time, as the present crisis is way more serious than any wars of the past. And for God's sake people, please look at the numbers for ecological footprint and carbon footprint and see how the rich nations compare, per capita, to global averages. If those who claim they are left-wing in the rich nations are NOT prepared to seriously reduce their footprint sizes and start moving towards global averages, then they are all fake-left, IMO.
Well said! Very well said indeed.
I'm one of the scoundrels who loves chocolate and doesn't often think about the costs, less so with coffee and tea. So my ears are a little red right now. But in my own defence I can say that I've often thought of how many things we'll want to grow locally rather than import, and chocolate, tea, and coffee are right at the top of my list. For broadly the same reason we'd want to help provide the rest of the world with food and products of our industry so that they too could make the transition without tragedy.
Solid agreement on immediately starting major cuts in fossil-fuel extraction and use, and steady non-financial pressure (even-handed rationing) to make folk think about other ways to live.
It will take, I think, making some basic changes in parts of the culture of private-profit Capitalism that we take for granted (I'm presuming we can't immediately abolish p-p Capitalism entirely), such as eliminating for-profit housing, long over-the-road commutes, etc. We'd want to decouple the right to life from the need for a for-profit (someone else's profit) job, eliminate most unproductive jobs, and let people swap houses in an even-up way to be close to their work, et endless cetera. For openers.
My only disagreement, I think, is that I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with building new nuke plants as an interim measure IFF they were small, passive-safety designs operated by government rather than a for-profit entity. To my best knowledge, no US military reactor has ever had a problem, which I put down to the fact that there's no profit motive, so there's no reason ever to skimp on maintenance or staffing.