Climate Progress

Our top climate scientist has sent out a really, really long email (where does he find the time?), mostly discussing comments on his recent email essay on coal. I think Hansen is the clearest thinker on climate among the top scientists in the field, so I will reprint the email, breaking it up into several postings. The first one addresses “Coal-CO₂ versus Oil-CO₂” (a query that was also raised by a commenter here)

My statement that releasing a coal-CO₂ molecule into the air is more harmful than setting free an oil-CO₂ molecule caused puzzlement. Of course the molecules are identical. What I want people to recognize is a way of framing the climate problem that makes clear what action is required to avert disaster. Only two aspects of the physics must be understood:

(1) CO₂ “lifetime”. A substantial fraction of the CO₂ released to the air in burning fossil fuels will stay there for a very long time (about one-quarter is still there after 500 years).

(2) Fossil fuel reservoir sizes. There is enough CO₂ in readily accessible oil and gas reserves to take atmospheric CO₂ close to, and probably somewhat beyond, the “dangerous” level. The coal reservoir, not to mention unconventional fossil fuels such as tar shale, can take CO₂ far beyond the dangerous level, producing, indeed, “a different planet”.

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The definitive study on the global warming impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) is out. And it confirms what Climate Progress has long been saying:

The widespread use of plug-in hybrid vehicles — which could be driven up to 40 miles on electric power alone — would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States without overloading the nation’s power grid, according to a new study.

The study, “Environmental Assessment of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” is by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council (whose new blog is the oddly-named Switchboard). Here’s a key chart:

Here are some more details on the study’s conclusions:

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E&E Daily (subs. req’d) reports that the fireworks will be next week. The fuel efficiency debate will probably be front and center. Here are details:

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Green Car Congress translated a story that appeared in the Japanese press:

Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads.

Toyota will be the first car maker to obtain permission for a plug-in hybrid test in Japan. After completing the road tests, Toyota will start building a way to market the model by leasing them to public (government and municipal) offices.

According to the report, Toyota is testing a lithium-ion battery pack in the plug-in. Earlier this year, Nikkei Business speculated that Toyota would
introduce the plug-in at the Tokyo Motor Show in November.

One of their readers offered a “slightly different” interpretation:

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We weren’t going to come right out and make the direct attribution of the UK’s record floods to global warming, but those water-logged Brits are. PM Gordon Brown said

Obviously like every advanced industrial country we’re coming to terms with some of the issues surrounding climate change…. This has been, if you like, a one in 150 years set of incidents that has taken place in both Yorkshire and Humberside and now in Gloucestershire and the Severn.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn went further. He noted that “the scientific consensus was that the climate was changing,” and added

The world is going to have to come to terms, so the scientists are telling us, with more extreme weather events and that’s why we need to anticipate them and try and plan for them.

Kudos to Benn and Brown. Let’s hope we soon get U.S. leaders who are equally blunt.

Britain experiences High Water:

Tens of thousands of people are without electricity or water as Britain suffers its worst flooding in modern history….

An Environment Agency spokesman said: “We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before. The benchmark was 1947 and this has already exceeded it.“

Fear not, Denyers, we can’t say for certain this is due to human-caused global warming, even though the theory predicts an increase in intense rain events. We can, however, say, this is what people in much of the planet will need to get used to if our leaders keep doing nothing.

No, it’s not an oxymoron. Here’s a hilarious video on the “principles of economics, translated.”

Great line: “Microeconomists are people who are wrong about specific things, and macroeconomists are wrong about things in general.” — though it turns out that line is a paraphrase of a line from P. J. O’Rourke’s, Eat the Rich.

Off topic? No — as the comic’s website explains, “When not performing stand-up, he consults on climate change and other environmental economics issues and teaches at the University of Washington.”

Climate Progress is getting more comments–and more thoughtful comments–which is great. In general, I don’t censor comments, even ones that are factually inaccurate–I say, bring it on, Deniers! The only comments I have been disallowing have swearing or vulgarity or spam. No need for that — this issue is simply too important.

The Global Warming Denyers are truly confused in the arguments and “facts” that they make up.

Planet Gore has dug up “a leading international geologist and former expert IPCC reviewer,” Tom V. Segalstad, who is quoted as saying:

The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium. This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon — it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.

Ooh. Looks like all the leading climate scientists in the world made a simple, stupid mistake. Gosh, guess we can all go out and build all the coal plants we want — not!

The key to this nonsense is the worlds I have boldfaced. To paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, “Tom, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in chemical equilibrium any more.”

That’s the whole point — we are spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than the oceans and other sinks can take them up. It takes thousands of years to reach equilibrium with the oceans — the planet will be cooked (and the near-surface ocean nearly lifeless) long before then. I’ll provide one of the many sources you can find on the Internet for this genuine fact below; as we’ll see, the real story — the ocean sink appears to be saturating — should actually make us more worried about global warming, not less.

Let’s call this PG Disinfotainment Watch #41 and #42 (for not bothering to use Google to find the truth). And let’s strip Tom (pictured here) of his doctorate for making a mistake that would get an undergraduate geology student a failing grade.
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Plug-ins are on the way! We’ve said it many times, but then we aren’t the world’s leading auto maker. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Toyota’s revelation Tuesday that it will develop a new “plug-in hybrid” - which uses a wall socket at night to charge and relies on an electric motor to go many miles before sipping any gasoline - could presage a major shift in automotive technology, some industry analysts say.

Detroit’s Big Three have each said the technology is being looked at - after years of outright dismissal. But Toyota’s announcement was more significant because the company is presumed to have the technology to actually bring such cars to market, they say….

On Tuesday, the president of Toyota’s North American subsidiary, Jim Press, said the company is looking at developing a plug-in vehicle that can “travel greater distances without using its gas engine.” The technology would “conserve more oil and slice smog and greenhouse gases to nearly imperceptible levels”

The later claim assumes, of course, the electricity is greenhouse-gas free, which it will have to be if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming (though even running on current grid electricity, a plug in is much cleaner than a regular car).

Looks like we may have a race for the first practical, consumer plug-in between Toyota and G.M.