Climate Progress

I haven’t been posting as much as I usually do, since I have been preparing testimony for the Congressional hearing on Wednesday. The committee has finally posted details of the hearing here. It should be a rousing debate. At least I won’t be all alone on the anti-CTL side.

In the course of preparing, one of Climate Progress’s readers sent me some high-quality information on the high level of water use in the liquid coal process, which I though I’d share. The key factoid is five to seven gallons of water are necessary for every gallon of diesel fuel that’s produced (and double that if you coproduce diesel fuel and electricity from coal).

This comes from a very useful report: “Emerging Issues for Fossil Energy and Water” by DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The key chart is (click on it for a clearer image):

GPM is gallons per minute, Bgal is billions of gallon, BPSD is barrels per steam day (whatever a “steam day” is), and I think 42 gallons per barrel (that’s what it is for oil, anyway). Ed Markey (D-MA) put this all in layman’s language on Grist:

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We have known for a while that global warming is making our weather more extreme, especially extreme heat, drought, heavy rainfall, and flooding. Now we have more predictions:

NASA scientists have developed a new climate model that indicates that the most violent severe storms and tornadoes may become more common as Earth’s climate warms.

Perhaps that is why we have been setting records for tornados lately. This is especially bad news for this country because, as the study notes: “The central/east U.S. experiences the most severe thunderstorms and tornadoes on Earth.”

The full study, “Will moist convection be stronger in a warmer climate?” was published in Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) earlier this month. The research has mixed implications for wildfires:

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Energy efficiency easiest path to aid climate - Reuters. “The cash needed to return rising [global] emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to current levels by 2030 would amount to 0.3 to 0.5 percent of projected gross domestic product (GDP), or 1.1 to 1.7 percent of global investment flows, in 2030,” according to a new U.N. report that can be found here.

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes - New York Times. One of the best newspaper articles ever written on China’s pollution problem.

Vulnerable to rising seas, Singapore envisions a giant seawall - International Herald Tribune “Most of the business-end of Singapore - its airport, its business district and, of course, its busy container ports, lie less than two meters above sea level.” Just how ideal it is to live on a walled island is another issue. I’m sure any Singaporean would agree - let’s just keep the sea from rising.

To go green in jet fuel, Boeing looks at algae - Seattle Times. “These slimy aquatic creatures not only absorb great quantities of carbon dioxide during their lifetime, but they are also the source of energy-rich oil that can be turned into fuel. Lurking in the depths of ponds, they take a lot less space than conventional horizontal above-ground crops — and they can live in brackish water.” Bottom Line: “Instead of needing all of Florida [for U.S. transport needs], you could provide the whole world’s fleet with biojet fuel if you had a bioreactor the size of Maryland.”

Solar thermal power is back! Solar thermal gets less attention than its sexier cousin — high-tech photovoltaics — but has two big advantages. First, it is much cheaper than PV. Second, it captures energy in a form that is much easier to store — heat — typically with mirrored surfaces that concentrate sunlight onto a receiver that heats a liquid (which is then used to make steam to drive a turbine).

Back in the 1980s, Luz International was the sole commercial developer of U.S. solar thermal electric projects. The company built nine solar plants, totaling 355 MW of capacity, in California’s Mojave desert. Luz filed for bankruptcy in 1991 for a variety of reasons detailed in this Sandia report.

For 15 years, no commercial solar thermal plants have been built until the Spanish system pictured here. Technology Review has published as an advertising supplement one of the longest and most informative pieces I have seen on solar thermal, also called concentrated solar power (CSP).

California utilities are also beginning to contract for new CSP plants — “the resurrection of thermal solar arrays,” as the New York Times puts it. In July, Pacific Gas & Electric announced a plan to buy 550 megawatts of CSP in the Mojave Desert

If you want to read more about this re-emerging form of solar power, the National Renewable Energy Lab has a website with publications on the technology and potential market.

Liquid Coal Hearing Update: It looks like this will be a good hearing for those who want to hear both sides of the liquid coal debate. I will post the link to the video next week. I now know of 4 other witness:

• Someone from Rentech, a liquid coal company. You can read previous testimony by Rentech here.
• Someone from Headwaters, “America’s leading provider of technology and reagant products for coal-based synfuel.”
• David Hawkins from NRDC (not a fan of liquid coal). You can read previous testimony from Hawkins here.
• I think someone from RAND as a GOP witness.

Thoughts are welcome, especially if there is anyone particularly knowledgeable on the water implications of liquid coal.

MacCready is best known for designing the Gossamer Condor, which “made the first sustained, controlled flight powered solely by a human.” But electric vehicle enthusiasts know him for his work on the GM EV1. You won’t see this in most obits, but if you want to know the scoop on his EV work, here is a good remembrance.

He was a great man, and I was fortunate to meet him once — he actually was in the audience for a talk I gave dissing hydrogen cars and praising plug-in hybrids. I was honored that he stayed for the talk and then was kind enough to say he agreed with my analysis. He will be missed.

Now you can read in full the IPPC’s report from Working Group II on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Find it here.

The report’s release coincides with eerie hints of our future in resource management. The water level of the Great Lakes — the largest freshwater reservoir in the world — has been unusually low recently. This is not entirely due to climate change, but is very likely exacerbated by it.

If you go to page 628 of the full report (page 12 of the North American chapter), you’ll be treated to a terrific chart on the interconnected impacts of increasingly low water levels in the Great Lakes (reprinted below). Impacts include decreased potential for hydropower, loss of habitat and species, difficult navigation, and issues with water quality and water access.

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G. Gordon Liddy’s daughter repeated a standard denyer line in our debate: Humans are very adaptable — we’ve adapted to climate changes in the past and will do so in the future.

I think Hurricane Katrina gives the lie to that myth. No, I’m not saying humans are not adaptable. Nor am I saying global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, although warming probably did make it a more intense. But on the two-year anniversary of Katrina — and the one year anniversary of Climate Progress’s initial launch — I’m saying Katrina showed the limitations of adaptation as a response to climate change, for several reasons.

First, the citizens of New Orleans “adapted” to Hurricane Katrina, but I’m certain that every last one of them wishes we had prevented the disaster with stronger levees. The multiple catastrophes — extreme drought, extreme flooding, extreme weather, extreme temperatures — that global warming will bring can be suffered through, but I wouldn’t call it adaptation.

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This week is the one-year anniversary of Climate Progress, so I’ve been looking at CP’s place in the blogosphere. I wanted an objective ranking, so I decided to use Technorati, which ranks all blogs by “authority” (the number of blogs linking to it). The lower the rank the better.

I have listed only blogs whose primary focus is climate, which excluded favorites like The Intersection. But if I included that one, I’d have to include general environmental blogs like Gristmill and lots of energy-centric blogs, resulting in a not-very-useful list for global warming junkies. I have also omitted the (very few) top-ranked Denyer blogs (sorry Steve McIntrye) — the Denyers get far more attention than they deserve already.

Here goes (recent Technorati rank in parentheses):

10. Accuweather Climate Blog (39,249) — “Global warming news, science, myths, articles.” A good general interest climate blog.

9. Climate Feedback (34,124) — “An informal forum for debate and commentary on climate science.” A useful new blog, sponsored by Nature magazine. On the downside, you’ll have to endure posts by Roger Pielke, Jr.

8. Climate of Our Future (24,327) — “A discussion on climate change.” Another good general interest climate blog.

7. It’s Getting Hot In Here (20,428) — “Dispatches from the youth climate movement.” There is hope for the next generation after all!

6. Climate Progress (16,087) — “An insider’s view of climate science, politics, and solutions.” A fast-rising (relative) newbie.

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A new study by NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab finds:

Greenhouse gases likely accounted for more than half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States last year…. [T]he probability of U.S. temperatures breaking a record in 2006 had increased 15-fold compared to pre-industrial times because of greenhouse gas increases in Earth’s atmosphere.

How did they come to this conclusion?

[T]he NOAA team analyzed 42 simulations of Earth’s climate from 18 climate models provided for the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change… The results of the analysis showed that greenhouse gases produced warmth over the entire United States in the model projections, much like the warming pattern that was observed last year across the country.

The warming pattern did not match that of El Niño, which the study found typically cools the country slightly:

For a final check, the scientists compared the observed 2006 pattern of abnormal surface temperatures to the projected effects of greenhouse-gas warming and El Niño temperature responses. The U.S. temperature pattern of widespread warming was completely inconsistent with the pattern expected from El Niño, but it closely matched the expected effects of greenhouse warming.

When even NOAA scientists attribute recent warming to greenhouse gases, you know it’s time to take action. Let’s see if the media give this important study the same attention they gave to the recent trivial revision in NASA’s U.S. land-based temperature data record.