This is one of the reasons that studying historical temperatures is so important (a need that resulted in ClimateGate and the CRU emails). If history shows that Earth has been dramatically warmer than current temperatures, then we can assume that the runaway tipping point will not be reached (at least not very soon).

A recent study shows that this feedback appears to exist. The good news is that the models have it wrong – they expected a far greater feedback than was found in this current study. This is great news for mankind as our imminent death is at least delayed. It also reaffirms my call for better climate modeling science!

It is unlikely that President Barack Obama is strong enough to persuade Congress to pass sweeping legislation to ruin the American economy with global warming fears. It was close though! If the US Government had gone after cap and trade prior to healthcare, they would have pulled it off. Now it is doubtful.

The following article by Alister Doyle appeared on Reuters.

Climate change caused by mankind will release extra heat-trapping gases stored in nature into the atmosphere in a small spur to global warming, a study showed.

But the knock-on effect of the additional carbon dioxide — stored in soils, plants and the oceans — on top of industrial emissions building up in the atmosphere will be less severe than suggested by some recent studies, they said.

“We are confirming that the feedback exists and is positive. That’s bad news,” lead author David Frank of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL said of the study in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

“But if we compare our results with some recent estimates (showing a bigger feedback effect) then it’s good news,” Frank, an American citizen, told Reuters of the report with other experts in Switzerland and Germany.

The data, based on natural swings in temperatures from 1050-1800, indicated that a rise of one degree Celsius (1.6 degree Fahrenheit) would increase carbon dioxide concentrations by about 7.7 parts per million in the atmosphere.

That is far below recent estimates of 40 ppm that would be a much stronger boost to feared climate changes such as floods, desertification, wildfires, rising sea levels and more powerful storm, they said.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already risen to about 390 ppm from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. Only some models in the last major U.N. climate report, in 2007, included assessments of carbon cycle feedbacks.

Frank said the new study marks an advance by quantifying feedback over the past 1,000 years and will help refine computer models for predicting future temperatures.

SURPRISES

“In a warmer climate, we should not expect pleasant surprises in the form of more efficient uptake of carbon by oceans and land,” Hugues Goosse of the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, wrote in a comment in Nature.

The experts made 220,000 comparisons of carbon dioxide levels — trapped in tiny bubbles in annual layers of Antarctic ice — against temperatures inferred from natural sources such as tree rings or lake sediments over the years 1050-1800.

Goosse said the study refined a general view that rising temperatures amplify warming from nature even though some impacts are likely to suck carbon dioxide from the air.

Carbon might be freed to the air by a projected shift to drier conditions in some areas, for instance in the east Amazon rainforest. But that could be partly offset if temperatures rise in the Arctic, allowing more plants to grow.

Warmer soils might accelerate the respiration of tiny organisms, releasing extra carbon dioxide to the air. Wetlands or oceans may also release carbon if temperatures rise.

Frank said it was hard to say how the new findings might have altered estimates in a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 that world temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 Celsius by 2100.

“Of the models that did include the carbon cycle, our results suggests that those with slightly below average feedbacks might be more accurate,” he said. “But we can’t now say exactly what sort of temperature range that would imply.”

Mr. Craig’s article is pretty typical of the problem in this debate for both sides. His article is filled with references to “hoax” in this discussion. Hoax is a word that is often referenced by some that doubt global warming predictions (or more precisely, the efforts to reverse the influence). In this case, Mr. Craig is making fun of it with the natural assumption that he thinks such people are fools for thinking it is a “hoax.”

Is global warming a hoax?  Hardly. According to Dictionary.com a hoax is:

hoax (hks)

n.

1. An act intended to deceive or trick.

2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means.

tr.v. hoaxed, hoax·ing, hoax·es

To deceive or cheat by using a hoax.

Does anybody really think that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas? Is anyone really saying that CO2 doesn’t have the chemical and electrical properties that allow it to absorb certain wavelengths of energy? I don’t think so. There is no disputing the properties of CO2. The discussion is about its relative influence on the rest of the atmosphere and the cost to treasure and life.

Mr. Craig makes the following opening statement:

Whenever I hear someone say that Global Warming or Climate Change is a hoax, I wonder if they realize this “hoax” is nearly two centuries old.

Mr. Craig is linking scientific discovery of the physical properties of gases with political discussion of reversing industrial production. Mr. Craig is alluding that because there is good scientific understanding of the nature of a molecule that there is good scientific understanding of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Mr. Craig is challenging some that may believe that “fixing” carbon dioxide production with our current industrial knowledge may condemn millions to a life of less wealth and possibly death.

Of course, if people on both sides of the issue continue to use words like “hoax” then we will never have a real discussion of the issues. Mr. Craig appears to be a fairly-well educated individual – it is too bad that he is fanning the flames of confrontation rather than a true discussion on both sides of the issue.

Chief among the reasons for this ineffectiveness is that with the price of oil at its current state, it is simply not cost effective to use alternative fuels that will dump less CO2 into the atmosphere. The oil producing nations are probably not maintaining crude at this level to doom the planet to disaster, they are simply smart business people that are providing their “drugs” to the “addicts” at a price and in a way that will insure that no one can ever move off.

This is the basic problem with crude oil as an energy source. No matter how cheaply new liquid fuels can be developed, it is almost assured that oil can be dropped in price to match the new economic competitor such that oil will be cheaper.

Below are selected clips from the Wall Street Journal regarding the failing of companies that were trying to compete with liquid gold from the ground.

Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.

The global credit crisis, a glut of capacity, lower oil prices and delayed government rules changes on fuel mixes are threatening the viability of two of the three main biofuel sectors — biodiesel and next-generation fuels derived from feedstocks other than food. Ethanol, the largest biofuel sector, is also in financial trouble, although longstanding government support will likely protect it.

Earlier this year, GreenHunter Energy Inc., operator of the nation’s largest biodiesel refinery, stopped production and in June said it may have to sell its Houston plant, only a year after politicians presided over its opening. Dozens of other new biodiesel plants, which make a diesel substitute from vegetable oils and animal fats, have stopped operating because biodiesel production is no longer economical.

Producers of next-generation biofuels — those using nonfood renewable materials such as grasses, cornstalks and sugarcane stalks — are finding it tough to attract investment and ramp up production to an industrial scale. The sector suffered a major setback this summer after a federal jury ruled that Cello Energy of Alabama, a plant-fiber-based biofuel producer, had defrauded investors. Backed by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Cello was expected to supply 70% of the 100.7 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels that the Environmental Protection Agency planned to blend into the U.S. fuel supply next year. The alleged fraud will almost certainly prevent the EPA from meeting its targets next year, energy analysts say.

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Domestically produced biofuels were supposed to be an answer to reducing America’s reliance on foreign oil. In 2007, Congress set targets for the U.S. to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuels a year into the U.S. fuel supply in 2022, from 11.1 billion gallons in 2009. That would increase biofuels’ share of the liquid-fuel mix to roughly 16% from 5%, based on U.S. Energy Information Administration fuel-demand projections.

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Corn ethanol, which has been supported by government blending mandates and other subsidies for years, has come under fire for driving up the price of corn and other basic foodstuffs. While it will continue to be produced, corn ethanol’s dominant role in filling the biofuels’ blending mandate was set to shrink through 2022. Cellulosic ethanol, derived from the inedible portions of plants, and other advanced fuels were expected to surpass corn ethanol to fill close to half of all biofuel mandates in that time.

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The business models for most biofuel companies were predicated on a much higher price of crude oil, making biofuels more attractive. A government-guaranteed market was also central to business plans.

But once blending mandates were postponed, oil prices plunged and the recession crushed fuel demand, many biodiesel companies started operating in the red. Even ethanol producers, which have enjoyed government subsidies and growing federal requirements to blend it into gasoline, have been operating at a loss over the past year. Numerous established producers have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection.

Critics of the biofuels boom say government support helped create the mess in the first place. In 2007, biofuels including ethanol received $3.25 billion in subsidies and support — more than nuclear, solar or any other energy source, according to the Energy Information Administration. With new stimulus funding, this figure is expected to jump. New Energy Finance Ltd., an alternative-energy research firm, estimates that blending mandates alone would provide over $33 billion in tax credits to the biofuels industry from 2009 through 2013.

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Mr. Obama, who supported biofuels throughout his campaign, is working to roll out grants and loan guarantees for bio-refineries and green fuel projects, said Heather Zichal, a White House energy adviser. The pace of the disbursements should speed up this fall, administration officials say.

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The European Union dealt the final blow this spring when it slapped a tariff on U.S. biodiesel, killing what had been the industry’s main sales outlet.

While I certainly do not begrudge this gentlemen the right to speak their mind, I wonder if this message (that may be good for America) also is good for their business interests. Mr. Pickens is renown in the energy sector and a large scale switch to natural gas would likely help his wallet. Mr. Turner is a very large landowner in the western States and my gut is that he has found large deposits of natural gas under some of his holdings.

All that being said, I tend to agree with the core of their opinion. The United States should concentrate more on natural gas. It would most likely help the environment and it would help to lessen the choke hold that foreign interests have on our economy.

The following parts of their opinion appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Renewable energy and clean-burning natural gas are the basis of a new strategy the world needs to create a cleaner and more secure future. And the global transformation to a clean-energy economy may be the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. According to the authoritative Potential Gas Committee (administered by the Colorado School of Mines), the U.S. sits on top of massive reservoirs of natural gas—an estimated 2,000 trillion cubic feet—that contain more energy than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.

Harnessing this large supply—plus developing wind, solar and biofuel energy sources—is essential to achieve three strategic national priorities:

• Energy security: The internal combustion engine makes us dependent on oil that’s concentrated in a handful of countries in some of the world’s most volatile regions. In June, we imported 374 million barrels of oil, nearly two-thirds of what we used, at a cost of $24.7 billion. With 70% of imported oil going into cars and trucks, our transportation system is perilously at risk to shaky oil markets and even shakier regimes.

• Economic security: Last year more than $155 billion was invested in clean energy technologies such as wind and solar, and China and India plan to invest hundreds of billions in renewable energy sources. The annual market for clean energy may escalate in the next decade to between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. The race is on.

• Climate security: Likewise, the clock is ticking on potentially devastating climate changes. We already are witnessing the disintegration of polar ice, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and altered weather patterns. But if we act now, we can prevent catastrophic human and economic impacts.

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In the electricity sector, natural gas is already cheap, available and ready to meet the nation’s power needs while improving climate security. It emits about half the carbon dioxide per British thermal unit of energy, and far fewer of the heavy metals than does coal.

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…New coal plants should be required to combine natural gas with the coal they burn, resulting in cleaner emissions, and every power plant should meet strict carbon-emissions standards.

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In the transportation sector, renewable energy and natural gas can also be deployed immediately. For a quarter century, natural-gas vehicle technology has been available but stymied by lack of leadership. Of the 10 million natural gas vehicles in the world, fewer than 150,000 are in the U.S.

We can begin transitioning the nation’s fleet of 6.5 million 18-wheelers that run regular routes. It would take just 20 refueling stations along a single highway to get trucks from one coast to the other. Centrally fueled urban business and government fleets also can quickly move to natural gas. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are in the process of buying new natural gas vehicles for their fleets, and many municipalities are harnessing the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas-powered buses.

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The economic, environmental, and national security imperatives of America’s energy posture are clear, as is the proven potential of domestic natural resources like gas, wind and solar power. Coupled with energy efficiency, these resources have the potential to help jump-start the economy, drive prosperity and reduce emissions well into the 21st century. The keys are in our hands. All we have to do is unlock the door and start the engine.

One of the major trade rags in engineering is C&EN (Chemical and Engineering News). It is edited by Mr. Rudy Baum. If you aren’t in that trade, you would probably never pick up an issue so you may not be familiar with it. I haven’t read the publication in a long time but was recently made aware of a bit of controversy by Climate Depot. While the readers of C&EN are likely not climatologists, the science of CO2 and its affect on the atmosphere is very steeped in chemistry which their target market knows a bit about.

Mr. Baum wrote an opinion in June that dealt with global warming and some of the recent politics of the cap and trade legislation. While Mr. Baum is certainly entitled to his opinion on this subject, it appears that his readers were not very happy with his stance and some of the phrasing that he used. I won’t reproduce the editorial here as you can jump over read it for yourself.  I will bring out a few excerpts that have been published in the recent letters to the editor.  Some of them even call for the firing of the man!

I am not going to identify the individual writer of each comment by name.  I don’t think I have that right.  I will simply suggest that you read all of the letters to the editor that are posted for July 27, 2009.

…Instead, what should be a noble organization is turning into another left-wing mouthpiece. I don’t agree with your climate-change views, and I am not happy that you continue to use the pulpit of your editorials to promote your left-wing opinions…

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…Although under your editorial leadership, I suspect we would be treated to a biased and skewed version of scientific debate. I think its time to find a new editor.

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I am always intrigued by claims that science is settled, especially when it comes to something as complex as climate. Rudy Baum’s remarks are particularly disquieting because of his hostility toward skepticism, which is part of every scientist’s soul. Let’s cut to the chase with some questions for Baum: Which of the 20-odd major climate models has settled the science, such that all of the rest are now discarded?
…

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…It makes sense to reduce the combustion of carbon-based fuels, if only to preserve their use as feedstocks for industry. However, I am appalled at the condescending attitude of Rudy Baum, Al Gore, President Barack Obama, et al., who essentially tell us that there is no need for further research—that the matter is solved….

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Your editorial in the June 22 issue of C&EN was a disgrace. It was filled with misinformation, half-truths, and ad hominem attacks on those who dare disagree with you. Shameful!
…

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…The more people try to trivialize global warming, the more we and our descendants will suffer the results, some of which have already been quantified (for example, glacier melting and polar ice disappearing). Weather disruptions and shore erosion, for example, will begin to occur. The people who deny global warming are in the same class as those who rejected the negative effects of DDT, those who denied the negative effects of CFCs on the atmosphere, and so on.


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…The only demonstrated way forward is nuclear power. But those who oppose nuclear power are somewhat similar to climate-change deniers. I predict nuclear power will be accepted when the fear of climate change exceeds the fear of nuclear power. When might this happen? Not soon. Among the population at large, climate-change fears are not even in the top 10 worries.


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…I can’t accept as facts the reports of federal agencies, because they have become political and are more likely to support the regime in power than not. Baum’s attempt to close out debate goes against all my scientific training, and to hear this from my ACS is certainly alarming to me.


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Your comments about the climate-change deniers are right on target. In fact, your closing paragraph, “Sow doubt; make up statistics,” etc., was one of the best summaries I’ve seen of the deceitful practices that the deniers are allowed to get away with….

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…We cannot continue to burn organic fuels at billions of point sources without usefully recapturing the carbon (utilities should be able to do this)….

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I am furious that idiots such as Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas) helped pass this cap-and-trade bill. How much of a payoff are they getting from General Electric to pass this stupid bill?…

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Having worked as an atmospheric chemist for many years, I have extensive experience with environmental issues, and I usually agree with Rudy Baum’s editorials. But his use of “climate-change deniers” to pillory scientists who do not believe climate change is a crisis is disingenuous and unscientific….

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…Given the climate’s complexity and these and other uncertainties, are we justified in legislating major increases in our energy costs unilaterally guided only by a moral imperative to “do our part” for Earth’s climate? I am among many environmentally responsible citizen-scientists who think this is stupid, both because our emissions reductions will be dwarfed by increases elsewhere (China and India, for example) and because the models have large uncertainties….

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…Finally, I have very little in common with the philosophy of the Heartland Institute and other “free-market fanatics,” and I consider myself a progressive Democrat. Nevertheless, we scientists should know better than to propound scientific truth by consensus and to excoriate skeptics with purple prose.

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The editor’s page of C&EN should not be a political page. Rudy Baum has been pushing the global warming (conveniently changed now to “climate change”) hypothesis as fact very strongly for some time now. He denigrates as foolish and ignorant folks who do not swallow the global warming hypothesis and his comments are rather arrogant….

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…Are the temperature measurements accurate? Eighty-nine percent of the 860 monitoring stations inspected by meteorologist Anthony Watts and volunteers from the surfacestations.org project failed to meet the National Weather Service’s siting requirements (they were too close to artificial heating or radiating/reflecting sources). This is not the only information that does not support Baum’s hypothesis….

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…I would like to see the ACS Board cap Baum’s political pen and trade him to either the New York Times or Washington Post.

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In the interest of brevity, I can limit my response to the diatribe of the editor-in-chief in the June 22 edition of C&EN to one word: Disgusting.

There are many more comments in the letters to Mr. Baum.  Many of them are quite well written and make excellent points.  I encourage you to go there and spend a few minutes reading them.

A study by 3 researchers and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research has concluded that the weather variations (both increases and decreases) are the result of natural climate processes. They find that the Southern Oscillation is a key indicator of changing global atmospheric temperatures seven months later.

The paper is titled “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature” and following is the abstract:

Time series for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and global tropospheric temperature anomalies (GTTA) are compared for the 1958−2008 period. GTTA are represented by data from satellite microwave sensing units (MSU) for the period 1980–2008 and from radiosondes (RATPAC) for 1958–2008. After the removal from the data set of short periods of temperature perturbation that relate to near-equator volcanic eruption, we use derivatives to document the presence of a 5- to 7-month delayed close relationship between SOI and GTTA. Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record. Because El Niño−Southern Oscillation is known to exercise a particularly strong influence in the tropics, we also compared the SOI with tropical temperature anomalies between 20°S and 20°N. The results showed that SOI accounted for 81% of the variance in tropospheric temperature anomalies in the tropics. Overall the results suggest that the Southern Oscillation exercises a consistently dominant influence on mean global temperature, with a maximum effect in the tropics, except for periods when equatorial volcanism causes ad hoc cooling. That mean global tropospheric temperature has for the last 50 years fallen and risen in close accord with the SOI of 5–7 months earlier shows the potential of natural forcing mechanisms to account for most of the temperature variation.

So once again, we are in a situation where one researcher says that humans are to blame and another says that it is all natural.

Following are selected excerpts in Farm Weekly which is the article that AccuWeather referenced:

The findings follow research released earlier this month by US scientists which shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

In a statement to the media, lead author John McLean said that when climate modellers could not accurately determine historical temperatures “they added a ‘human influence’ to their models”.

“This paper shows that the missing component was the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO),” Mr McLean said.

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“The IPCC acknowledges in its 4th Assessment Report that ENSO conditions cannot be predicted more than about 12 months ahead so until that situation improves projected global temperatures are likely to be quite inaccurate.”

The group says that the surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 70 per cent of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century,” Associate Professor de Freitas said.

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example, causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña.

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Professor Bob Carter, one of four scientists who recently assisted Senator Steve Fielding in questioning the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

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“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, an emissions trading scheme will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

While few people would call me a global warming alarmists, I do think it is important to have relatively balanced perspective on all of this.  In fact, that is the essence of this blog.

Most reputable scientists without an agenda (which likely excludes anyone associated with Al Gore) had concluded long ago that it wasn’t the CO2 concentrations that would deliver the doom and gloom of the alarmists.  Rather, the concern was a feedback loop that would be accelerated by a fairly rapid expansion of carbon dioxide.  One theory is that this CO2 increase would cause temperatures to increase slightly which causes an increase in H2O in the atmosphere which further increases the temperature in an escalating fashion.

The concern is not the CO2 increase directly but the tipping point that it trips. This is incredibly difficult to model in the computer models that we are using since we have never seen this phenomenon.  This is part of the reason that I do not trust the current state of the art of the computer models – they assume that this tripping point will be hit and we don’t know that it will.

Here are highlights from the USAToday article.

Could the best climate models — the ones used to predict global warming — all be wrong?

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.  The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.

“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” says oceanographer Gerald Dickens, study co-author and professor of Earth Science at Rice University in Houston. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”

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The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. “Some feedback loop or other processes that aren’t accounted for in these models — the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming — caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM.”

In their most recent assessment report in 2007, the IPCC predicted the Earth would warm by anywhere from 2 to 11 degrees by the end of the century due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by human industrial activity.

Contrary to my custom, I will be recreating the complete story here.

Strickland details plans for nuclear plant
Business First of Columbus – by Matt Burns

A third nuclear power station proposed for Ohio likely won’t start operating for years, but government officials and energy industry executives are saying it is time to start considering its construction and Piketon is the place for it.

Politicians and executives from companies and organizations involved in the proposed multibillion-dollar project unveiled plans Thursday for an alliance that will push for development of the power station in southern Ohio. Officials said the project, if approved, would take more than a decade to complete. The initiative would create an estimated 3,000 jobs during construction and up to 700 jobs to operate the facility, provided regulators give it the OK.

With a long approval and construction road ahead and government plans for toughening emissions regulations, Gov. Ted Strickland said Ohio – the fifth-largest electricity consumer in the nation – must take planning steps now.

“We cannot wait to begin building our new energy future,” he said at the gathering in Piketon, about 60 miles south of Columbus.

Working on the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance are Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK); French nuclear power company Areva SA; Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative; nuclear developer UniStar Nuclear Energy LLC; and USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU).

The 3,700-acre site for the plant was home to a 900-worker uranium enrichment complex that ceased operations in 2001. The government created the complex in 1954 to make uranium to fuel military reactors and for nuclear weapons.

Bethesda, Md.-based USEC, which ran the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, has maintained a presence there with about 1,200 workers. A recently licensed American Centrifuge Plant, which will create fuel for nuclear power operations, is set to go online there in 2011, USEC told Columbus Business First.

Duke Energy executives and state officials are billing the plant as a key step in moving the state away from a dependence on coal-fired electricity, which is the source of more than 85 percent of Ohio’s electricity. The state is home to two nuclear plants in the north.

“It’s an indisputable fact that the nation and the planet are transitioning to a low-carbon future,” Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said Thursday. “With the creation of this clean-energy park, we’re preparing to cross the bridge to that low-carbon future.”

Piketon is viewed as a strong site for the proposed plant because of its infrastructure. Strickland said in a phone interview after Thursday’s announcement that the infrastructure advantage, combined with the alliance’s past experience in nuclear development, could even move the project quicker than the average nuclear plant.

Strickland said the alliance is seeking U.S. Energy Department funding for the project’s first phase, which would include permitting. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy would manage and oversee the project and apply for federal licensing. Duke Energy and Areva would shoulder the bulk of the project’s cost, he said, which is estimated at more than $5 billion.

U.S. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, acknowledged the dark side of the former Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The government has paid out about $325 million to workers who became ill as a result of their jobs there and it has contributed about $41 million toward medical bills, he said.

Strickland said he’s confident the industry has made performance and environmental strides that likely will eliminate any “broad-based objection” to the project.

“I believe we now are wiser, the standards are tougher and that the industry has become safer,” he said.

nuclear, global+warming, Ohio, carbon dioxide, CO2

There does not appear to be any new scientific evidence of global warming in this paper.  Instead it references the 2007 IPCC findings and then studies that financial impact of those assertions.

The Telegraph recently wrote a story on the report.

The UK needs to cut greenhouse gases by 45 per cent by 2020 to prevent the world “lurching into climate disaster”, according to a new report from Oxfam.

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This would mean the UK would have to increase its current target to cut greenhouse gases from 34 per cent on 1990 levels to 45.3 per cent by further improving energy efficiency and relying more on renewable energy.

Both Europe and the US would need to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2020 – almost double the current EU target of 20 per cent and more than three times the most likely target to be set by the US of 14 per cent. Japan would have to deliver a 56 per cent reduction, although the country recently announced it would not commit to more than eight per cent.

At the same time it will be necessary to pump more than £90 billion into helping poorer countries cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change to prevent “climate catastrophe”.

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Aid agencies and developing countries are putting increasing pressure on rich nations to sign up to tough emissions targets and a “financial mechanism” that can provide money for poorer countries to adapt to climate change. One suggestion is for the money from carbon markets to go towards the adaptation fund or for a tax on international aviation and shipping to provide the money.

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Phil Bloomer, Oxfam’s Campaigns and Policy Director, … “Rich countries have the money and the technology to pull us from the brink of no return. They have a double duty – to deliver massive emissions cuts at home and provide money for poor countries to tackle their emissions too,” he said.

“It is unrealistic and immoral for rich countries to expect developing countries to cut their emissions first when it is developing countries who are most vulnerable to climate change and need to develop out of poverty. Every country must play its part.”

There is also a case to be made that there is pressure put on food prices due to ethanol production as well.

I am not totally against using ethanol as an additive. I think there is some advantage to keeping the market alive and viable to spur development of new techniques of creating the liquid and new crop energy sources other than corn.

For instance, the article doesn’t cite any greenhouse gas figures if the source of heat during the distillation process is electricity from nuclear (to the best of my knowledge this technique is not used commercially, presumably due to cost).  There is a great explanation of the dry-milling process here.

While I think the US government should continue to mandate the 10% ethanol blend, I see no economic or scientific reason to increase that blend to 15%.

Below are key excerpts from the article at WSJ.com but you can click here to read the full opinion.

The Obama Administration is pushing a big expansion in ethanol, including a mandate to increase the share of the corn-based fuel required in gasoline to 15% from 10%.

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The biofuels industry already receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced, or about $3 billion a year. Meanwhile, import tariffs of 54 cents a gallon and an ad valorem tariff of four to seven cents a gallon keep out sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and the Caribbean. The federal 10% blending requirement insures a market for ethanol whether consumers want it or not — a market Congress has mandated will double to 20.5 billion gallons in 2015.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last month that Americans pay another surcharge for ethanol in higher food prices. CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008 “the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices.” Ethanol raises food prices because millions of acres of farmland and three billion bushels of corn were diverted to ethanol from food production. Americans spend about $1.1 trillion a year on food, so in 2007 the ethanol subsidy cost families between $5.5 billion and $8.8 billion in higher grocery bills.

A second study — by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality — explains that the reduction in CO2 emissions from burning ethanol are minimal and maybe negative. Making ethanol requires new land from clearing forest and grasslands that would otherwise sequester carbon emissions. “As with petroleum based fuels,” the report concludes: “GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are associated with the conversion and combustion of bio-fuels and every year they are produced GHG emissions could be released through time if new acres are needed to produce corn or other crops for biofuels.”

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Both CBO and EPA find that in theory cellulosic ethanol — from wood chips, grasses and biowaste — would reduce carbon emissions. However, as CBO emphasizes, “current technologies for producing cellulosic ethanol are not commercially viable.” The ethanol lobby is attempting a giant bait-and-switch: Keep claiming that cellulosic ethanol is just around the corner, even as it knows the only current technology to meet federal mandates is corn ethanol (or sugar, if it didn’t face an import tariff).

By addressing the magnitude of the climate threat with urgency, a powerful global climate change treaty would help establish a firm foundation for a sustainable economic future. This would set a more predictable framework for companies to plan and invest, provide a stimulus for renewed prosperity and a more secure climate system. Economic recovery and urgent action to tackle climate change are complementary – boosting the economy and jobs through investment in the new infrastructure needed to reduce emissions.

Business is at its best when innovating to achieve a goal and the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is vital to our common social, economic and environmental future. At the Summit we agreed that this will require ¹:

1. Agreement on a science-based greenhouse gas stabilization path with 2020 and 2050 emissions reduction targets.

We support the scientific evidence of the IPCC’s 4th. We are concerned that some recent scientific evidence suggests the problem may be worse than many of the IPCC estimates.

An effective global climate treaty must establish an ambitious goal and set emission targets that protect us and future generations from the risks of climate destabilization. Limiting the global average temperature increase to a maximum of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels would entail abatement of around 17Gt versus business-as-usual by 2020.

This will require an immediate and substantial change in the current global greenhouse gases emission trend: it must peak and begin to reduce within the next decade. Longer-term targets must be informed by the evolving science, but the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report indicates that global emissions must fall by at least half of 1990 levels by 2050.

We believe that working to reduce emissions now is less costly than delaying our efforts. There is nothing to be gained through delay. The deepest reductions should initially be made by developed economies though global emissions reduction will require all nations to play a part.

Emissions reduction at this scale will profoundly affect business, and business is already taking action to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. We are ready to make those changes and support ambitious political decisions to address the climate challenge wherever we operate. If policies are well designed and implemented, the benefits of early action will outweigh the short-term adjustment costs. This early action can only be achieved by setting an ambitious 2020 target.

2. Effective measurement, reporting and verification of emissions.

Achieving and tracking greenhouse gas emissions reduction is vital to measuring convergence towards the objectives of an effective climate treaty. As businesses we can set an example by contributing to a unified, coherent and reliable measurement, reporting and verification discipline leading to mandatory reporting. Accounting for the emissions we are responsible for will provide the basis for emissions reduction beyond what may be required by regulation and allow our performance to be properly judged and rewarded by investors and the public.

3. Incentives for a dramatic increase in financing low emissions technologies.

To promote effective, efficient, equitable and ambitious action to address climate change the world will need to mobilize the scale of investment necessary to achieve the emissions reduction required. Properly established, an international carbon market framed around ambitious reduction targets can enable both cost-effective abatement and create the carbon price stability to drive the deployment of technologies that will deliver large-scale emissions reductions.

The first steps to establishing a global market will be to enable linkage between national and regional carbon markets. An international agreement will help secure investor confidence in the carbon market, and national actions will help generate new financial flows for climate investment.

The new climate treaty must “push” the development of new technologies through the use of public funds to leverage private finance in early stage demonstration and deployment. This will require policy measures that create clear, predictable, long-term incentives to stimulate private investment and enable the global diffusion of capital and technology.

4. Deployment of existing low-emissions technologies and the development of new ones.

The private sector is already the source of over two-thirds of the world’s investments in clean technology innovation, and is the most effective source of know-how and technology dissemination and transfer. Many low-technologies already exist and can significantly reduce global emissions. Significant emissions reduction can be achieved through energy efficiency, much of it with positive financial returns. Standards and regulations are the best way to achieve this. A new treaty must support deployment of low-carbon solutions by encouraging incentives for public and private purchasers to choose the lowest emissions infrastructure and technologies and for investors to account for climate risk in their decisions.

Government and business must work together to ensure that all nations have equitable access to new clean energy technologies and other innovations by, among others, working with developing countries to improve the infrastructure required for effective deployment.

An effective global climate treaty must provide the means to fund research, development and the deployment of new clean energy technologies. Pricing can help “pull” these technologies through the innovation chain, generate revenue and enhance the flow of investment to developing countries. Governments should strive to end the current perverse subsidies that favour high-.emissions transport and energy infrastructure and promote deforestation.

A shift to a low-carbon economy, supported by private sector participation and government, has the potential to drive the next generation of technological innovation, address the environmental and economic challenges that climate change presents, and contribute to global development.

5. Funds to make communities more resilient and able to adapt to the effects of climate change.

We recognize that adaptation is as important as mitigation in an effective global climate treaty. Adaptation planning will require a holistic and long-term planning perspective, which will require different levels of activity at the international, national and local levels. Businesses will be responsible for building much of the infrastructure needed to protect us from climate impacts. An effective global climate treaty will mobilize funding that supports public private partnerships to enhance development, adaptive capacity, climate resilience and management of risk.

6. Innovative means to protect forests and balance the carbon cycle.

Because a significant proportion of the CO₂ reduction required by 2020 comes from the sequestration of carbon in forests and agriculture lands, an effective climate treaty must facilitate such sequestration. If emissions reductions targets are to be met, there is an immediate need to protect forests and enhance carbon sequestration. The private sector can play an important role in reducing deforestation, particularly in developing countries, through mechanisms structured to value conservation.

We believe these elements should form the core of the international climate change treaty agreed at Copenhagen. As business leaders we stand ready to innovate and operate within the framework established through that treaty and national policies.

Reducing the emissions that until now have been so linked to our economic growth and betterment will be an enormous, unprecedented global challenge but will also provide significant opportunities for sustainable growth, development and innovation. Acting together, we owe it to future generations to meet this challenge. Now is the time to create the foundations for long term, low carbon prosperity. We are willing to work with government to do so.

*

Presented by the Copenhagen Climate Council, informed by discussions with the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; 3C; the World Economic Forum Climate Change Initiative; the U.N. Global Compact and The Climate Group, and deliberations among participants at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, May 24-26 2009.

1. The views expressed here have been informed by discussions at the World Business Summit on Climate Change. They do not necessarily reflect the views of all participants.

This story is from AP.

By DINA CAPPIELLO and H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation imposing the first nationwide limits on the pollution blamed for global warming advanced in the House late Thursday, clearing a key committee despite strong Republican opposition.

The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the sweeping climate bill 33-25 after repeatedly turning back GOP attempts to kill or weaken the measure during four days of debate.

The panel’s action increases the likelihood that the full House for the first time will address broad legislation to tackle climate change later this year. The Senate has yet to take up the issue.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel’s chairman, said the bill represents “decisive and historic action” to increase America’s energy security and deal with global warming. “When this bill is enacted into law, we will break our dependence on foreign oil, make our nation the world leader in clean energy jobs and technology, and cut global-warming pollution,” said Waxman.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has promised to press for passage of climate legislation this year, but prospects remain uncertain, especially in the Senate. President Barack Obama has told Congress he too wants a bill this year, ahead of international climate talks in December.

The House bill requires factories, refineries and power plants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and six other greenhouse gases by roughly 80 percent by mid-century and hasten the nation’s energy shift away from fossil fuels by putting a price on carbon dioxide releases.

Only one Republican — Rep. Mary Bono Mack of California — crossed party lines in support of the bill. Four Democrats voted against it. She said that while she had concerns about the bill, including its cost, the country can’t wait “to make needed changes to our energy policy.”

Waxman had vowed to get the 946-page bill out of his committee before Memorial Day. Pressure on lawmakers to leave for the holiday recess pushed the committee to wrap up late Thursday after considering more than 80 amendments, 56 of them from Republicans and many designed to weaken or kill the bill.

“The American people are overwhelming calling for a new direction … to take action in a way that changes forever our relationship with imported oil, with the loss of jobs overseas, with the pollution that is causing greenhouse gas warming on our planet,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a co-sponsor of the bill.

Republicans argued that the pollution cuts would lead to soaring energy prices and threaten economic growth by imposing new costs on energy intensive industries already facing economic hardships.

“We don’t want to put the economy in jeopardy,” said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the committee’s ranking Republican. He offered an alternative that would have scrapped the cap on greenhouse gases and pollution trading scheme, provide more incentives for nuclear energy and bolster research into capturing carbon from coal-burning power plants. It was defeated 35-19.

Barton said he had “serious concern about the redirection of our energy policy in America.”

“For the sake of our nation I hope to some degree you are right. I’m afraid that you’re not. We will see,” Barton told Waxman minutes before the vote.

To ease the economic impact, supporters of the bill said, the government would issue pollution allowances, or permits, to businesses that could be traded on the open market. The bill calls for giving away 35 percent of the pollution permits to electric utilities that otherwise would likely pass the additional costs onto consumes. The government also would sell 15 percent of the allowances and use the money to provide direct relief to consumers.

“It is very clear that ratepayers are going to be protected,” Waxman insisted.

To get the support of Democrats from coal and industrial states, Waxman agreed to give away significant emissions allowances to industries in their states, including the electric utilities, steel manufactures, automakers and refineries. Waxman also scaled back the required greenhouse gas reductions between now and 2020 from 20 percent to 17 percent. And he eased the requirement for utilities to use renewable energy such as wind and solar for electricity production.

Democrats also added language to create a clean energy bank to disperse grants for new forms of energy and inserted a “cash for clunkers” program that would provide rebates to consumers who turn in gas guzzling vehicles for more fuel-efficient cars.

The bill is H.R. 2454.

One of the foundations of predicting the climate is that we have some idea of how water moves around the planet.  That water can be in the form of water vapor or liquid water that is flowing in streams, lakes and the oceans.  Since the Earth is approximately 2/3 water and water vapor is the single largest greenhouse gas, the way it acts is very important for understanding climate and predicting the future of climate.

One of the largest influencers of the climates of various areas of the world is the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt.  Mr. Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and winner of the Nobel Peace Price, even described this huge current in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.  He discussed what would happen if the this conveyor belt would stop and then “alluded” to Greenland being the source of freshwater that could make that happen.  There was even a movie (Day After Tomorrow) that described the world where this flow would stop (a movie that Mr. Gore borrowed a CGI clip from).

Now we find out that we don’t know everything about this flow of water.  Which means that any climate model that made assumptions based on our incorrect understanding of this flow is, by definition, incorrect.  These are the same climate models that we are using as justification for imposing cap and trade (or carbon trading) taxes on the US population.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be taxing the population just yet but rather spend some real money on hard science and really get a solid picture of what is going on.  If we find that we are impacting the climate in a negative manner then most realistic people would support aggressive action to reverse course.

Sorry, Mr. Gore.  It seems that the science is not settled yet and the data is all over the map on what is really going on and why.

Check out The Resilient Earth’s discussion of the subject.  Mr. Hoffman does an excellent job of discussing the issue.

I do want to take one clip of Mr. Hoffman’s discussion out of context as I think it bears extra notice:

Climate skeptics are sometimes accused of selectively interpreting scientific data in order to bolster their case against anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The term used is “cherry picking.” When a theory makes certain predictions it is totally acceptable, even obligatory, to investigate those predictions. When a theory is based on certain fundamental assumptions regarding underlying science it is perfectly logical to question that theory when its underlying assumptions are shown to be in error. This is not cherry picking, it is how science works. It may discomfort those who complacently believe in the “consensus view” of AGW, but that is of no importance to science.

I will only share the first 2 paragraphs of Mr. Hoffman’s discussion here and encourage you to jump over there to read the rest.  The original study was published in Nature.

News has come that the famed ocean conveyor belt, subject of countless TV documentaries and science lessons, is not as simple as scientists believed. The 50 year old model of global ocean circulation that predicts a deep Atlantic counter current below the Gulf Stream has been called into question by an armada of drifting subsurface sensors. As shocking as this news is to oceanographers it is even worse for climate modelers—it means that all the current climate prediction models are significantly wrong.

It is known by many names: the meridional overturning current (MOC), the thermohaline circulation (THC), and, popularly, the great ocean conveyor belt. It has been the subject of study by oceanographers for half a century and is known to be a fundamentally important part of earthly climate regulation. It is the primary mechanism for transferring heat from the tropics to higher latitudes, the proximate reason that the occasional palm tree grows on the south coast of England. Until now, scientists thought they had a pretty good handle on how the current flows, the mechanisms that drive the circulation and affect climate world wide.

Al Gore, Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, climate model, global warming

I absolutely agree with Mr. Munger.  My rantings on cap and trade (or carbon trading) are almost constant on this site.

I also agree with Senator Gregg that we need to get 100 nuclear plants online as quickly as possible.  Nuclear has problems but it is the best and most clean way to generate the amounts of energy that the United States needs.

Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway, Judd Gregg, nuclear, cap and trade, carbon trading, video, CNBC

• are customers (industrial and consumer) willing to pay 10% more for their energy needs due to be generated from coal when another part of the country is served by nuclear?
• are customers willing to pay considerably more for the trucking of fruits and vegetables than their fellow constituent that lives a little closer to the source?

There are many more examples, obviously. The key thing here is that we are talking dollars and cents. And many people would be willing to spend those dollars to save the planet if they thought it was really doing that rather than just lining the pocket of someone else or putting their local economy at risk versus another economy farther away. It would also assist if there were more solid evidence of the rewards of carbon reduction and that this was the best way to that end.

It’s turning out that the biggest problem with carbon taxes is political reality. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has just announced he will delay implementing his trademark cap-and-trade emissions trading proposal until at least 2011. Mr. Rudd’s March proposal would have imposed total carbon permit costs (taxes) of 11.5 billion Australian dollars (US$8.5 billion) in the first two years, starting in 2010. This would have increased consumer prices by about 1.1% and shaved 0.1% off annual GDP growth until at least 2050, according to Australia’s Treasury. Support has fallen among business groups and individuals who earlier professed enthusiasm for Aussie cap and trade. Green gains were negligible; Australia accounts for only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

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This is yet another example of politicians elsewhere cashing in politically on the current anti-carbon enthusiasm, only to discover that support diminishes as the real-world costs become clear.

global warming, Australia, Kevin Rudd, cap and trade, carbon trading

I originally found this article by reading Watts Up With That so go over there and check out his handling of this story.

The Interior Department on Friday let stand a Bush administration policy barring the federal government from using the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population as a reason to crack down on global warming, upsetting environmentalists and cheering oil and gas companies.

The decision means the government cannot use the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, though Interior Secretary Ken Salazar explicitly has blamed those emissions for the habitat erosion that last year landed the polar bear on the list of threatened species.

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Environmental groups promised to sue.

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Andrew Wetzler, who directs the endangered species project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision was illegal and that the group would “continue to fight it in court.”

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Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, praised Salazar for what he called “a common-sense decision that will ensure more jobs are not lost due to excessive regulations of greenhouse gases by the government.”

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Congress never intended for the species act to regulate climate change, Salazar said.

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Salazar has overturned several last-minute Bush environmental rules. He rescinded one that would have allowed federal agencies to bypass expert biologists and determine on their own whether their projects threatened endangered plants or animals. He also blocked the issuance of oil and gas drilling leases near national parks in Utah.

Yet Salazar sided with Bush on another high-profile species issue, moving ahead with a plan to remove gray wolves from the endangered list in the Great Lakes region and parts of the Mountain West.

politics, polar bears, Barach Hussein Obama, George Walker Bush,

If you read this site often, you know that I really don’t like carbon trading.  I don’t think it will help solve any problems and it is only a way to tax people and push industries into doom.  Dr. Lovelock appears to agree with me and he is a fairly strong supporter of the theory that global warming is man made. 

Also in this interview, Dr. Lovelock discusses his favorite approach to reducing the overall carbon footprint.  This approach of burying charcoal is not very popular and there are some other environmental concerns in the production of charcoal.

You can read the entire article at NewScientist.  The interview is much longer than what i have reproduced here.  Please click through to the source.

Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?

Not a hope in hell. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt – that’s an awful lot of countryside.

What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?

That is a waste of time. It’s a crazy idea – and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.

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So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste – which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering – into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won’t do it.

Do you think we will survive?

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.

global warming, carbon trading, cap and trade, charcoal, James Lovelock, carbon dioxide, CO2

While there is a lot of research on alternative sources of ethanol that would not compete with food, this research has yet to make it to development.  The Wall Street Journal put out a good article discussing this a few weeks ago so I thought I would share the highlights.  Click through here to read the entire article.

Corn ethanol producers — led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy — want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn’t cooperate.

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Americans are unlikely to use enough gas next year to absorb the 13 billion gallons of ethanol that Congress mandated, because current regulations limit the ethanol content in each gallon of gas at 10%. The industry is asking that this cap be lifted to 15% or even 20%. That way, more ethanol can be mixed with less gas, and producers won’t end up with a glut that the government does not require anyone to buy.

The ethanol boosters aren’t troubled that only a fraction of the 240 million cars and trucks on the road today can run with ethanol blends higher than 10%. It can damage engines and corrode automotive pipes, as well as impair some safety features, especially in older vehicles. It can also overwhelm pollution control systems like catalytic converters. The malfunctions multiply in other products that use gas, such as boats, snowmobiles, lawnmowers, chainsaws, etc.

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The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club agree, on top of growing scientific evidence that corn ethanol provides little or no net reduction in CO2 over the gasoline it displaces.

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So successful but politically unpopular businesses will be punished for not buying a product that does not exist — from companies that haven’t yet found a way to succeed despite generous political and taxpayer advantages. The next step is to use cap and trade to make green alternatives look artificially good by comparison. Even then they’ll probably still be bottomless money pits.

To recap: Congress and the ethanol lobby argue that if some outcome would be politically nice, it should be mandated (details to follow). Then a new round of market interventions is necessary to fix the economic harm resulting from the previous requirements, while creating more damage in the process. Ethanol is one of the most shameless energy rackets going, in a field with no shortage of competitors.

ethanol, biofuel, corn, carbon dioxide, CO2

Looking at alternatives for getting this to work may be our best chance of reducing pollution (including CO2) via using less gasoline to propel our cars the same distance.

From the Heat2Power website:

The heat2power system is based on the use of one or more cylinders for the regeneration of waste heat. These cylinders can be in replacement of the combustion cylinders inside an existing engine or as an add-on module that is connected to the engine by means of a gear set or a belt drive. Also is it possible to have no mechanical linkage between combustion engine and regeneration unit in case the power from the regeneration unit is taken off electrically. In general for low cost of installation and development we recommend OEMs to use an add-on system. In that way the original engine remains basically unchanged.

The thermal power is extracted from the exhaust of the internal combustion engine by means of a heat exchanger. This is an gas-gas heat exchanger operating at high temperatures: up to about 950°C. Basically the heat2power system works like most other thermodynamic cycles : intake and compress a gas, then heat it up and finally let it expand. The difference between an ICE and the heat2power system is that the heat input is not by a combustion inside the cylinder but by heat exchange external to the cylinder.

After the expansion stroke the air is released at low temperatures (250-300°C instead of 600-950°C). This can also be considered as an advantage for military vehicle that require a low thermal profile.

The heat exchanger in the exhaust is placed after the catalyst (gasoline vehicles) or after the particle filter (diesel vehicles). In such manner the exhaust gas after treatment remains unaffected and the combustion engine does not need its tuning to be done all over again. However we recommend to apply thermal insulation of the exhaust manifold and the first part of the exhaust and catalyst/DPF so that a maximum amount of heat is available for the regeneration process.

I know that many of my readers doubt that CO2 actually has changed the climate.  I also have doubts on this since the science is so ambiguous and so strongly relies on computer models.  However, the acidification of the ocean due to an increased absorption of carbon dioxide is chemistry and is not subject to fuzzy computer models and guesses. 

In case you question that the increase of CO2 is man-made and not natural – check out this article.

Some excerpts from WSJ:

In the living laboratory of a submerged volcano, marine biologist Verena Tunnicliffe glimpsed sea creatures trying to survive in acidic oceans.

Carbon dioxide that bubbles up in the sulfur chimneys of the undersea Eifuku volcano near the Pacific’s Mariana Islands has turned the water into an acidic broth, with striking effects on sea life. Scientists say the corrosive conditions there offer clues to how rising levels of man-made CO2 in the air could unbalance oceans world-wide.

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Conditions on the volcanic slopes of Eifuku have been this acidic for millennia, giving these creatures more than enough time to acclimate. But many oceanographers worry that increased CO2 — likely created by burning fossil fuel — is changing sea chemistry world-wide more quickly than most marine life can adapt. A host of experiments are underway to assess just how the increased CO2 levels are changing ocean life.

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All told, the oceans have absorbed 118 billion tons of carbon in the 200 years since the beginning of the industrial revolution, an international research team led by oceanographer Christopher Sabine at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle has calculated. Every second of the day, the oceans absorb an additional 300 tons of CO2 emissions.

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“If CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, then the oceans become more acidic,” says marine ecologist Jon Havenhand of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. “The chemistry is unavoidable.”

For at least 600,000 years, the oceans maintained a steady pH of about 8.2, according to levels measured in ancient ice cores that preserve an annual chemical record of times past in the same way that tree rings do. Since 1800, however, the pH of seawater has dropped to 8.1. “The number is small but the change is substantial,” says marine biologist Donald Potts at the University of California, Santa Cruz. By the end of this century, the pH of seawater is expected to drop to 7.8 or so.