Just a quick note to let you all know where I disappeared to. Our friends did arrive for their visit, as planned, but just before they arrived I discovered a Very Important Hard Drive decided to fail. After saving what data I could and trying every trick I could think of to get the rest, I ran off to Staples for a new HD, and have been rebuilding stuff ever since.
I hope to have things in shape well enough to resume posting tonight (he typed with crossed fingers).
I hope to have some Real Content posted later today, Saturday morning at the latest. I’m a little discombobulated today, thanks to a morning doctor appointment and getting ready for a visit from our friends, Mark and Eve.
So, let me turn the microphone over to all youse guys. Tell me what’s on your mind, energy and environment-wise. Which things scare you and which give you the most hope, where do think the tipping points are in our situation (i.e. how high will gasoline have to go before US drivers get Very Serious about conservation and/or switching to alternatives (include your definition of “Very Serious”, of course)), if and when will PO overtake GW as “the” public concern, etc.
My answers:
On my mind: My ongoing effort to determine which factors will be a big deal, which we can ignore, and how the entire landscape will change under the influence of various X Factors, like the arrival of radically cheaper solar PV hardware.
Scares me: The immense uncertainties surrounding oil, especially in the context of Bush’s psychotic saber rattling over Iran.
Gives me hope: The apparently limitless flexibility and ingenuity of human beings when faced with an extraordinary challenge.
Tipping points: Gasoline at $4 to $5/gallon or persistent spot shortages. Another couple of seasons of record-breaking GW evidence from the poles.
Perception that PO > GW: I think there’s no more than a one-in-three chance it will happen at all, as politicians will continue to say everything but the radioactive words “peak oil” (thanks to the Apocalypticon morons on the Internet). But if it happens, it won’t be until well into 2009, unless there’s some precipitating event.
It happened again this week, and I’m still trying to figure out what causes it.
The US Dept. of Energy releases it’s This Week in Petroleum update, commonly called the TWIP at 10:30AM on Wednesday, as scheduled. The oil futures market immediately reacts–this week it was in the downward direction–stories hit the wire about why–this week it was the slight, unexpected build in US crude oil stockpiles–only to reverse that reading of the figures later on Wednesday or Thursday–as we’re now reading that oil is up largely because the rise in overall stockpiles was more than offset by a decline in the stockpiles at Cushing, OK.
I don’t keep track of such things, but these TWIP U-turns, as I’ve been calling them for some time, happen relatively frequently, perhaps once every three or four reports.
What the hell is going on here?
Is this a case of the market having a knee-jerk reaction to the information in the top few paragraphs of the text version of the TWIP, without reading the rest of it? (The full text version is released all at once at 10:30AM US Eastern. The fancier version comes a few hours later.)
In more general terms, I’m highly skeptical of these reports that say the entire market for oil or even the stock market in general moved for one particular reason. In some cases, like a surprise announcement of an interest rate change by the Fed or a value for a key economic indicator, it’s probably a reasonable conclusion. But I think the market watchers and writers get very carried away with their estimate of their own ability to read the mind of the vast, seething, and slightly psychotic marketplace.
And then we have the Zenn all-electric cars, which the company’s specifications page says have a top speed (albeit limited by regulation) of 25 MPG, a range of 35 miles, and a base price between $12,750 and $14,700, depending on the model.
Which begs a couple of questions: What is the market for such vehicles in the US (or Europe, or Australia, or …)? How great an impact can/will they have on reducing our gasoline consumption and CO2 emissions?
I have to admit, I’m not sure how to view such vehicles, often called NEV’s (neighborhood EV’s). While I know full well what the per-mile benefits are, in terms of marginal consumption and emissions, I have a very hard time estimating how popular they would be under various gasoline prices.
The biggest hurdle for would be adopters is confidence that they could live with the speed and range limitations. My wife and I could do a pretty fair amount of our driving with such a vehicle. Most of our usual trips to local stores and restaurants, dentist and doctor visits, could easily be covered with a 35-mile round trip. But some of our travel would be either too close to the 35-mile limit to risk, or would be beyond it. Appointments with my allergist and our trips to area sporting events (not entirely lacrosse, mind you) would force me to use a “regular car”, even with no battery life given up to heating or cooling the passenger compartment. (Even if the 35-mile range would just cover the trip, the 25 MPH limit would be a show stopper because of the highway travel involved.) Trips to visit family in Pennsylvania would be completely out of the question.
We’re not a typical household, as we both work from home offices, though. I suspect that a lot of American families have one or more people who live close enough to work or school that they could get by with a Zenn car, with minimal impact to their lifestyle. But that’s a necessary, not sufficient, condition for they widespread adoption. The people making the buying decisions have to perceive that they could live with such a vehicle. Even at the relatively low price, buying a Zenn car is quite a gamble; if you wanted to re-sell it 6 months after you bought it, how hard do you think it would be to find a buyer?
And, as always, there’s the issue of alternatives. My beloved Scion xA cost me $14,200 last June, with automatic transmission. Currently, Toyota sells a Yaris three-door at a base price of $11,300. I suspect that the majority of American drivers would prefer to go with something like that, even with much higher gasoline prices than we’re seeing right now, and be free of the speed and range limits.
And that, in turn, leads to the next question: How much do the Zenn cars’ number have to improve for them to go from being a classic niche product to a widely accepted mainstream option?
DOE to Invest up to $20 Million for Plug-In Hybrid Research:
DOE announced on September 25th that it will invest nearly $20 million in plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) research. PHEVs have the potential to displace a large amount of gasoline by delivering up to 40 miles of electric range without recharging—a distance that includes most daily roundtrip commutes. Five projects will be cost-shared with the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), allowing up to $38 million for battery research and development. The companies selected for the projects include EnerDel, Inc. in Indiana; A123Systems in Massachusetts; Compact Power Inc. in Michigan; 3M in Minnesota; and Johnson Controls – Saft Advanced Power Solutions in Wisconsin. The projects will focus on developing batteries and cells for 10- and 40-mile range PHEVs and building small cells to test new cathode materials.
In addition, the University of Michigan will receive nearly $2 million to explore the future of PHEVs in a two-year study conducted with DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and DTE Energy. The study will evaluate how PHEVs would share the power grid with other energy needs; monitor the American public’s view of PHEVs and their driving behavior in such vehicles; assess the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; and identify how automakers can optimize PHEV design to increase performance and reduce cost. See the DOE press release, the PNNL press Release, and the Draft Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle R&D Plan on the FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program Web site.
A number of other efforts are also aiming to advance PHEV technologies. In early September, Google.org—the philanthropic arm of Google Inc.—offered $10 million to for-profit companies that are working to advance PHEV technologies. Meanwhile, California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced that it is working with Tesla Motors to study the remote control of the charging of electric vehicles. Such “smart charging” could allow a utility to vary the electric charging load on its system in response to intermittent energy sources. In effect, electric vehicles would serve as a large energy storage system that utilities could direct energy to at times when ample supplies are available and the load on the electrical grid is low. See the Google.org and PG&E press releases.
$20 million? Really? Is that one full crumb from the US federal budget, or are we still in the sub-crumb range?
Please forgive my sarcasm, but this is pathetic. Given the enormous potential for plug-ins and EV’s to change the rules of the game, and how utterly dependent on batteries those developments are, this funding is laughably low. Add at least two zeros to the end of that number, and it might be where it should be.
The TWIP is out. US crude oil stockpiles rose 1.8 million barrels, while US gasoline stockpiles rose by 0.6 million barrels. As in recent weeks, the gasoline number is much more important, simply because those stocks are so low right now. The modest growth in gasoline stocks is good news, or at least not bad news.
How the White House worked to scuttle California’s climate law:
President Bush’s transportation secretary, Mary Peters, with White House approval, personally directed a lobbying campaign to urge governors and two dozen House members to block California’s first-in-the-nation limits on greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, according to e-mails obtained by Congress.
The e-mails show Peters worked closely with the top opponents in Congress of California’s emissions law and sought out governors from auto-producing states, who were seen as likely to oppose the state’s request that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allow the new rules to go into effect.
“The administration is trying to stack the deck against California’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, wrote Monday to the White House. “It suggests that political considerations - not the merits of the issue - will determine how EPA acts.”
Waxman released the e-mails, which are available on the committee’s Web site [here], along with his letter to the White House. The documents show that the idea to launch the lobbying effort started with Peters.
[insert scream here]
Go read the whole thing, especially if your outrage level is running a bit low. Trust me, this will top it off right quick.
Nuke Dump Structures Moved After Study:
Engineers moved some planned structures at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump after rock samples indicated a fault line unexpectedly ran beneath their original location, an Energy Department official said Monday.
Allen Benson, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy in Las Vegas, said adjustments to the project were made in June.
“That’s why we do studies, to come up with information to make the repositories safer,” Benson said.
The department responded to a published report that cited a May 21 letter in which U.S. Geological Survey maps showed the Bow Ridge fault “may be farther east than projected.” The Las Vegas Review-Journal said it obtained the documents last week.
Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state’s chief anti-Yucca administrator, said he was not reassured by what he called “just-in-time engineering.”
“This represents a complete lack of understanding about the site’s characteristics,” Loux said. “They’ve been out there for 25 years or longer. And they get surprises like this. This is basic geology, stuff they should have known all along.”
Oops.
More substantively, I don’t think anyone should get too carried away with “look at the nuclear bullet we dodged!” stuff. But this is clearly a very strong sign that we should be pushing any such project very hard to make absolutely sure they have their facts right.
Once again, I go back to my basic risk equation and how it shapes public perceptions of nuclear power. The expected value of an accident is the probability of an accident times the average impact of an accident. People who like nuclear power focus on how small the probability of an accident is, while people who don’t like it focus on the high cost of an accident. It’s like playing Russian roulette with a gun with one bullet and many more than the usual 6 chambers. Things like this “surprise” discovery of a fault line only convinces people that the number of chambers in the gun is smaller than they thought.
Record winter heating prices expected:
Prices for home heating oil are expected to be almost 28 percent higher than last year’s level, according to NEADA. The average family is projected to pay about $402 more for heating oil than last year for a total of $1,834.
The average U.S. household will pay $992 for heating costs this winter, up $94, or 9.9 percent, from last winter, according to NEADA, a policy organization for the state energy aid officials.
You want toasty, you pay for toasty.
CO2 emissions could violate EPA ocean-quality standards within decades:
In a commentary in the September 25, 2007, issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), a large team of scientists state that human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will alter ocean chemistry to the point where it will violate U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Quality Criteria [1976] by mid-century if emissions are not dramatically curtailed now. This is the first recognition that atmospheric CO2 emissions will cause ocean waters to violate EPA water quality criteria.
The paper also says that carbon-dioxide induced “changes in ocean chemistry within the ranges predicted for the next decades and centuries present significant risks to marine biota” and that “adverse impacts on food webs and key biogeochemical process” would result.
An international team of twenty five leading researchers described the evidence to date regarding the effects of CO2 emissions on the acidity of the world’s oceans.
“About 1/3 of the CO2 from fossil-fuel burning is absorbed by the world’s oceans,” explained lead author Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology. “When CO2 gas dissolves in the ocean it makes carbonic acid which can damage coral reefs and also hurt other calcifying organisms, such as phytoplankton and zooplankton, some of the most critical players at the bottom of the world’s food chain. In sufficient concentration, the acidity can corrode shellfish shells, disrupt coral formation, and interfere with oxygen supply. ”
Most of the research today points to a future where, in the absence of a major effort to curtail carbon dioxide emissions, there will be double the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (760 parts per million, or ppm) by century’s end. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could reach 500 ppm by mid-century. Pre-industrial concentrations, by comparison, were 280 ppm and today’s concentration is about 380 ppm.
The acidity from CO2 dissolved in ocean water is measured by the pH scale (potential of Hydrogen). Declines in pH indicate that a solution is more acidic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [1976] Quality Criteria for Water state: “For open ocean waters where the depth is substantially greater than the euphotic zone, the pH should not be changed more than 0.2 units outside the range of naturally occurring variation …” The euphotic zone goes to a depth of about 650 feet (200 meters), where light can still reach and photosynthesis can occur.
“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations need to remain at less than 500 ppm for the ocean pH decrease to stay within the 0.2 limit set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [1976],” remarked Caldeira. “If atmospheric CO2 goes above 500 ppm, the surface of the entire ocean will be out of compliance with EPA pH guidelines for the open ocean. We need to start thinking about carbon dioxide as an ocean pollutant. That is, when we release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, we are dumping industrial waste in the ocean.”
Keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below 500 ppm level would require a rapid global transition to a system of energy production and consumption that releases very little carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
We’re on track to have illegal, dead oceans? Oy.
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It seems that the article run by Next Energy News (which I wrote about here) was either a joke by or on them, or a byproduct of someone’s delusional state. I asked one of the PR people at Ford about this, he passed it to one of his colleagues, Jennifer Moore, who got right back to me. Her reply, in its entirety (except for her signature and contact information):
Unsourced article indeed. Our current focus is on our collaboration with Southern California Edison to develop new business models that would support plug in hybrids as well as develop the technology with an eye toward commercialization (making them accessible and affordable). I do not know where the next Energy news story came from.
(I had referred to the article as “unsourced”, hence her use of that term.)
I don’t know who originated this charade, but it seems pretty clear that it was a whole lot of nothing about nothing.
Ford to bring back ESCORT in 2010 with 100 mpg Hybrid:
Ford Motor Company has embarked on a bold mission to bring back the Escort name in a revolutionary new Plug-in Hybrid vehicle.
The new Hybrid only vehicle will compete with the highly successful Toyota Prius which has established a loyal cult-like following since its introduction 7 years ago. The new Escort Hybrid is planned for the model year 2011 and to be introduced in the fall of 2010.
…
The System Ford has chosen is a single mode Hybrid instead of the Dual-mode Hybrid that is going to be offered by GM and Chrysler. The Dual-mode hybrid uses two smaller electric motors that assist the gasoline engine at different times in the acceleration cycle. Ford believes the Single mode Plug-in Hybrid system will be superior in the future with the introduction of
“Super Batteries” now being developed.
…
Ford is in race with GM to bring out the new Escort before the Chevy Volt hits the market in 2010. Alan Mulally Ford’s new CEO realizes that Ford needs to hang on to their perceived lead in domestic Hybrid technology first developed and introduced for the Ford Escape.
Well, isn’t this a nifty surprise?
Assuming this report is accurate (a point I bring up only because of the lack of citations or quotations in the article), then it’s a great sign that Ford is finally showing some serious movement in the right direction. And sorry, Ford fans, but even with the Escape Hybrid, they’ve been wandering in the wilderness for far too long while other companies have received nearly all the attention for things like the upcoming Volt. (And the less said about their “perceived lead domestic Hybrid technology”, the better.)
Right now, we’re in a state of uncertainty with the US car companies. GM is a mix of very promising moves (the Volt) and some supremely awful ones (the reintroduction of the Camaro). Chrysler is still on big, honkin’ unknown, thanks to their recent buyout, although rumors are floating around the net that they’ll be making major product line changes quickly. Ford has been largely invisible. Yes, they talked about their hydrogen fuel cell series hybrid, which I think most people dismissed as being as likely to arrive soon as one of those flying cars from the Popular Science covers of the 1930’s. Could this announcement be a major move in the right direction for Ford and those of us who desperately want to shift transportation from oil to electrons?
I will ask the press people at Ford what’s going on here.
Toyota’s Irv Miller jumps into Series-Parallel debate again! Now with new definitions!:
Over at the Toyota Open Road Blog, Communications VP Irv Miller has chimed in again on the whole parallel vs series hybrid debate, this time with some fresh definitions.
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Perhaps Miller’s most interesting, if dubious, point comes when he tries to redefine some hybrid terminology. The series hybrid is simple: it refers to a battery-powered vehicle with some kind of range extender. Miller defines a parallel hybrid as a system like the Honda IMA that does not have an EV-only mode. Most other people in the industry would call this a mild parallel hybrid, since both the internal combustion and electric motors provide torque to the wheels. In function this is little different from the GM belt-alternator-starter hybrid system.Referring to Toyota’s own Hybrid-Synergy-Drive system, he now terms to this as a series/parallel hybrid system. The series portion comes in because the system can drive the vehicle from the electric motor only, in addition to using the combination of the ICE/motor or just ICE. Ford, GM and everyone else using such a system just call this a strong parallel hybrid. This move of changing the terms of the discussion really comes off more as obfuscation of the argument than advancement. It seems like Toyota may be regretting opening this can of worms in the first place. At least Miller does acknowledge that their is no one right answer and that their is room for multiple solutions for different applications.
Someone should remind Toyota of the Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, stop digging.
This is really getting absurd, and has proven another old guideline, that any argument that goes on long enough eventually devolves into semantics.
I should jump in here and explain how I use these terms, even at the risk of making the situation worse. In short, I agree with the author above (not Miller), on what’s a parallel vs. a series hybrid, and within a parallel, where the dividing line is between strong and weak variants.
I would agree that the Toyota system is this new thing, a “series/parallel” hybrid, only if [1] the battery can be charged from the engine (i.e. not just regenerative braking) and [2] the vehicle can drive some non-trivial distance, say, 10 miles, purely on electricity.
I don’t make any distinction between series hybrids that start/stop the ICE as needed from those in which the ICE runs constantly. I’m sure that there’s a terminology difference there, or if not, someone will come along and create one shortly.
I think what we’re seeing here is Toyota not liking the fact they’re on the wrong side of the series vs. parallel divide, and deciding to address it in the very short run with PR moves while the engineers work behind the scenes on something more substantive for public consumption in a few years.
Series hybrids, especially with greatly downsized ICE’s capable of running on E85, could make such an enormous difference in the petroleum intensity of our transportation that I think they’re inevitable. The only way I don’t think they will arrive and become a dominant part of the market is if we make basically no advances in battery technology, or we make such huge advances that we can leap straight to EV’s. I strongly doubt either of those scenarios will come to pass.
See US energy usage for a treasure chest full of US energy geek goodies, in the form of gobs of state-level stats and rankings.
Sun launches community for measuring, comparing GHG emissions:
In an effort to help organizations get a handle on their swelling carbon footprints, Sun today is launching OpenEco.org, an online community providing free tools and resources for calculating, tracking, and comparing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
With OpenEco.org, organizations can calculate on a granular level the GHGs related to their facilities and vehicle fleets, based on standard, approved carbon accounting standards. They also can track trends and their progress, and compile reports suitable under programs such as the EPA Climate Leaders, according to Sun.
Scientists hopeful despite climate signs:
Climate scientists say mankind is on the path for soaring temperatures that will melt polar ice sheets, raise seas to dangerous levels, and trigger mass extinctions. But they say the most catastrophic of consequences can and will be avoided.
They have hope. So should you, Mann said.
“Sometimes we fear that we are delivering too morose a message and not conveying enough that there is reason for optimism,” Mann said.
Mann is not alone in laughing, even though the news he delivers could make people cry.
“It’s hard at times,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. “You can’t give up hope because what else is there in life if you give up hope? When you give up hope, that’s quitting and scientists don’t like to quit.”
That optimism is based on science and faith.
The science, Mann said, is because climate researchers are sure of one thing that the public isn’t: The numbers show that there is still time to avert the worst.
NASA’s James Hansen, who forecasts some of the bleakest outlooks on global warming, said in an e-mail: “I am always surprised when people get depressed rather than energized to do something. It’s not too late to stabilize climate.”
“I am not about to give up,” Hansen wrote. He has hope, he says, because he has grandchildren.
The views of these scientists perfectly encapsulate my current thinking. It’s not too late, we can make a difference, and because the stakes are so stupefyingly high, we will find ways to fix the situation.
And yes, it’s the oldest cliche in such circles, but it really is about the children. I’m of an age where, if I had children, they would quite possibly be parents themselves. This is an eerie realization, to say the least–I’ve never thought of myself as a father, let alone a (gasp!) grandfather. But I suddenly have these inexplicable feelings, which I refer to as “the grandfather gene kicking in”, in which I desperately want to do what I can to help fix this staggering mess we’ve created. I feel it when I’m around our neighbors kids or our own three nieces or the middle school kids I presented to last year or even the small group of college kids in the audience last week.
It is a moral imperative, nothing less.
And that is precisely why I hate both the cornucopians/deniers and the Apocalypticons. We don’t have the luxury of wasting time while the mainstream public is given wildly false information. The cornucopians are delaying the much needed responses to peak oil and global warming, while the Apocalypticons are scaring people into either giving up or doing the wrong things.
The battle is just getting under way, and I, for one, ain’t goin’ without a fight.
Record sea ice melt this summer larger than Texas and Alaska:
Shattering previous records, the sea ice in the Arctic shrank 1 million square miles more this summer than the average melt over 25 years, an area larger than Alaska and Texas combined, according to NASA satellite data released Thursday.
Scientists at the federally financed National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado attributed the big melt to a global increase in ocean and air temperatures. The melting was made worse by a cloudless summer in the Arctic, the researchers said.
“The Arctic sea ice is the first signal, and the biggest signal, of the effects of rising global temperatures,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the center.
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Melting sea ice doesn’t raise ocean levels as do melting glaciers and other land-based ice. But what happens in the Arctic affects the globe as a whole, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of experts preparing studies of Earth’s physical functions as well as effects on humans and the economy.The Arctic melt is expected to amplify the Earth’s warming, as there is less sea ice to reflect sunlight back into space and more dark ocean to absorb solar energy. Warmer water flowing from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and fresher water flowing into the North Atlantic from the Arctic also will change ocean temperatures and currents.
ACCESS TO OIL IS BEDROCK OF OUR MIDDLE EAST POLICY:
Should the United States invade a foreign country for its oil?
If that question were posed in a poll, the vast majority of Americans would no doubt answer with a resounding “no.” We’re the good guys in the world, spreading democracy, freeing the oppressed, opposing tyrants. We wouldn’t invade a sovereign country strictly out of a selfish lust for its resources, would we?
Of course we would. We’ve already supported coups, sent armies and invaded at least one country to protect our access to petroleum. In his newly published memoirs, Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, put that uncomfortable truth front and center with his thoughts on the invasion of Iraq.
“I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows — the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he wrote.
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Think about it. What other reason does the United States have for its deep involvement in the Middle East, an unstable region full of despots, hostile to democracy and friendly to jihadists? That’s why the United States pushed Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991 — to prevent a subsequent invasion of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. While several agendas converged to drive the war wagon to Baghdad in 2003, the critical factor — indeed the cause that underpinned all others — was protecting U.S. access to Middle East oil reserves.
The author (Cynthia Tucker, of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) makes some excellent points beyond those quoted above. Go read it all.
In hacking through a backlog of misc. stuff, I came across the recent interview with James Schlesinger, the US’s first Secretary of Energy. (Direct link to the 13MB MP3 file is here.)
In this interview, when asked about his claim that the PR battle is over and the peakists have won, Schesinger says (my transcription; any errors are mine):
If you speak to people in the industry, they will concede that whatever the company may say publicly, we understand that we are facing a decline in our own production and that worldwide we are not going to be able to produce more fuel liquids or crude oil in the near future. And if you look at pronouncements by governments, including the Energy Information Administration in the United States, the National Petroleum Council, what they show is that by the early 2020’s we are going to have peaked out in terms of conventional oil production. And that is an immense change from what we have seen before in the attitude in the industry.
He also says that politicians aren’t talking about it purely out of a desire to be (re-)elected, since it’s such bad news. He tells of being at a conference where an ex-CEO of an oil company said, “course I’m a peakist”, although this unnamed person seemed not to mention the timing associated with his recognition that math works.
Schlesinger also says that he thinks the distinction between a geological and logistical peak in oil supply is important “conceptually, but not practically”.
So, what do we really have here? I think it’s clear that most of the people in the Legislative and Executive branches “know about peak oil,” even if they think it’s coming further in the future than I do. I suspect he’s right in explaining why no politicians are talking about peak oil–much better to address it indirectly through reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the “achieving energy independence” canard than to expose the monster under our bed. (Which leads me to think that the members of the peak oil caucus in the US House of Representatives must consist of very brave people.)
I’m less convinced that large companies outside of the oil business are on board. I suspect that many of them are still working from ignorance on this topic, and are so concerned with labor negotiations or law suits or making the next quarter’s numbers look pretty that they’re paying very little attention to things that are years away, especially when the EIA is sticking to their “we have decades before the peak” stance.
Let me point out, yet again, that the key is not the peak, but the crunch. Peak oil does not mean the end of oil, as we all know, so what we really care about is the price of oil and the ramifications of its increase. If we hit the peak and supply started to decline, but worldwide demand dropped just a little faster, then the world price of oil would decline, even post-peak. I’m not suggesting that’s how things will play out (although it would be nice), merely pointing out that supply and demand trumps the absolute world peak in terms of importance to human beings.
Finally, I truly hate the word “peakist”, but I don’t know what’s better. Peak oiler? Peaker? Person who understands that we can’t use a non-renewable resource forever?
I also point out that Schlesinger and I have one view in common: The Iraq war was about oil. Not stealing or controlling it, but making sure it was available to the US on the open market. Looked at that way, we have paid and will continue to pay, in blood and treasure, one hell of an access premium on whatever oil we consume from Iraq and anywhere else in that part of the world where the supply might have fallen prey to, shall we say, another country’s influence.
Greenhouse Earth: Methane powered runaway global warming:
Methane released from wetlands turned the Earth into a hothouse 55 million years ago, according to research released Wednesday that could shed light on a worrying aspect of today’s climate-change crisis.
Scientists have long sought to understand the triggers for an extraordinary warming episode called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 10 million years after the twilight of the dinosaurs.
Earth’s surface warmed by at least five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few hundred or a few thousand years. The Arctic Ocean was at 23 degrees Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit) — about the same as a tepid bath — before the planet eventually cooled.
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Pancost’s team sifted through the dirt to measure the carbon isotope values of hopanoids, which are compounds made by bacteria.They found that levels of these isotopes suddenly fell at the onset of the PETM, yielding a signature that can only be explained if the bugs dramatically switched to a diet of methane, a powerful, naturally-occurring greenhouse gas.
Reporting in the British journal Nature, Pancost believes that the methane had remained locked up in the soil for millions of years before warming released it into the atmosphere.
As atmospheric methane levels rose, so too did Earth’s temperature as a result of the famous “greenhouse” effect. In turn, that released more methane, and so on.
Am I the only one who read this and didn’t immediately think of Walter and Luis Alvarez making the claim in 1980 that they’d found a smoking gun in the geologic record that showed the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite strike? (They found a thin, iridium-rich layer at the 65 million-years-ago level, which was then detected around the world.) At first it seemed absurd, but has become more and more accepted.
The possibility of a massive methane release scares me spitless, whether it’s from defrosting Siberian (so-called) permafrost or methane hydrates bubbling up from the ocean floor. We don’t yet know enough to gauge this as a threat or what magic temperature it will take to kick start it. But I think the size of the methane deposits make possibly the largest of all positive feedback loops.
Bush to Skip U.N. Talks on Global Warming:
Dozens of world leaders are to gather at the United Nations on Monday for a full agenda of talks on how to fight global warming, and President Bush is skipping all the day’s events but the dinner.
His focus instead is on his own gathering of leaders in Washington later this week, a meeting with the same stated goal, a reduction in the emissions blamed for climate change, but a fundamentally different idea of how to achieve it.
Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, as his critics charge. They say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.
483 days until 1/20/2009. Just sayin’.
NRDC Challenges Toyota to prove its Green Image is more Than just ‘Empty Words’:
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the biggest and most politically-connected environmental organizations in the world, is challenging Toyota to prove that its environmentally-friendly image is more than just so many “empty words.”
In what could turn out to be a major threat to Toyota’s marketing strategy, the NRDC last week called upon its members to write the president of Toyota North America and tell him to break ranks with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which opposes a bill currently before Congress that would raise vehicles’ fuel economy.
In an email, NRDC told members that “Prius fans might be surprised to learn that Toyota is trying to move America backward on fuel economy.” Pointedly noting that Toyota hasn’t broken ranks with others in the manufacturers’ alliance, the email went on to rhetorically ask: “Why is Toyota, a company that can make a car that gets 55 miles per gallon today, fighting a 35 mpg standard?”
Good. We need a bright light turned on all the car companies who are fighting these CAFE revisions.
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See A Siegel’s Daily Kos diary, Will Congress condemn this ad?, for more detail on the latest advertising blitz to push denier myths than you can stomach.
Honestly, the details in Siegel’s diary are so offensive, the effect of the ad campaign he describes so counter-productive, that I can’t muster even a feeble attempt at humor.
I could live to be 200 years old and never fully understand the mindset behind such efforts. I keep trying to rely on my economics training for an explanation–these people are so fixated on what they perceive to be a short-term threat to their economic interests that they’re willing to do anything to stop action to reduce CO2 emissions, regardless of the long-term consequences. But my mind recoils from the thought of the staggering level of myopia and indifference to the fate of other human beings and the ecosphere as a whole, not to mention the jaw-dropping boneheadedness of the deniers.
Will the PO arena see the same level of denier activity? I can’t see why not. If anything, the monetary incentive to be a PO denier is likely even greater, and more concentrated, than it is among the GW deniers. We’re in for quite the PR onslaught if PO becomes a mainstream meme the way GW has.
Have I mentioned lately that the future will be a lot of things, but “dull” isn’t on the list?
By the way, it looks like technical problems in the taping will prevent me from posting a video of the entire presentation from the other night. I might be able to edit out some snippets and post them, if I think they would be useful as standalone clips. I won’t know until I get the DVD from Keri and have a chance to play with it in editing software.
Sadly (or luckily, depending on your point of view, so to speak), I had to do the presentation fully clothed, as the Brighton Library has a “no naked people spray painted candy apple red” policy. Philistines.
Wow, and I thought I needed to get a life.
Well, as a way of saying thanks to those dropping in tonight, let me post something non-energy-related that I’ve been meaning to toss out here. What is it? You’ll have to click to find out.
Let me shovel some links in your general direction, just to give you something worthwhile to do on the weekend…
Disclosures and Public Companies in the World of GHG Regulation:
Pressure is building toward increased disclosure by public companies of greenhouse gas (”GHG”) emissions and the possible effects of climate change on business. SEC disclosure rules do not require specific disclosure of GHG emission levels or climate-related risks beyond that generally applicable to all environmental issues and to the required disclosure regarding business operations, risk factors and financial aspects of the business. In the past, existing disclosure rules have prompted climate-related disclosures by companies in industries already subject to regulation (e.g., coal-fired generators in states that have enacted GHG emission regulation) or other businesses particularly vulnerable to effects of GHG emissions or climate control, such as oil refining, petrochemical production and transportation. Meanwhile, companies in industries thought to be less directly affected have tended to rely on general disclosure regarding environmental and regulatory risks. Although the disclosure rules may stay the same, many are now arguing that the regulatory environment is changing and risks are increasing, resulting in the need for more disclosure.
Prediction: The whole issue of accurate accounting for GHG emissions, whether by companies or countries, will be one of those critical issues that almost no one talks about. It will be a close analog to the issue of oil reserve and production transparency, which Matt Simmons has been talking about for years.
I’m convinced we’ll have a situation in just a few years where scientists will be saying something like, “three years ago, we had X PPM of CO2 in the air, and now it’s Y PPM. But the claimed emissions of all countries only account for 75% of that rise from X to Y.” And that’s when the finger pointing exercise will really kick into high gear.
First Renewable FIT Introduced in U.S.:
Patterned after Germany’s highly successful Renewable Energy Sources Act, Veteran Michigan Assemblywoman Kathleen Law submitted a bill to the Michigan House of Representatives earlier this week that creates the first comprehensive renewable energy feed-in tariff (FIT) introduced into any U.S. legislature.
Like the German law which has powered the country to world leadership in wind, solar, and biomass energy—and created nearly one-quarter million new jobs in its booming renewable energy industry—proponents of the bill are hoping the tariff will revive Michigan’s flagging economy.
Great idea, virtually zero chance it or anything close will become law in the US within the next decade. Unless, that is, US politicians receive a massive spine transplant.
(See the article for more details on the legislation.)
Hover over a country to see how many metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions it emits per capita, or how many millions of tons it emits total, and whether it has ratified the Kyoto Accord. Invitees to Bush’s September 28th major emitters meeting are also marked.
Cool interactive maps. Go play.
Toyota calls for Congress to pass Hill-Terry CAFE bill:
Over on the Toyota Open Road blog, VP Communications Irv Miller has put a post calling on Congress to pass a comprehensive energy bill this session. In particular, Toyota wants the US Congress to pass the Hill-Terry fuel economy standards. That’s the same proposal favored by the domestic automakers that would raise the fleet average to somewhere between 32 and 35 mpg by 2022.
I must be dumb as a stump, because I still don’t get this. The rate of technological change is going to so far outstrip these numbers that I can’t figure out why Toyota and the US companies are set against them. Could it be simply that those are the companies with the most to lose from truck sales being hammered? Could they actually not realize that over the next 10 years gasoline prices will largely relegate light truck sales to commercial customers, anyway?
A bright energy future without coal or nuclear:
This week, our dirty coal-fired power plants were back in the news with electoral candidates arguing the ifs and whens of their necessary shutdown. Shutting down coal plants, our guiltiest climate-change-causing beasts, seems like a no-brainer, but heels keep dragging.
We’re told that spending $1.3 billion on scrubbers is the answer. Let’s be clear: Scrubbers remove some particulates – pollution that causes smog – but they will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. In fact, scrubbers are energy intensive and could lead to more of these emissions, leaving us further unable to meet Kyoto targets.
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For Ontario, a decision to invest billions of dollars in nuclear megaprojects or coal scrubbers is a decision not to invest in clean renewable technology. Every dollar sunk into huge transmission systems to support centralized megaprojects is a dollar not invested in “smart grids” that accommodate local production of renewable energy.A bright energy future without the need for coal or nuclear is doable. With renewable energy, energy efficiency and co-generation, we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions by half of what’s called for in the OPA plan. Ontarians could actually be saving money on their electricity bill rather than deepening our nuclear debt with at least another 40 years of expensive and unreliable power, not to mention generating more long-lived, unsolvable radioactive waste.
Arctic Melting Leaves Countries Sparring:
The reports from the world’s scientists depict the Arctic sea ice cap now shrunk to its smallest size in history — the great melting uncovering vast stretches of the Arctic Ocean and opening up a northwest shipping lane mariners have been dreaming about since Christopher Columbus discovered America.
The reports from the world’s diplomats and military planners say there’s a new theater of war — at least cold war — where tensions are heating up because the world is.
Go read it all, and weep for what we’re doing to the world we’re leaving to our children.
Evidence of global warming surrounds a skeptic:
In his book “Cool it: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming,” published earlier this month, the controversial Danish academic pooh-poohs warnings of potential catastrophes caused by climate change.
“We will not lose our forests. We will not run out of energy, raw materials or water,” argues Lomborg, booked at Town Hall tonight.
Huh? Instead of coming into our house and lecturing us, Lomborg ought to take a few days off and look around.
He should travel into British Columbia, where warmer winters in the very cold Chilcotin Plateau have allowed the mountain pine beetle to embark on what’s likely to be a cross-North America killing spree.
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Lomborg makes a salient case for the urgency of providing Third World countries with safe drinking water and of curing the HIV/AIDS epidemic that is sweeping southern Africa.We have an urgent challenge here, too. West Coast states and British Columbia have recognized the need for what Campbell calls “decisive action” on climate change. Outright denial, or a claim of exaggeration, is an unaffordable indulgence.
My enthusiasm for reading and reviewing Lomborg’s book continues to recede.
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Last night’s presentation went very well. My running joke about such things is that if no one was physically injured and no one was arrested, it was a success. By that admittedly low standard, our little event last night went pretty OK.
There was one violent incident, however, in the form of my inadvertent assault on reality. On slide 3, where I provide a brief summary of the oil situation, I somehow got one of the most basic numbers of US energy consumption wrong. I said oil provides 28% of US energy, when it’s obviously 40%. The version of the presentation online (here, 1MB PDF) has been corrected. My sincere thanks to Hank for the e-mail pointing this out. As penance, I will sit in the corner this afternoon and memorize US refinery utilization numbers.
On a slightly more serious note… We had a good crowd, and many good questions. I found out afterwards that one of the attendees was an ex-Exxon Mobil employee, and a couple of the people were Kunstler fans. If I kept that mix of people relatively happy, then I just might be ready for a run for the Senate.
As always with such things, the person in the front of the room tends to learn as much as the audience. My big revelation last night was how skewed my view is of what constitutes “optimism” in our evolving oil situation. I tend to think of myself as an optimist, and when one person questioned me about that and said that in the 1970’s we endured a lot of pain here in the US, I agreed. I said I remember it well, and that we’re likely in for a worse spell in the coming years, but that I wasn’t concerned. I said that we’ll still be growing and delivering food, making and delivering medicine and other critical things, even as we’re paying a lot more for it. I pointed out that if you look at the US oil consumption numbers chart (the red line on slide 7 of the presentation, for those of you playing the home version), we used a lot less oil very quickly. It definitely wasn’t fun, but we’re still here, and this time around, while it’s likely to be a permanent condition and not just a few years, we have a lot of technology to make harvesting that low hanging fruit easier. Better car technology, the Internet (allowing many people to work from home), and the overall benefits of computerization for things like dynamically managing traffic to reduce congestion.
It was at that moment, when I saw the look on a lot of faces in the room, that I realized how loaded the term “optimist” really is.
I’m not at all sure what this implies for how I should present this kind of material or how I should describe my personal views. The answer might well be: There is no implication, beyond being ready to explain it when asked, as I did last night. But it’s something to ponder a bit while memorizing those refinery utilization stats.
I’ll have a post about last night’s presentation shortly. For now, some tidbits to hold you over…
China to enter ‘wind power era’ before 2010:
China will enter an era in which wind power will be fully developed by 2010, an expert said on Wednesday.
He Dexin, president of the Chinese Wind Energy Association (CWEA), said the gross installed power-generating capacity would reach 5,000 megawatts by the end of 2010, ahead of schedule.
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He laid out a road map for the country’s wind power development:
- After 2010, China will independently design and manufacture a wind turbine generator system.
- The country’s wind power-generating capacity will reach 30,000 megawatts before 2020, and will head towards a 50,000-megawatt goal.
- The cost of wind power will be close to that of traditional power generating methods at the time.
- The capacity will reach 100,000 megawatts in 2030 when wind power will be extensively applied in various industries.
Just for a sense of scale, the current US wind power capacity is 12,634 MW.
I expect to see this kind of growth around the world as we get more serious about reducing CO2 emissions and run up against higher natural gas prices.
The IPCC estimates that aviation today is responsible for 2 percent of global CO2 emissions with a total climate change impact of 3 percent. These figures have remained largely unchanged over the last two decades, despite the growth of air traffic.
Projecting forward to 2050, the IPCC has aviation at 3 percent of global CO2 emissions and 5-6 percent of climate change impact. We are and will remain a small part of the big problem of climate change.
Nonetheless, aviation’s carbon footprint is growing, and that is politically unacceptable for any industry. The challenge is to keep the many benefits of aviation - unprecedented global mobility that supports 32 million jobs and $3.5 billion worth of economic activity - while eliminating its negative impacts.
The solution is not to return to the days when flying was reserved for the well-to-do by making it artificially expensive with even more taxes. Punitive economic measures like emissions trading will not have a big impact on aviation’s environmental performance.
With 28 percent of costs coming directly from fuel, the airline industry has the strongest incentive of any industry to keep fuel consumption low. Positive measures - tax credits to encourage faster re-fleeting or grants to fund alternative fuel research - would deliver better results.
Prediction: Even the best of policies won’t change the fact that air travel CO2 emissions will continue to grow (in absolute terms, probably not in per-passenger-mile terms), and the entire sector will indeed shrink to a boutique industry as oil prices go much higher in coming years.
While it’s true that we’re making some significant progress on making jet fuel from coal, I think the down pressure on that technology will come in the form of CO2 emissions reduction. In other words, that fuel will also become much more expensive, and the squeeze on the airlines will be almost as bad as if they were running on 100% petroleum.
I don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs, and I have no desire to see any industry downsized or wiped out by the oil crunch. But to be blunt, if the airline sector shrinks a lot and we replace a lot of that travel with new passenger trains, I would consider it a good trade-off for the economy and environment as a whole.
Ethanol craze endangers U.S. Plains water: report:
The U.S. craze for ethanol could severely strain an already ailing aquifer in key farm states, increasing demand for scarce water supplies by more than 2 billion gallons a year, according to a report issued Thursday by the nonprofit group Environmental Defense.
The environmental group’s report focused on the Ogallala aquifer, an 800-mile-long underground pool that stretches from Texas to South Dakota. The Ogallala feeds one-fifth of all the irrigated land in the United States, and is critical to farmers growing corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans and other crops.
The report states that between three and six gallons of water are needed to produce one gallon of ethanol, potentially increasing demand on the already declining Ogallala by as much as 2.6 billion gallons a year just to process the corn and produce the fuel. Another 120 billion gallons a year could be needed for irrigation to grow more corn in the region, according to the report.
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According to the ethanol coalition, there are 132 ethanol plants currently in operation with a capacity for 6.8 billion gallons a year and 79 under construction with capacity for 5.7 billion gallons. Most of the ethanol development is in the U.S. Midwest.
Once again, water issues are right in the center of the overlap between peak oil and global warming. More reliance on biofuels and more fossil fuel or nuclear electricity generation (which we’ll need more of as we electrify transportation) mean much more water consumption, even as global weather patterns are shifting water supplies, often away from areas that we’ve thought of as “always” being farm land.
Hot off the keyboard, here’s the “final” version of my presentation, The Oil Crunch (26 page, 1MB PDF).
Thanks again to everyone who offered comments.
Tomorrow I’ll post a summary of how it went and address any noteworthy questions from the audience. I’m expecting at least one or two questions from deep left field tonight, plus some of the usual, “oh there’s plenty of oil, the big companies like Exxon are just screwing us” skepticism.
I will also get caught up on today’s comments.
