CCS — Use It Or Lose It

One of the most compelling chapters in the PBS Frontline 2-hour special on global warming that aired earlier this week was the segment on America's Addiction to Coal.
PBS dives headfirst into the myth of clean coal and pretty much tears it apart using something we don't often see these days when it come US energy issues: facts.

Fine ceramic tubes cut carbon dioxide out of coal-fired power

If this works out, I'm putting my money (ha) into advanced ceramic material...

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com Science Daily — Greenhouse gas emissions from power stations could be cut to almost zero by controlling the combustion process with tiny tubes made from an advanced ceramic material, claim engineers on August 3, 2007. The oxygen-depleted air, which consists mainly of nitrogen, can be returned to the atmosphere with no harmful effects on the environment, while the carbon dioxide can be collected separately from the inside of the tubes after combustion. An alternative would be to control the flow of air and methane so that only partial combustion took place. This would result in a flow of 'synthesis gas', a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can easily be converted into a variety of useful hydrocarbon chemicals.

Bush pushes for international inaction on global warming

President Bush is organising a September conference and inviting the world's major polluters to develop strategies to hold onto business as usual for as long as possible.

I'll eat my Grand PooBah hat, Freemasons Apron, and publish the secret handshake on my blog, if they actually agree to reduce emissions.

In theory they should — they claim to want to contribute.

"The United States is committed to collaborating with other major economies to agree on a detailed contribution for a new global framework by the end of 2008, which would contribute to a global agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by 2009," Bush said in his invitation.

But here's the rub.

"In addition, we expect to place special emphasis on how major economies can, in close cooperation with the private sector, accelerate the development and deployment of clean technologies, a critical component of an effective global approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

It's about investing more into yet-to-be-developed 'clean coal' technology, or more tax-subsidised, long-term nuclear projects. Not about reducing emissions in the here-and-now at all. In other words, business-as-usual, for the polluters. Viewed against their record profits, it's galling.

clipped from www.smh.com.au US President George Bush has invited the world's major polluters, including Australia, to a September 27-28 conference to set long-term goals on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental groups have called the plan, which Bush proposed in a speech on May 31, a diversion from other global efforts to combat global warming, while Washington says it complements UN-driven talks on the issue. Bush has asked Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea in separate letters to send representatives to Washington for the meeting, officials said today. Like Australia, the United States - the world's number one emitter of greenhouse gases - has refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandates cuts in the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It expires in 2012. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Will Howard be alive to trade carbon?

Yesterday winter officially began in Australia, yet here I am still wearing me favourite t-shirt and blogging away in me favourite grundies. You, dear reader, should consider yourself seriously honoured.

So it is with a certain sense of irony that I witness that our prime global warming denialist, Prime Minister John Howard, release his Report on the Task Group on Emissions Trading into such an under-dressed climate. While his unprecedented acknowledgement of the need for emissions trading is a radical departure from his previous stances, and a welcome one, it is still hard to throw off those nagging doubts sparked by those within own party referring to him as The Lying Rodent.

ANALYSIS OF THE REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER HOWARD’S
TASK GROUP ON EMISSIONS TRADING

by Wadard

1. The PM's terms of reference are biased towards sustaining coal and uranium exports.

“Australia enjoys major competitive advantages through the possession of large reserves of fossil fuels and uranium. In assessing Australia’s further contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these advantages must be preserved.
Against this background the Task Group will be asked to advise on the nature and design of a workable global emissions trading system in which Australia would be able to participate. The Task Group will advise and report on additional steps that might be taken, in Australia, consistent with the goal of establishing such a system."

2. Some of the submissions by interested parties are confidential, that is, not publicly available for scrutiny.

Why so? Is transparency not important? The list of 'non-confidential' submitting parties is here:

3. The Task Group Committee comprises of senior bureaucrats, mainly economists, and fossil-fuel industry representatives, not scientists or renewable energy experts.

The Bureaucrats:
David Borthwick – Economist and former member of the Office of the Prime Minister; Ken Henry - Secretary to the Treasury in 2005; Michael L’Estrange - secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Mark Patterson - the chairman of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (2001).

The Fossil Fuel & Industry Representatives:
Peter Coates - coal miner Xstrata; Tony Concannon - International Power managing director; Chris Lynch - BHP Billiton executive director; John Marlay - Alumina Chief Executive; Margaret Jackson - chairwoman of Qantas; John Stewart - National Australia Bank.

So honestly - do I really need to take this analysis further?

If the godfathers of the local Mafia and the Yakusa, the snakeheads of the Chinese Triads, as well as the financial manager from the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan opium franchise, their Russian Crime Syndicate partners, and the Columbian Cocaine Cartels were all brought together at the taxpayers' expense to form a working group to develop a framework to combat drug trafficking, and they sought submissions from the Banditos, Nomads and Hells Angels motorbike gangs, amongst others, would you read their report with confidence or amusement?

Well, that's how I feel about this task force's report, which you can download here and judge for yourself. Let me know what you think.

I don't like being so cynical, but Howard's track record in the integrity stakes makes Judas look like Jesus. I may be wrong to be so dismissive; it's just that they want to wait to 2012 to kick-off their carbon trading. That's five years away; Given Howard's advanced age I wonder whether he is having a lend of us all?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Coal industry pledges "clean-coal" research dollars

Whenever I hear of "clean-coal", I think of safe-sex . Unless you and your partner are 100% 'healthy', and monogamous, there is no such thing as safe-sex, only safer-sex. Risks remain.

Anyhoo, there is more money for cleaner-coal research. This time coming from the industry itself:

clipped from au.news.yahoo.com Under political pressure over climate change, the coal industry has vowed to raise at least $1 billion to develop technology to curb greenhouse gases. The announcement increases by $700 million the funds producers have committed to clean coal technology. The Australian Coal Association said the $1 billion would be raised over 10 years by extending the $300 million COAL21 Fund. All black coal companies will contribute equally to the fund through a voluntary levy, which will continue indefinitely. "This should leave no doubt about the coal industry's intention to partner with state and federal governments on nationally significant clean coal projects," ACA executive director Mark O'Neill said. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie this week threatened to increase mining royalties, claiming the state's industry had reneged on a deal to invest in clean coal. Tags: global warming, climate change, clean coal, energy

Howard's vapourware or Al Gore's hard truth?

John Howard is in China. He's looking to sell Australia's non-expertise in yet-to-be-developed clean-coal messiah technology. It's only expected to potentially bear fruit under favourable conditions at some abstract time in the 20's. In software development this is called vapourware, but the irony of Howard's hawkings gives the term a new context. When considering the value of Howard's offer, the most mercantile Chinese need to understand Howard's view on "core" and "non-core" promises. Especially since he is flogging them nuclear energy as well. Surprising, this ladling uranium in India and China when the PM is not touting the "War on Terror" -- yet another new context for "vapourware".

Meanwhile Al Gore is across the Japan Sea running hard in the other direction. He's explaining to the Kyoto Protocol hosts how short the window is in which to get it right and seriously reduce emissions. Most climate scientists say ten years, so I guess Gore does not have five to waste: :::[Reuters]

Jan. 15 -Al Gore says that he will not run in the 2008 election, saying he was involved in "a different kind of campaign."

Al Gore, who is currently in Japan promoting his award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", spoke with journalists in Tokyo, saying, "The U.S. should be leading the world toward a solution for this climate crisis instead of leading in the other direction."

So... who gets your vote in this different kind of campaign? Gore may be passing up the chance to run in the US Presidential Elections, but he will be running in a different kind of way in the upcoming Australian Federal Elections. And in the next Japanese elections. And in the elections every country he promotes his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth".

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Australia Kyoto Energy

But does carbon capture and storage really work?

The Australian Government, and its coal industry (Or with the industry greenhouse mafiosos writing the Government's energy policy, is it the other way round?) has decided that future technologies preserving non-renewable energy sources are going to be the way to fight against climate change. By that they mean carbon capture technology, oxymoronically called 'clean-coal'.

And nuclear.  But the only way we are going to make nuclear cheap, is if we make coal expensive; i.e. if we burn clean coal. That's the theory we are bring sold, so what's the real plan? :::[SMH: Slow burn for carbon capture technology]

TECHNOLOGY to capture and store carbon pollution from a coal-fired power station on a large scale will be operating at only a handful of sites around the world by 2020, a coal industry report says.

There are nine large carbon capture and storage experiments under way, according to an international coal lobby group, the World Coal Institute. But even if they all stay on schedule, they will only be able to dispose of carbon generated from the equivalent of about four large coal-fired power plants.

"The race is on to have the first coal-fired carbon capture and storage demonstration project operating at a commercial scale," said the institute in a report issued on Tuesday. "A number of projects are vying for the honours in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the USA."

The plan is scaring me, Mr Howard. When you can cut your lighting energy by 75% today by srewing in energy efficient bulbs, it's absurd that you can only give me four large power station being able to carbon geo-sequester in the whole world, and by 2020. How much of the Western Arctic Iceshelf would have bumped into New Zealand by then while your plan is still trying to get off the ground?

If we don't soon move past the stage where the more things change -- like the climate -- the more they stay the same -- like politics -- we're in trouble. Howard needs to consider people other than the coal and uranium industries in charting our energy future.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Science CO2 Australian Politics Earth Australia Kyoto Energy

Arnie to auto-makers: I'll be back

One of the strategies of the fossil-fuel lobby is to confuse people down to a state of hopelessness - the argument you hear goes, "It's sheer arrogance to think that mankind can affect something as big as the atmosphere." It's fatalistc, wrong and dangerous.

Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

It was easy to laugh from all the way from Down-Under when the film-mogul Schwarzenegger became the Republican Governor of California, especially after marrying a Kennedy. The joke had been nicely set up by the Gipper becoming US President Ronald Reagan. But this guy seems to be doing a good job, and with him recognising his leadership responsibilities, i.e. to face up to climate change and take the hard decisons needed to implement laws to fight it, he's got my cyber-vote as a global citizen on a global issue: :::[SMH: Arnie goes green]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday is expected to sign into law the United States' first state cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

But even before the bill is signed, the law's future is in doubt.

Federal lawsuits related to greenhouse gas issues, involving California, Vermont and Massachusetts, could cloud California's latest attempt to be a leader in the fight against global climate change.

At the heart of California's attempt to curb the gases believed responsible for global warming are state vehicle regulations that are being challenged by US and foreign car makers. The rules, adopted in 2004 by the state Air Resources Board, would force vehicle companies to cut emissions from their cars and light trucks.

Rulings favourable to industry would greatly complicate efforts to cut overall emissions in California, knocking out nearly a quarter of the state's reduction strategy. The goal is to reduce emissions to 1990 levels over the next 14 years.

"Reducing greenhouse gases is a hugely difficult challenge," said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. "It's going to be very difficult with the auto regulations. Without them, it's going to be impossible."

Vehicle makers have sued California and Vermont for setting greenhouse gas emission standards on vehicles, saying the rules are tantamount to imposing a fuel-economy standard. Only the federal government can set gas-mileage rules.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts and 11 other states, including California, are challenging the Bush administration's decision not to regulate heat-trapping carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The case is before the US Supreme Court.

A lot is riding on Govenor Schwarzenegger winning:

California is the world's 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases, and experts warn that the state will suffer if industries and vehicles aren't forced to cut their pollutants.

It will be a tough fight against the motor industry.

Climate change experts say the state can't afford to wait any longer to begin scaling back its carbon emissions - slashing its use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

But a win in court for the motor industry on the previous regulations would send state regulators scrambling to meet the deadlines outlined in the global warming bill that Schwarzenegger is scheduled to sign this week.

They would have to find other ways to force the transportation sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 30 million metric tons, about 20 per cent of the statewide cap.

Linda Adams, head of Schwarzenegger's Environmental Protection Agency, said a court loss would take away an essential tool.

"Any attempt to undo the progress California has made to reduce climate change emissions would threaten the state's ability to meet the governor's goals," Adams said in a statement.

As a precaution, state MPs inserted a provision into the global warming bill that would give the Air Resources Board power to impose other regulations on the motor industry designed to reduce greenhouse gases.

One reason why I like him is that he had a previous life. Isn't a career-politician. But like all these high-profiles that political parties like to parachute in, the question is, is he tough enough? And in this case it's, is he tough enough to take on the motor industry and win?:

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Training gives us an outlet for suppressed energies created by stress and thus tone the spirit just as exercise conditions the body. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The wisdom he brings from his job before politics augers well for a post-material world:

Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

My grandfather was funnier: "Money may not make you happy, but I wouldn't mind finding out." I think he was paraphrasing Marx. The other Marx.

But this is the funniest yet:

I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Funny man.

Other blogs on: global+warming, climate+change, california arnold schwarzenegger

Could US energy politics go Category Five?

At some point time in time, most likely soon, you are going to see something happen that will be big enough to snap the ordinary American right out of their climate change complacency.

It may not just be one big event, it could be a confluence of a number of different events. Perhaps a harbinger of this is when journalists start to regularly use extreme weather metaphors to describe politics and industry. Raymond Learsy of the Huffington Post believes he sees a perfect storm brewing over energy.
:::[A Perfect Storm Is Developing Around Energy Policy: Friedman On TV, Gore In Our Gut]

The speculation about Gore's political ambitions are flying fast and furious. But regardless of whether Gore decides to run again, I sense that something akin to the perfect storm is developing on the issue of energy policy. With $3-a-gallon (and rising) gasoline, an emerging consensus that global warming is real, and a growing sense that Big Oil's hand-in-glove relationship with the administration and Congress harms the average American citizen, Al Gore's return to the public stage may be the critical spark that finally lights a fire under the American electorate.

And yesterday Bill Blakemore of ABCNews announced he also believes he detects a perfect storm in the making. It seems an elm tree has been uprooted and has fallen across the driveway of the White house by a literal storm, and this has served to focus the so called "debate" on global warming. :::[A Perfect Storm Descends Upon The Nations Capital]

June 26, 2006: A perfect storm of drenching rain, irony, political rancor, public fear and - at the last minute like a fierce stroke of lightning - word from the highest court in the land, descended on the nation's capital today.

This storm - pulling in many parts of the global warming emergency - also broke through the White House perimeters and helped bring down a century-old elm tree, laying it across the driveway.

It seems even Mother Nature is not adverse to using the odd bitingly ironic metaphor to make her point. Denying access to and from the White House by use of an uprooted elm (possibly planted by a significant American in the good old days of 'for the people, by the people') until the U.S. Supreme Court announces that it will indeed hear the case brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that it should have regulated carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming.

How poetic and pithy a protest is that?

Not quite as poetic as the license George W Bush takes with the truth when he holds that there is a scientific global warming debate on whether global warming is man-made or natural. In what is a departure from the way US media generally cover global warming and politics, Blakemore takes the President to task for propagating propaganda:

"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary...… to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil"

The President - as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find - is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -— as he also did a few weeks ago - that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" - well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society" level.

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence - gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world - that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

I grew up in a county subject to big thunder storms, every summer day at 3:00pm for 15 minutes the rapidly darkened heavens would open up on an otherwise sunny sky. On occasion one got a sense during the build up of the storm that it was going to be a much bigger one than usual. You could smell the electricity in the air, taste it in your mouth (tastes like blood), and feel the beginnings of a tingle on the back of your neck. And you just knew you were in for one serious doozy.

That's kind of how it feels now, but on a global dimension.

Other blogs on: global warming climate change politics us supreme court co2 carbon dioxide

They don't drought global warming in Goulburn.

The current drought has claimed it's first dam, the Pejar Dam, which services the NSW city of Goulburn, which is now officially empty for the first time in its 25 year old history.

After six consecutive years of below average rainfall, the Pejar Dam, which when full has a capacity of 9,000 megalitres, is now down to just 3 megalitres, the Goulburn Mulwaree Council said.

Now with the water supply coming from Sooley Dam and Rossi Weir, which are both about 90 per cent full, Goulburn had enough water for just 17 months.

Water supply for Goulburn is now only at 30.5 per cent of total capacity. Only 18.5 per cent of this water is of usable quality.

Get used to it.

Other posts about the drought in Australia

• Global Warming Watch: Finally some rain where it counts.
  It must be Christmas. Finally rain fell in the Warragamba Dam catchment area...
• Global Warming Watch: Gums have reason to be blue
  Who needs trees anyway?
• Global Warming Watch: 2005, hottest year on record, almost.
  Repeat after me whilst fanning, "Global warming is not happening!"

Tags: global+warming, global+warming+effects, climate+change, drought, dam+levels, Australia, Goulburn

AP6 climate talks raises temperatures

The people are not fooled by the recent Sydney AP6 industry-friendly climate smokescreen as the Letters to the Editor of the SMH demonstrate:

Hot air does little to cool the greenhouse.

Along with the world's, my temperature was rising when reading the results of the government climate change junket ("Greenhouse battle handed to industry", January 13). What on earth did the government representatives actually do? The only outcome I see is that they have now officially rubber- stamped further destruction of the world's climate by the world's biggest polluting companies and countries.

My temperature finally boiled over when I read a quote from the US representative that nuclear energy would be "discussed by the renewable energy group because many people consider it a renewable source". How do you renew uranium? Is Kakadu renewable? I would laugh if I could stop crying in despair.

Damien Quinnell Menai

John Howard has just pledged to spend $1 a person a year for the next five years to slash greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe he should spend $2.50 a person, as he did with his industrial reforms campaign, to explain why his el cheapo solution will work.

Stephen Wong Castlecrag

How could you possibly expect industry leaders to look after the health of the planet when the best they can do is to reward themselves with the highest possible salaries while their fellow workers, who are deemed lower on the status ladder, can earn up to 250 times less. Can those who think so highly of themselves be truly trusted to think of others?

Richard Nohra Hurlstone Park

Why does John Howard speak at these conferences? It would be much simpler if he rose after an American and just said "ditto".

Jim Ruxton Pymble

One hundred million dollars from our guys? That's about two Liberal government ad campaigns. And $69 million from the United States? That's about $10 million less than what they spent investigating Bill Clinton's fib and a semen stain.

Ross Sharp Toowong (Qld)

Tags: News, Politics, Global Warming, Greenhouse, Climate Change

AP6 a whole lot of hot air

The inaugral Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6) has come up with a rather unimpressive resolve to invent new technologies to make fossil fuels 'cleaner'. To this end it is pledging $A170 million over 5 years.

Too little, too late, wrong focus. Global warming was flagged as a problem to the world by the revelations of the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990, which pointed to strong and growing evidence of temperature rise, sea level rise and other changes resulting from rising emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.

That report stressed the need for a 60 to 80 percent cut in CO2 emissions just to stabilise rising atmospheric concentrations of this greenhouse gas. Australia's government responds 16 years later by pledging $A25 million for the next 5 years - their way to avoid the only real effective course of action, and that is to set an effective target for the reduction of CO2 emissions.

Tags: Climate+Change, Global+Warming, Earth, CO2, AP6, Kyoto