Desalination. Part 2.

12 years ago I posted my thoughts on the building of Sydney's Desalination Plant in Kurnell. A few days ago, the NSW Government announced plans to double the size of the output. A doubling of its size was actually planned for when it was designed, so the cost will not be as great.

As a result, the expanded Kurnell Desalination Plant will be able to supply 30% of Sydney's water needs.

Desalination plants are all over Australia. Apart from Sydney, there are plants in Melbourne (33% of supply), SE Queensland (27%), Adelaide (50%) and two in Perth (37%).

But according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, water consumption by households represents only 12% of water consumption (1,909,075 Megalitres out of a total of 16,558,203 Megalitres in 2016-17). Agriculture represents over 60% of consumption (10,305,491 Megalitres in 2016-17). The rest is used by mining and industry.

In my original article, I pondered the potential of switching over to desalinated water for all of Australia's needs, including agriculture. In the years since, I have learned that the total cost of such a venture would be very, very high. And yet in the face of Australia's worst drought on record and massive bushfires, the cost of not acting may be even higher.

Australia's agricultural heartland is located along the Murray / Darling / Murrumbidgee river areas. These rivers have provided irrigation water for over a century to farmers. Yet it appears as though these rivers will no longer be able to supply the water necessary - even the Murrumbidgee and its reliance upon the water diverted by the Snowy Mountains Scheme is finding it difficult.

The best desalination solution would involve a series of very large desalination plants built on the coast and close to the river systems. These areas would be the mouth of the Murray in South Australia and also the coastal areas of SE Queensland.

As with Kurnell and other Australian plants, these new plants will be built along with renewable energy plants to power them. Solar and Wind farms can be built in appropriate areas and connected to the grid.

Snaking up from these huge desalination plants would be clean piped water, following the river systems through the current agricultural areas. These pipes would snake up the Murray from the Murray mouth, and along the Murray in Western NSW and the Murrumbidgee in the South of NSW. From SE Queensland, the pipes would be built along to the Southern Downs, where it would snake down various tributaries of the Darling such as the Barwon, and would connect up to the pipes from Murray mouth, creating a huge water grid accessible by farmers in SE and SW Queensland, Northern, Western, Southern and South Western NSW, Northern and Western Victoria, and Eastern South Australia.

With a 100% guarantee of water, farmers and farming communities would be assured of their future, along with an assurance of food production in a future where global warming will cause substantial drought all over the world. The presence of water will also allow for the growth of secondary industries and the growth of rural towns. It may be that people will flock to these areas for work, especially if world food prices grow.

Of course there will need to be common sense practices to accompany this. Irrigation water will be delivered through pipes rather than canals - the less evaporation the better. Steps must be taken to ensure that land degradation from salinity and inappropriate crops is minimised. It is also possible that farms in these areas would be covered to reduce transpiration from the crops and minimise insecticide usage.

One concern would be the output of brine from the desalination process. This is something that people have questioned for a while since large scale desalination plants first became operational. Would the brine create a high-salt, low oxygen dead zone around the outfall pipes, killing sealife?

What needs to be kept in mind here are two things. The first is the proportion of water used compared to the amount of water in the world's oceans. The second is the Water Cycle.

The amount of water in the sea is staggering. Compare the amount of water in the world's oceans to the amount of water humans need to survive and the result is, very, very, very large. If humans desalinated all their water needs, the impact it would have on the world's oceans is minimal. The outlet pipes of desalination plants do not release enough brine to poison the ocean - the brine mixes in with normal seawater and moves via currents and wind. The only concern would be if water from an enclosed salty body of water is desalinated - these would include the Dead Sea, the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea.

The water cycle is also important here. Water, when used, doesn't disappear. Consuming water doesn't destroy it, it just changes form. The water we drink for our bodies to live is matched by the amount of water our bodies produce - sweating, urination, defecation and evaporated water from breathing. In the same way, water used in agriculture is exchanged - transpiration from plants and an increase in groundwater will occur from irrigation. In all these cases, the water we consume eventually makes its way back into the atmosphere and into the ocean.

The cost of creating a network of desalinated agriculture of the sort I have described above will be huge. The cost of building Kurnell was $1.8 Billion. The cost of building my proposal is likely to be over $1 Trillion. But over a build period of, say, 20-30 years, the costs will be manageable and affordable when compared the Australia's annual GDP (which is around $1.4 Trillion today).

In my 2008 article I mentioned the following:

"While spending 5-6 months in drought-stricken country NSW in 2006, I asked a number of farmers about water supply. "Would you", I asked, "be prepared to pay premium prices for water if its supply can be 100% guaranteed?" They all said yes."

I still believe that this is the case today.

The danger of Arctic Methane

Over the past few years I have been examining the issue of Arctic Methane emissions as part of the effects of global warming. It's an issue that is growing in importance, but also an issue that is deeply misunderstood and misrepresented by the media, and which has attracted far too many conspiracy theorist "climate doomers". As a result of this mishmash of falsehoods and conspiracies, the issue of Arctic Methane does not have a very good reputation among mainstream climate scientists, and is sometimes used by climate denialists as evidence of crazy unscientific behaviour by advocates of global warming.

Of course I am not a scientist, which means that the only thing you, the reader, can truly rely upon is to check my statements and facts with known science. I'm reasonably confident that anyone who does this will find my presentation here to be correct.

The situation, in a nutshell, is as follows:

As the Arctic regions warm up, undersea and underground methane reservoirs will increasingly begin to out-gas into the atmosphere. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and increases in atmospheric methane will significantly speed up global warming and its effects.

A further explanation of the situation:

In the Arctic regions of Northern Canada and Siberia, there exists a layer of permafrost which acts as a "lid" or a "seal" over vast reservoirs of methane gas. This is especially the case in an area known as the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), an underwater shelf in the Arctic Sea to the North of Eastern Siberia. This is an area of reasonably shallow sea, with a mean depth of 50 metres. Below the bottom of this shallow sea is a layer of "subsea permafrost" which has remained permanently frozen for many thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. Beneath this layer of subsea permafrost is what is known as a "sedimentary basin" - a geological feature which is essentially made up of sediment depositions over a very long time (most likely to be from the many rivers that flow out of Eastern Siberia into the Arctic Ocean). Along with river sediments, the basin was also filled up with the biomass of plants and animals from ages past. Over time, this biomass was subjected to heat and pressure, and turned into methane.

The situation now is that heat from global warming is now beginning to melt the ice cap. Data from the past few decades has shown that the Arctic ice cap is quickly melting, and there is a reasonable expectation that the ice cap will completely melt during a northern summer some time in the next 10-15 years. Phase Transition - the moving between solid and liquid states of matter - is a process that actually takes a lot of energy to accomplish. Once the ice cap has melted and phase transition is no longer an issue, the temperature of the Arctic ocean will begin to steadily increase. Moreover, a greater mixture of the water column will occur due to the effects of wind and waves - presently this process is prevented over much the north pole during winter by the presence of sea ice, which stratifies water temperature. With a greater mixing of warmer water with water from the bottom, a heat pulse will begin to melt the subsea permafrost. As this subsea permafrost melts, cracks called gas migration pathways will open up, leading to a release of the methane trapped under the ice seal into the water. With only 50 metres of sea level, the methane will quickly exit the water and enter the atmosphere, where it will spread over the globe.

It is estimated that there are 5 gigatonnes of methane currently in our atmosphere. It is also estimated that the ESAS contains 100s to 1000s of gigatonnes of Methane beneath the permafrost seal. The chances are that 50 gigatonnes of methane could be released into the atmosphere within the next few decades, at most 100 years. A tenfold increase in atmospheric methane would lead to a major acceleration in warming.

The best explanation I have read about this issue comes from the Russian scientist Natalia Shakhova, who was interviewed about this subject and explains it here. Shakhova is probably the best person to read and listen to about the subject because she and the others who work with her regularly go into the Arctic to measure undersea methane levels and publish papers about the subject. Shakhova is the source for the 50 gigatonne output.

Unfortunately, Shakhova's work has been misrepresented and sensationalised by the media, as well as by the "doomers" and conspiracy theorists. The impression has been that the outgassing of methane is something that would happen suddenly, as though Shakhova's 50 gigatonne prediction might happen tomorrow. Vivid imaginations (like mine) could imagine a massive cloud of methane suddenly bursting out of the Arctic ocean, rising to cover the surface of the earth and quickly turning our world into Venus-like hellhole in which no form of life can survive. People who follow this apocalyptic vision then begin to accuse the IPCC and NOAA of holding back vital information, and that the statistics regularly released on atmospheric methane and global temperatures have been doctored to prevent global panic. Chemtrails and the Illuminti probably get mentioned as well.

It's this group, the doomers, that have probably done more to damage this theory than anything else. When I began to study this issue, I contacted climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who kindly responded to my questions promptly. His view is that the methane danger is overblown and its proponents are peddling bad science to scare people. Notably he didn't include Shakhova in this response. When I began to review his comments later on, I realised that he wasn't disagreeing with Shakhova's study, but with the bad science of the doomers. I also realised that he probably did not know the actual situation, which I described in the first few paragraphs.

One thing which has coloured the argument is the use of the word "clathrate". In the initial popular understanding of this subject, the idea was that methane clathrates - a combination of water and methane that forms a solid ice like substance - were the threat. Schmidt rightly pointed out to me that the majority of the world's undersea methane clathrate would not be subjected to such high temperatures for a very long time, because the majority of it was much deeper in the ocean, and the heat pulse from warmer water would take a very long time to reach it.

Nevertheless, the 50 gigatonne figure from Shakhova is focused solely upon the unique conditions of the ESAS, which is that a store of methane lies beneath a layer of melting subsea permafrost. How this methane is stored - whether it is a hydrate form or as a liquid under pressure - isn't the issue. Climate scientists like Schmidt are probably more concerned about sensationalist headlines and whether the "Clathrate Gun Hypothesis" is being misunderstood. Of course they should be concerned that bad science is exposed, but in this case I think they haven't done the actual issue - that presented by Shakhova - justice.

So what would the impact of a 50 gigatonne methane release be? A 2013 study, "Vast costs of Arctic change", written by scientist Peter Wadhams and economists Chris Hope and Gail Whiteman, estimated that the total cost to the world economy would be $60 Trillion (2012 figures), which is essentially the size of the entire world economy. In terms of the heating effects on the atmosphere, Hope stated "The methane release would bring forward the date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees C by between 15 and 35 years,".

So when will this occur? The answer is that it has probably already begun, but the amount of methane that is being released is too small to make any real difference. Certainly the amount of atmospheric methane has been steadily rising for many years now, but this is due to a large amount of factors (cow burps, fracking, rice farming) rather than the result of Arctic methane.

What we can predict is that the process will begin to speed up once the North polar ice cap completely melts during the northern summer. The polar ice cap, which floats on top of the Arctic ocean, has been steadily decreasing in mass for many years now, and, as I stated above, is likely to fully melt some time during the next 10-15 years. Some scientists have named this predicted occurrence "A blue water event", meaning that the Arctic ocean is completely free of surface ice. Of course ice will grow back during the winter months, but the net effect will be less ice, less albedo and more heat storage in the liquid water, and a water column mixing warm water into the shallow bottom of the ESAS, all resulting in a weakening of the subsea permafrost and an increasing amount of methane finding its way into the atmosphere.

And of course the effect of this outgassing will not be a sudden event - it will occur over many years, getting worse as time goes by. We'll be able to detect it via methane detection equipment in both the Arctic (Barrow) and in the Equator (Mauna Loa), both of which are in place and have been recording atmospheric methane levels for many decades. There are also satellites currently measuring atmospheric methane levels.

But what are the variables? it's one thing for me, a non scientist, to present this situation. It's another to be objective and judicious about it.

The first variable has to be the size and strength of the sub-sea permafrost. The permafrost "lid" that Shakhova describes as being under the ESAS cannot be uniformly thick, but must be thicker in some places and thinner in others. Obviously the thicker permafrost will take longer to melt. Moreover, if the thickness of the permafrost is determined to be larger than is currently measured, then its melting will take longer, and the release of methane will be more constrained. Obviously more study needs to be done in this area.

The second variable has to be the size and location of the methane. Like oil reservoirs, methane exists in permeable rock. This means that the methane itself is also unlikely to be a uniform shape and thickness under the permafrost. Recent land based methane outbursts in Siberia show that the underground gas seems to be centred in pockets. Obviously the surrounding geology, affected by the thickness of the permafrost lid, is likely to affect the time and exitent of outbursts.

The third variable is the speed at which the permafrost melts. As I have pointed out above, warmer waters and a lack of sea ice will inevitably lead to a melting of the subsea permafrost. But at what speed will this pulse of heat travel at? And what of the experience of phase transition that I have also mentioned, namely that it takes a lot of energy to turn ice into liquid water.

Conclusion

At present, the danger of undersea methane in the ESAS is considerable. The effects that it could possibly have upon our planet are dire. More research into the ESAS is desperately needed. Geoengineering to specifically cool the Arctic is also needed.

The U.K. Just Went 55 Hours Without Using Coal for the First Time in History

Bloomberg:

No coal was used for power generation by stations in the U.K. between 10:25 p.m. in London on Monday until 5:10 a.m. on Thursday, according to grid data compiled by Bloomberg. At the same time wind turbines produced more power.

This is good news. But it also shows further development is needed. The latitude of the UK places it in a zone which is rich in wind, but not necessarily rich in solar potential.

This means that decision makers should invest more resources into wind farms, especially those off shore.

It also means that energy storage facilities must be built. Wind (and solar) are intermittent power sources. The recent wind power increase is due to very high winds and will obviously decrease once the low pressure system disappears. Energy storage infrastructure is essential for the future development of renewable energy, as it can store the excess energy generated during peak production times (windy days for wind turbines, sunny days for solar) for later use during peak consumption times. This infrastructure can include the sort of lithium-ion battery storage that Tesla built in South Australia recently, and can be built on land already used by coal/gas power stations (since the distribution infrastructure is already in place).

Worldwide food production: no collapse yet

This is a result of some number crunching I did, comparing the amount of cereal grains produced to world population level:

I chose a three year average because the original had huge yearly swings while this gives a reasonably good idea of where things have been heading. It also takes into consideration the fact that cereals can be stored over the long term, which means that high production one year can help service demand the following year.

I chose cereal grains since these are a staple food and indicates generally the potential for future famines (as production decreases).

What it shows is that, so far, there have been no significant negative impacts on world food production in the past 50 years. There was a marked decline between 1985 and 2003 that needs to be explained, but production since 2003 has risen quickly.

The reason for looking at per capita figures (tonnes of grain produced divided by world population) is to see whether or not production levels are exceeding population: It's all well and good for cereal production to increase but it is another thing altogether if population is increasing faster than cereal production.

You can see the effect of the "Green Revolution" between 1963 and 1986.

I created this spreadsheet and graph to see whether or not Peak Oil and Global Warming had affected global food production. So far the answer is that they haven't yet.

A few years ago there were various food riots around the world tied to increasing prices. See here and here. It seems that, in hindsight, these problems were probably a result of local issues arising out of the Global Financial Crisis.

It's also true that grain prices have increased and this is due to increased demand from developing countries like China. Notwithstanding these facts and the consequences of them (richer people increasingly consuming more of the available food than poorer people) worldwide cereal production is still better now than at probably any other time in history.

Sources:

World Population Figures: Source.
Cereal Production 1961-2010 (World total; Cereals total; Production quantity): Source.
Cereal Production 2011-2012 (estimates): Source.

What happens when Conservatives get convinced by Climate Change?

They don't stop being conservatives, they start advocating a carbon tax:

Taking stock of our conservative principles and America’s energy and climate challenges, E&EI believes that the solution is an energy policy which:

• Eliminates all subsidies for all fuels;
  
• Attaches all costs to all fuels;
  
• and Ensures revenue neutrality to prevent the growth of government

A sensible solution is a revenue-neutral tax swap, accompanied by a phase-out of all energy subsidies. A tax swap would, dollar for dollar, ratchet down anti-growth income taxes and shift the tax onto carbon pollution: Tax the bad, quit taxing the good, and let the free-enterprise system deliver the fuels of the future.

Despite my position on the left hand side of the political spectrum, I have always believed that a number of conservative beliefs are worth keeping. The solution proposed by E&EI is probably not enough to solve the whole problem of global warming, but it is a healthy start, and one that comes from a side of politics that seems all too willing to deny science.

The Limits of Biochar

I recently did some basic equations about Biochar. If Biochar were the sole way that carbon is removed from the atmosphere, how much land would be needed to store the stuff? The calculations ended up being very pessimistic indeed. Armed with these calculations I sent off an email to the boffins at Real Climate. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt responded and pointed out that I had wildly overestimated the amount of anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere but, when taken with carbon that had been sequestered into the ocean, the final figure ends up being 400 billion metric tonnes - an amount that doesn't take into account future emissions.

How much Biochar can be used as a soil amendment? According to this, the amount is around 23.2 metric tonnes per hectare. It was just a matter of then dividing the amount of anthropogenic carbon by 23.2 and see how much land is required to sequester Biochar. The result is very depressing:

In short, 23.2 metric tonnes per hectare is not enough. Even if every single hectare of above ocean land mass is sequestered with 23.2 metric tonnes of biochar, the result is not enough to remove anthropogenic carbon. In reality, sequestering of biochar could not be achieved over the entire earth's surface, so I've given figures there for 10% of the earth's surface as well as 5%, which would require a Biochar sequestering of up to 23 times what is recommended.

So, the questions are:

1. What amount of sequestered Biochar is too much? At what point will it turn from being a soil amendment and become toxic to plant growth?
2. What would be the effects of deep Biochar sequestering, whereby Biochar is sequestered up to 10 metres underground rather than just existing within the 1-2 metres?
3. Is it viable to use carbon as a resource to replace current commodities such as iron, aluminium, glass and so on?
   

The good news, I suppose, is that a cylindrical storage container 50 metres high and 18.25 kilometres wide could effectively store all 400 billion metric tonnes of carbon (at 2.267 grams per cm³ = 90,680,00 km³, volume of cylinder = πr²h) if necessary. NOTE: My spreadsheet let me down in its maths here. The real figure would be 500 metres high and 7600km in diameter: Not good news.

Effects of the Kurnell Desalination Plant

Sydney's Kurnell Desalination Plant began operating during the first week of February 2010. At full capacity it produces some 250 megalitres a day of potable water. As I flew from Sydney to Launceston yesterday, I managed to glimpse it through the window as we flew over Kurnell.

It has not been a great time for proponents of desalination plants, at least in Australia. Popular opposition to the plants focuses upon the greenhouse gases produced by the increased energy needed to operate the plant (a problem offset by the co-construction of a wind farm that produces more kW-h over a 12 month period than is consumed by the desalination plant), the added cost it places upon tap water (which is only a problem when water supplies are not low) and the pollution caused by pumping brine back into the sea (a process which causes increased salinity in the affected area but is also a natural part of the water cycle).

Another problem is that the plant has begun operating during a severe La-Nina event which is known to cause high rainfall levels in Australia. The plant was conceived and built during an El-Nino period when Australia was suffering prolonged drought and low rainfall.

Over the past year I have been collating data from the Sydney Catchment Authority which runs a weekly data series on Sydney water storage and supply - specifically the amount of water gained and pumped by Sydney's network of dams. When compared to the previous six years (2004-2009), 2010 stands out as the year the least amount of water was delivered from dams - a direct result of the increased supply of the Kurnell Desalination Plant.

According to the Data I have collated, the average amount of water delivered from the first week of February to the second last week of December is 466,438.91 megalitres. In 2010, the water delivered in this period was 387,674.83 megalitres, which means that the Desalination plant prevented up to 78,764.08 megalitres from being pumped from Sydney's dams.

At the time that this article was published, Sydney Dam levels have risen to 1,863,500 megalitres, mainly as a result of increased rainfall. This represents 72.2% of capacity, the highest since 2002. If we do the math, we prove that, since 78,764.08 megalitres was saved due to the desalination plant, then we can expect the current dam levels to be 3.1% less than what they currently are - 69.1% - if the desalination plant was not operating.

Moreover, simply by crunching the numbers already shown above, we can see that the desalination plant produces around 17% of Sydney's water - at least if we compare 2010's results with the averages of 2004-2009.

The Kurnell plant was built with the understanding that it would be "mothballed" during periods of high dam capacity. It was also decided that the plant would run continuously for two years to iron out any problems before any "mothballing" would occur, so the chances are that the plant will continue to operate throughout 2011 no matter how full the dams get.

The Kurnell plant has been designed to allow for a doubling of capacity if needed - land has been set aside at the site for more buildings and the piping to and from the plant has been designed to allow for a doubling of capacity. If rainfall levels in Australia and Sydney continue to decline (despite the recent wet weather) then increasing the capacity of the plant will be a cost effective solution to any declining dam levels.

Since it would be more efficient to operate the plant for long periods and mothball it for long periods (as opposed to short periods for both), I would suggest some sort of "trigger" mechanism to be put into place:

* 75% Capacity: The plant will be shut down and mothballed once stored water supplies reach 75% capacity.
* 50% Capacity: The plant will begin operating once stored water supplies dip below 50% capacity.
* 25% Capacity: The plant will be doubled in size once stored water supplies dip below 25% capacity, or else another desalination plant built if this has already happened. (This assumes that the plant has been operating continuously since supplies dropped below 50%)

What about the Ozone Layer?

One of the complaints that Global Warming deniers point to is the ozone layer. They will say "Back in the 1980s everyone was worried about the ozone layer. There were dire predictions of global problems as a result of the growing hole in the ozone layer! Now what is happening? The ozone layer is growing back! If they were wrong in the 1980s about the ozone layer, they are likely to be wrong now when it comes to global warming!".

Today I read this:

The protective ozone layer in the earth's upper atmosphere has stopped thinning and should largely be restored by mid century thanks to a ban on harmful chemicals, UN scientists said on Thursday.

The "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010" report said a 1987 international treaty that phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) -- substances used in refrigerators, aerosol sprays and some packing foams --- had been successful.

Ozone provides a natural protective filter against harmful ultra-violet rays from the sun, which can cause sunburn, cataracts and skin cancer as well as damage vegetation.

First observations of a seasonal ozone hole appearing over the Antarctic occurred in the 1970s and the alarm was raised in the 1980s after it was found to be worsening under the onslaught of CFCs, prompting 196 countries to join the Montreal Protocol.

"The Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 to control ozone depleting substances is working, it has protected us from further ozone deplation over the past decades," said World Meteorological Organisation head of research Len Barrie.

So the answer is simple: there was a serious problem with the ozone layer in the 1980s and the scientific community did warn everyone that problems would result. But a 1987 agreement resulted in a serious reduction in the amount of CFCs entering the atmosphere. As a result of this action, the world was saved.

Now scientists are saying that carbon dioxide emissions by humanity is causing global warming. Perhaps we need to listen to them, and act accordingly.

BHP makes the right call

From the ABC:

In a luncheon hosted by the Australian British Chamber of Commerce in Sydney today, BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers said that there was no single silver bullet to reducing emissions and the Government has to incorporate a number of variables.

"It is a long-dated problem and the nature of long-dated problems normally means that a single silver bullet does not exist to cure the ills," he told the audience.

...

He cautions that Australia's energy supply is particularly carbon intensive, with about 90 per cent of carbon emissions coming from the electricity sector originating from coal-fired power stations.

"Reducing Australia's carbon emissions footprint will require substantial changes in consumer behaviour," Mr Kloppers said.

He encouraged consumers to favour low carbon alternatives and to recognise that making a difference comes at a price.

BHP Billiton is, of course, the largest mining company in the world. Moreover, while it has diverse mining interests, it does own and operate a number of coal mines around the world.

The encouraging thing about Kloppers' statements is that they reflect the thinking and attitude of BHP's top management towards the issue of climate change. It has always been my belief that companies involved in hydrocarbon-for-energy extraction should be the ones taking the lead in producing alternatives to carbon emissions, rather than setting up disinformation campaigns against scientific consensus.

Random thoughts on electric vehicles

Would you purchase a car that only had a range of 160km (100 miles)? I suppose in order to answer that question you need more information, such as "How fast will it go?" or "How many people will it carry?" If I then told you that the car in question had a maximum speed of 140 kph (87 mph) and was a hatchback and which could not refuel at a local service station but, until infrastructure is developed, can only be "filled up" at home... then you'd probably then ask "Well how much?" and then be surprised that the price was actually quite high for such a range disadvantage.

This, of course, is the problem facing first generation electric car buyers. Some time this year, Nissan will release the Leaf (pictured) onto the US market and thus become the first real fully electric car available for the public (with the notable exception of the EV1 and the controversy surrounding it). For us who are concerned both with the environment (especially lowering carbon emissions) and who don't wish to devolve society into anarcho-primitivism, the Nissan Leaf represents the first real step towards reducing carbon emissions while simultaneously maintaining an industrial society with viable personal transportation (as opposed to an industrial society that relies upon bicycles and public transport).

Yet the economist and the realist in me can't help but be worried about the Leaf. As a first generation electric car it obviously will have teething problems - not least being the lack of infrastructure needed to create a viable electric vehicle transportation system. In practical terms, this includes "charging stations" for electric cars located in people's homes, in parking areas and along travel routes. Unlike a normal service station, an electric car can't be charged up in the same way as a petrol-driven vehicle. The 2-3 minutes that a petrol driven car takes to be filled up is highly convenient when compared to the 30 minutes or so it would take an electric car to be charged up - and then only to an 80% level (fast-charging has the problem of not being able to charge fully, whereas slow-charging - done at home overnight - is able to charge up to a 100% battery capacity).

Yet even if the infrastructure is developed (at great initial expense to the taxpayer, though it will pay itself over time), the question of speed and range do come into consideration. While there are a substantial amount of people who would purchase the Leaf on its environmental features alone, the only thing going for it in the mind of the mainstream public would be its fuel economy, which is estimated by Nissan to be 150 miles per "gallon gasoline equivalent" (mpgge). In terms of internal space the Leaf would be considered no better than any other car in its size range, while the speed isn't exactly as fast as people would like (at least for those who wish to go speeding).

The most serious problem, though, is the range. Each Nissan Leaf has dozens of Lithium-Ion batteries stored under the floor - see here for a cutaway view. But even with these dozens of batteries and with the sheer time it takes to recharge them (especially when you are far from home) the range - 160km (100 miles) - is most inconvenient. Yet as I studied the subject further, the more encouraged I became.

Battery technology has come along in leaps and bounds. When the EV1 first came out in 1996, the two-door coupe used standard Lead-acid batteries and had a range of no more than 89km (55 miles). Subsequent improvements to the car's batteries - namely the use of NiMH to replace lead-acid - increased the vehicle's range to 116km (72 miles), which was better but still not good. Moreover, even the newer NiMH batteries took up a lot of room which essentially prevented the EV1 from having enough luggage space to compete with similar vehicles. Now, over a decade later, Lithium ion battery technology which was developed to increase the usable life of laptop computers, is now the preferred technology for electric car energy storage. As a result, the Leaf has more electrical power storage available to it than the EV1 - which in turn is responsible for the Leaf's superior luggage and passenger space. Yet it is nevertheless clear that current battery technology still has a long way to go.

It is inevitable that an effective battery system for an electric car will be developed. Every few months science and technology websites announce improvements to Lithium-ion technology or even better alternatives. As these technological changes begin to arrive, electric cars capable of 200, 400, 600, 800km or more ranges will be developed - and this will be the result of more electric power being stored in smaller and smaller battery packs.

But what of the 1st generation Nissan Leaf and its potential owners? It's all very well to argue that battery technology will be ready one day but that is hardly going to make people want to buy the Leaf now is it? Well, actually it might be - and this is where the advantages of battery technology comes in.

Here's the key - try to think of your potential electric car as an electric torch. As anyone knows, when torch batteries run out they just have to get recharged, or else thrown away. In the latter case, the purchase of new batteries is easy because batteries are modular and designed to fit all different sorts of uses. Now check the picture of the Leaf's under floor battery packs again - click here. Notice anything? They're modular. The Leaf doesn't have one big battery but dozens of smaller ones. If a battery is faulty then all you need to do is get a new one. And at some point in the future, you will be able to buy battery packs for your Leaf that can store more power. This means that your Leaf's range might be 160km now, but in 2 years time and with some newer batteries, your range might increase to 190km. A few years later and newer batteries increase the range to 250km. Own the car long enough and there is a chance that the newest battery packs could push the range of your 2010 Nissan Leaf to beyond 1000km. You can't do that with an ordinary petrol driven car - the only way to increase the range would be to increase the size of the petrol tank.

But electric cars have all sorts of other advantages over standard internal combustion engines. The most obvious is the lack of moving parts. An electric motor designed to move an axle doesn't have valves and pistons and doesn't need a driveshaft or a transmission. In short there is less to go wrong. Moreover, the lack of a driveshaft ensures that a car with an electric motor has a very high level of torque available to it. This means that even low-powered electric cars have the ability to move heavier than normal loads and climb steep inclines.

One design that Mitsubishi is developing is the MIEV concept - the placing of an electric motor within the wheel itself. This would allow a car to have essentially four electric motors powering it - one located inside each wheel. Obviously these MIEV wheels are modular enough to ensure that any faulty motors can simply be replaced as easily as the changing of a wheel - you can imagine a MIEV electric car not only having a spare wheel in case of a flat tyre, but also a spare engine inside it in case of a faulty engine. The great advantage of the MIEV design is that it provides more space inside the vehicle for batteries (there's no motor in the car at all), as well as providing constant 4 wheel drive - which can be quite useful even if you don't take the car off road. The Nissan Leaf, however, is a "traditional" front wheel drive in that the motor drives both sets of front wheels.

The last advantage that electric cars can bring will occur once the infrastructure is up and running. Essentially it can be argued that wherever there is grid power available there can be  a charging station. Current service stations need to have large underground storage tanks and need tankers to come along and refill them on a regular basis. An electric power infrastructure can allow smaller or larger charging stations according to need, as well as the ability to set one up near the electricity grid - no underground tanks need to be installed and no regular deliveries need to be made. Charging stations can also be automated, reducing the need for labour.

Petroleum powered vehicles produce as much if not more anthropogenic carbon than coal fired power stations. If the world is serious about reducing carbon emissions then electric vehicles must replace vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Yet it is obvious that more electric cars will result in more electricity being used, which means that a drop in one area of carbon emission (petroleum) may end up increasing the use of other sources of carbon emission (coal and gas power stations) - though the net result will be a drop in carbon emissions (the carbon emissions resulting from an increase in coal or gas power due to increased usage of electric vehicles will be smaller than the carbon emissions no longer produced by cars powered by petroleum - this is because electricity resulting from coal and gas power plants is more efficient than internal combustion engines). So while there will be a drop in demand for petroleum, there will be an increase in demand for electricity which will necessitate the building of new power plants. Given the state of carbon levels in the atmosphere and the need to remove all forms of carbon pollution, new power sources must be carbon free (eg wind, solar, geothermal or even new forms of nuclear power).

I'm looking forward to electric cars. They will be quieter and simpler to drive. They will be (eventually) easier to "fill up". The inherent advantages of increasing battery power storage technology and 100% torque will eventually make electric vehicles better to drive than anything we have now. It will take time, but I'm actually a bit optimistic.

Update 2010-03-19: By way of comparison in terms of power and torque, it is good to compare the Leaf with the Tiida - the design it is based on. The Tiida has a 1.8 litre engine capable of producing 91 kW (122 hp) of power and 170 Nm (127 ft·lbf) of torque. By way of comparison, the Leaf produces 80 kW (110hp) and 280 Nm (207 ft·lbf) of Torque. So while the electric car produces 12% less power than its gasoline powered competitor, it produces 64% more torque. So while the Leaf has less power than a 1.8 Litre engine, it has more torque than a 2.4 Litre engine. It has, for example, more torque than a Ford Focus. Add to this the fuel economy - the 1.8LT Tiida at its best reaches 8 litres per 100km (29.4 miles/gallon) whereas the Leaf runs at 1.57 litres per 100km (150 miles per gallon) in the "gallon gasoline equivalent" (mpgge).

Random thoughts on our vegetarian future

One of the strategies seen by climate futurists (ie those who believe in global warming and who are offering possible solutions) to save mankind is for the world to become more vegetarian. Unfortunately this has been derided (mainly by climate sceptics) for being, well, too lefty and radical.

What I can predict, however, is that even if nothing gets done currently, the future will be vegetarian - there will be no choice. And the reason for this is not due to smarmy governments relenting to PETA, but market forces.

Let's say that in 20 years time, climate change is impacting food production worldwide. Changes in rainfall because of global warming have resulted in less rain falling in breadbaskets and more rain falling on areas not used much for farming.

So with a drop in food supply comes the natural market response - an increase in prices. And it is not just one particular foodstuff but all that are affected. So the price of grains, vegetables, dairy and meat goes up.

Of these the most expensive is meat, which means that the market would respond to higher meat prices by dropping its demand. In its place would come an increased demand for meat substitutes, which are essentially protein based crops such as lentils, chickpeas and soy beans (to mention just three).

One main reason for this occurring is that the farming of grains and legumes produces more joules of food energy per square metre than your standard cattle station (or non-cattle equivalent). It would therefore make economic sense for farmers to shift their farms from meat production to grain or legume production. With this under way, farms would then be able to produce more food energy to meet the sky rocketing demand.

Of course this change will not come overnight, and nor will the change be the same throughout the world. The world's farmers are not suddenly going to kill their cattle and grow lentils. Instead, it will be a gradual process and there will still be meat producing areas around the world catering for the richer nations.

Unfortunately it will be the poorer nations that will suffer the most during this switch-over, as they are the least likely to be able to cope with a change in crops, less grain production in drought affected areas, and the technology and know how to take advantage of changing conditions. Expect famine in other words.

Thinking about Thorium

I'm not, as yet, prepared to do a back-flip on Nuclear power. However the proposals behind reactors powered by Thorium, rather than Uranium, are quite compelling. Here's a summary of the advantages:

1. The radioactive waste created by Thorium reactors decays over a much shorter time period - 200 years as opposed to many thousands by "traditional" nuclear reactors.
2. Nuclear waste from "traditional" reactors can be inserted into a Thorium reactor and turned into regular Thorium radioactive waste - this means that Thorium reactors can permanently remove the radioactive waste stored around the world from traditional nuclear reactors.
3. Thorium can be used to create nuclear bombs (the US tested a Thorium bomb back in the 1950s) but it is much more difficult to achieve and cannot be stored for very long (unlike Plutonium bombs).
4. A melt-down is impossible in a Thorium reactor.
5. Thorium is more widely available than uranium.
6. Thorium does not have to go through many secondary processes to use it in a reactor, making it cheaper to use.
   

I do, however, have some concerns:

• Any nation with a Thorium reactor has the ability to create weaponized Thorium. While it is not as "good" as plutonium it nevertheless increases the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation. Having Thorium reactors in the US, UK, Europe, Canada and other nations might seem acceptable... but what about Thorium reactors in third world nations? Would we trust Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia or North Korea with Thorium reactors?
• If a Thorium reactor is destroyed with conventional explosives (by terrorists or by an air force), what will the result be? Will a Chernobyl like radioactive cloud be released?
• if a nation has a Thorium reactor, will they also, by proxy, have the technology to create and weaponize Plutonium?
• Can radioactive waste from a Thorium reactor be used in a "dirty bomb"?
  

While I like the potential behind Thorium reactors, the danger posed by the concerns I have just outlined make me wary. Unstable third-world nations need a safe and reliable source of non-carbon emitting electrical energy in order for them to progress without harming themselves or the rest of the world. Coal and Gas plants in third world nations are "safe" but produce carbon dioxide. If they were replaced by (for example) wind, solar or geothermal energy then electricity would be available that is both safe and good for the environment. But a dictator who has a Thorium reactor under his control is far more dangerous to his nation and its neighbours than a dictator with a bunch of wind turbines under his control.

Climate change - a new religion?

There is a comments writer at the Newcastle Herald who sees proponents of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) as being part of a "false religion" or "cult". My personal feelings have been the opposite - that those who deny AGW, the sceptics or the "denialists", are part of a "false religion". Given that a recent survey of the Hunter Valley shows that one-third of people are to be considered "climate sceptics", that's obviously a very large "cult".

Evangelical Christians (of which I am one) are also ever mindful of new religious movements that challenge the claims of Christ. The rise of Neopaganism and the simultaneous rise of environmentalism and Green politics has led to a sort of "guilt by association", whereby evangelicals see "Greenies" or "treehuggers" as being ultimately satanic in origin.

This is not to say that sceptics are Christian and AGW proponents are not (I am both an AGW proponent AND a Christian) but the way these two groups have described each other in negative religious terms is problematic yet also understandable.

And, yes, I have described sceptics in such terms as well. Moreover I think that it is a good way of describing them.

Of course there is nothing religious per se about Climatology and the whole Global Warming debate. The use of the word to describe either side of the debate is not meant to literally label such a belief "religious" (though there is a point at which actual religion sometimes ends up being discussed, ie many Christians oppose AGW on religious grounds). What it is meant to convey, along with word "cult" would be the following:

1. A commitment to the truth of their belief.
2. The desire to change the world based upon the natural outworking of the belief.
3. A belief that is not rooted in reality.

So from the point-of-view of scepticism, AGW proponents 1) believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, 2) want to reduce carbon emissions on an international scale to prevent global warming, and 3) are doing so either because they are stupid (AGW is false), misled (belief that the IPCC and others are right when they're not) or because they have ulterior motives (money, prestige, conspiracy theories).

But now take the opposite viewpoint. From the point of view of AGW proponents, sceptics 1) do not believe that current warming has anything to do with human activity, 2) do not want to reduce carbon emissions because it is unnecessary, and 3) are doing so either because they are stupid (AGW is true), misled (by media, think tanks owned by sceptics) or because they have ulterior motives (funded by oil and mining companies).

Daniel Okrent, former public editor of the New York Times, created the following adage:

The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.

According to Wikipedia, this adage refers "to the phenomenon of the press providing legitimacy to fringe or minority viewpoints in an effort to appear even-handed."

What we have in this debate are two mutually exclusive polar opposites: Those who believe in AGW and those who don't. Now the fact is that one of these groups MUST be wrong -  there is actually no room for a third alternative viewpoint. Either the world is heating up because of human activity or it is not.

If a person believes in something that they hold to be truth, and if that truth demands action, then they will act accordingly. Whether or not their position is true in an objective sense doesn't enter into the equation, which means that this basic behaviour is quite normal and quite human. For those who believe, they will do x. For those who do not believe, they will do y.

This means that each group will naturally see each other with incredulity. "How can these jokers believe in / not believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming!? They are so committed to their position! They are like a false religion, a cult!". That is a natural position to take.

In the end, it comes down to information analysis and self assessment. Can we trust those experts who form the scientific basis of our belief at this point? Have we been guilty of believing stupid stuff in the past? How much knowledge of the subject do we need before we must let the "experts" take over and speak for us?

And that is why I am an AGW proponent and not a sceptic. I believe that a consensus of climatologists on this subject is all the evidence I need, regardless of where these people get their funding or which country they're from. I think that it is likely that the vast majority of climatologists have approached this subject with diligence and have come to their conclusions based on evidence, and I find it much less likely that these Climatologists have conspired and colluded over time to falsify the data for their own twisted ends. Moreover I also believe that, just as Big Tobacco hired doctors and scientists to confuse the public about the health effects of smoking in order to promote their own interests, so too do I believe that oil companies and mining companies are hiring scientists to confuse the public in order to promote their own interests (ie profit).

Moreover, I also note that there has never been any mass collusion of scientists to promote lies in history, whereas there have been multiple instances throughout history of quashing scientific knowledge by groups that are threatened by it - Big Tobacco attacking those scientists who discovered the link between smoking and cancer; the church attacking Galileo for his scientific progress. Science has obviously been corrupted by political operatives (eg Nazi Germany) but, left to itself, it has yet to deliberately use its power to lie and mislead the public. I see no evidence of political influence upon the world's Climatologists.

And those are my reasons for being a proponent of AGW, and the reason why many sceptics would see me as part of the "climate change religion", and the reason why I see them as being deceived by a "religion of scientific denialism".

There can be no "balance" here, because something IS true.

The Limits of Climate Scepticism

Occasionally The Economist gets it right:

I woke up the other morning to find that I would have to confront yet another headache-inducing attempt to phase-shift my perception of reality, and that this would require wading into historical accounts of the collection and homogenisation of temperature data. On December 8th, a climate-change sceptic named Willis Eschenbach posted what he called the "smoking gun" of climate change data manipulation: a series of graphs of the uandjusted historical record of the temperature-monitoring site at the airport in Darwin, Australia, plotted against the same data as adjusted for various error factors ("homogenised") by the Global Historical Climate Network, or GHCN. Mr Eschenbach claimed the adjustment was so arbitrary, it had to be evidence of intentional manipulation.

(and then, after a lengthy piece exploring the evidence and dismissing Eschenbach's claims)

So, after hours of research, I can dismiss Mr Eschenbach. But what am I supposed to do the next time I wake up and someone whose name I don't know has produced another plausible-seeming account of bias in the climate-change science? Am I supposed to invest another couple of hours in it? Do I have to waste the time of the readers of this blog with yet another long post on the subject? Why? Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to simply say, look, I've seen these kind of claims before, they always turns out to be wrong, and it's not worth my time to look into it?

Well, here's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further "smoking gun" claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story.

I couldn't have written it better myself. It's a pity that The Economist doesn't have the same sort of attitude towards Peak Oil.

More on Evangelicals and Global Warming

A comment I made here:

I suppose my point is about urgency and common sense. If a man is tied to rail tracks and a train is approaching, do you a) untie him or b) preach the gospel to him? Obviously you would do the first, then hopefully the second.

Global Warming has come about because of sin. Mankind has not looked after the earth that God left him to be steward over. Ultimately the answer to this sin is the preaching of the gospel, but there does need to be some "untying from the railway tracks" as well.

Sadly, many evangelical Christians have been convinced of the sceptic argument - a far greater proportion than the rest of society (probably due to their links with conservative politics). They have essentially "backed the wrong horse" to use a racing metaphor. They are tightening the ropes of the man on the railway tracks while preaching the gospel to him. Not a good situation to be in.

When environmental disaster strikes, and millions do die, will unbelievers see evangelical Christians as rescuers from the disaster or enablers of the disaster?

Not Sceptics: Conspiracy Theorists

Just found this over at Dave's site about the CRU Hack:

I’ve been watching the ‘controversy’ develop over the last week or so, and I have to say, it’s pretty dispiriting. Not because a global leftist conspiracy as been unearthed, but because of the renewed enthusiasm of the sceptics to shoot first, and ask questions later. It’s saddening to see how little hey understand, and how little they want to understand.

There’s a couple of posts here that look at a couple of the accusations: http://allegationaudit.blogspot.com

There’s a couple of reasonable posts here:
- Scientific American: Climate change cover-up? You better believe it
- OpenDemocracy: The real scandal in the hacked climate change e-mails controversy

Personally, I think I’m going to stop referring to the sceptics as sceptics, but rather conspiracy theorists. There’s nothing sceptical about the sceptics (and that’s nothing new) - but the wild political conspiracies people are so quick to believe in, and anything that looks vaguely like evidence for the conspiracy instantly becomes not just a smoking gun, but ‘the mushroom cloud’.

These are clearly irony-deficient people. They claim AGW is a religion for true believes, yet they believe in crazy, global conspiracies on scant evidence. There’s still no scientific counter to AGW, there’s not even a desire to understand the issue, or examine the new ‘controversy’ in any depth.

But then again, these are the people that gave us Iraq’s WMDs, so I guess a desire for understanding is not a high priority.

(emphasis mine)
Original Link.

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Update on the CRU hack

I just discovered that the hack and the emails did not originate from the Hadley Climate Research Unit but from the University of East Anglia. Obviously some emails from CRU ended up being shown (since CRU and UEA would communicate with one another) but the hack and the data should be read in this particular light. No one is going to get a complete picture of how an organisation works by looking at emails from another organisation, so any evidence needs to be incontrovertible and clear, which it apparently is not.

Realclimate says:

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution).

In regards to actual quotes being used, Realclimate says:

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

Of course, committed climate change denialists would begin reading that sentence before their eyes glazed over, and then respond to it by saying:

• You're just trying to explain it away!
• But the email says...

When in reality they are saying

• I have no idea what that explanation means, so I'll just keep saying it's wrong because it's easier than trying to understand sciencey stuff.
• How come a heavy metal band has a guy playing a keytar?
  

AGW and the Cru Hack

AGW and the Cru hack sounds like a really bad band, hence the picture. Actually it's got nothing to do with music, so sorry for misleading you!

AGW is, of course, "Anthropogenic Global Warming". CRU is short for "Climatic Research Unit", specifically the one at the University of East Anglia. And "hack", in this case, means "to devise or modify (a computer program), usually skillfully".

What it all adds up to is that hackers have broken into the CRU server, stolen a whole heap of information - specifically climate data and staff emails - and then sent copies of the 61mb file all over the internet for people to see. The BBC is reporting it here.

Although the hackers themselves have broken dozens of laws and making private emails is, shall we put it, unethical, the security breach may help to provide vital information for those interested in Global Warming - both the advocates (like myself) and the sceptics. What it will show is the pure, unadulterated and honest opinions of those who work for an organisation that promotes one side of climate science thinking. It is a snapshot - warts and all - of what goes on in a scientific community that believes current global warming is caused by human activity.

Of course there will be plenty of dross. The emails will contain derisive opinions of Manchester United fans, discussions about what sort of Indian restaurant in Norwich provides the best Korma, the Heydon bed and breakfast booking for two research students conducting a secret affair and whether or not "New Moon" will be a good film. But what it will also provide (hopefully) is evidence as to whether data is ignored or manipulated or not, and whether there is some sort of shadowy conspiracy going on.

RealClimate, the blog I go to on a daily basis to read about Climate Science, has this to say about the CRU hack:

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

Linus' Law states "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", which in the context of software development means that open source coding is superior to closed source because its very openness and transparency ensures quality. While the CRU hack was certainly an invasion of privacy, it does allow us to view the "bugs" in this scientific community and determine whether or not their work is flawed. I await the results, and am reasonably confident that it will only bolster the case for those who believe in AGW.

If it doesn't, I'll start listening to Alestorm.

EDIT: 160mb of data. Sorry. Link also to The Guardian.

2012 and the problem of taking real threats seriously

2012 is a new film about the end of the world starring John Cusack. It is directed by Ronald Emmerlich - the same guy who destroyed the world in Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. The choice of the title, the year 2012, is due mainly to the idea that the Mayan calender predicts that the end of the world will occur in 2012 (apparently, if read and interpreted in a certain way). No doubt the film will also highlight the 2012 phenomenon, which Wikipedia says is "a range of beliefs and proposals positing that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur in the year 2012."

So the idea is that you have 2012 the phenomenon, and you have 2012 the film, which is based very loosely upon that phenomenon.

Aang finally defeats the evil Fire Lord, but at what price to humanity?

Apparently the film has received all sorts of bad reviews. I think that's a good thing. I personally think that the entire 2012 phenomenon is going to be a load of rubbish and people will look back upon it in the same way as other apocalyptic scenarios that never happened (eg Comet Kohoutek; The Montanists and their New Jerusalem).

As a believer in Peak Oil and Global Warming, though, I do believe that the world is heading towards some sort of economic and social disaster that will take a long time to recover from. Annoyingly, apocalyptic films like 2012 end up misinforming people as to the nature of the problem and any potential solutions. When global warming and the whole "Greenhouse effect" was first touted as a serious problem back in the 1990s, Hollywood decided to use good science as the basis of a particular film, and in the process threw science out the window.

Not a denialist.

2012, from what I can gather, is just another Emmerlich destroy-the-world pic. Aliens did it in Independence Day, Godzilla did it in some film I can't remember the name of, and global warming did it in The Day After Tomorrow. 2012 just continues the theme, except it's based on wow weird Mayan prophecy (you know, the same people who didn't prophesy the Spanish conquest of South America).

For Hollywood, the premise can be weird, it can be spiritual, it can be scientific - what matters is what the result looks like on the big screen. So for the consumers what we have is a simple conclusion - the world can end through weird prophecy, through monsters, through global warming and through alien invasion. And all are fictional.

Just another bad Hollywood screenplay.

The reality is that both Global Warming and Peak Oil are threats to our world, but they are threats which are grounded in science, not fiction. Will there be some major threat to our world which appears in 2012? There might just be, but it won't be on the scale of 2012 the film. And even if nothing of consequence occurs in 2012 it may occur later. When it comes to being a futurist, the what is more important than the when - we don't exactly know when things will get worse, we just know that they will.

Societal collapse is the danger we face when we take into account the dangers posed by Global Warming and Peak Oil. History is replete with examples of societal collapse, from the Great Depression to the Black Plague.

I'm not dead yet!

What we have learned from societal collapses in the past is that it is never the "end of the world", and that some areas are worse hit than others. Some collapses are localised or regionalised. Other collapses are mild while some are severe and last centuries.

What we do know is this: Peak Oil advocates believe that the world's oil output will begin to steadily and irreversibly drop, forcing our society to find alternatives to motorised transport and suburban living, a process which will result in a lengthy period of economic stagnation. Global Warming advocates believe that mankind's pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution has led to a warming effect upon climate, and will eventually lead to rising sea levels. The climate change caused by this process will result in low-lying areas of the world being permanently inundated by seawater, as well as causing droughts in food producing areas as well as floods and increased threat of hurricanes and cyclones in tropical regions. This is enough to measure potential deaths in the millions. It will not be the "end of the world", but it will be the end for many.

To conclude, don't watch 2012. It's silly. Don't worry about Hollywood threats to the world - but do worry about threats that have a sound scientific basis.

American Physical Society rejects Global Warming denialism

The American Physical Society, one of the largest and oldest scientific societies in the world, has an "official statement" regarding Global Warming. Here it is:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Naturally the "denialists" (those who actively promote the view that global warming is either not occurring or is not man-made) have had an issue with the APS statement, so a number of APS members put a petition through to the APS council. The idea was to change the "official statement" (which I quoted above) to the following:

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human --on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

The APS responded thus:

The Council of the American Physical Society has overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to replace the Society’s 2007 Statement on Climate Change with a version that raised doubts about global warming. The Council’s vote came after it received a report from a committee of eminent scientists who reviewed the existing statement in response to a petition submitted by a group of APS members.

What is interesting about the APS response are the final two sentences:

As a membership organization of more than 47,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous scientific standards in developing its statements. The Society is always open to review of its statements when significant numbers of its members request it to do so.

So how many APS members backed the denialist proposal? It seems that the number was around 160, which is a very small number when compared to the 46,840 members who didn't sign it. If denialists are to succeed in swaying scientific opinion, they need to get more scientists on their side. A proposal backed by 0.34% of APS members is hardly enough to matter. Moreover it seems to suggest that a consensus of scientific opinion exists within the APS that the current official statement is correct.

It is true that over 31,000 American scientists have signed a denialist petition, but since there are 2,157,300 scientists in the US (at least in 2001), that's still barely more than 1.4%. If a controversy did exist, you'd expect there to be more scientists up in arms about global warming. A good rule of thumb would be 20% - if 20% of scientists disagree with anthropogenic global warming then you could argue that a controversy does exist. I look forward to denialists getting 400,000 more signatures.