science is the only thing humanity has going for it

4.1°C

5.3°C

0.7°C to 0.9°C

The supercooled water clouds over Wimberley, TX. Because of the extraordinarily wet spring in Texas, lots of ground moisture is being evaporated here each day. Now, the greedy Brazilians led by the corrupt neo-Nazi, Bolsonaro, want to "develop" (read destroy) the Amazon forest and change it into the soybean plantations for export to China. During that development process, the giant captive cloud system over the Amazonia will disappear. Today this supercooled cloud system gives the hot tropical Amazonia appearance of a cold Arctic region. The accelerated destruction of the Amazonia is yet another way, in which the US, led by Trump and his tariffs, will speed up to the conversion of our hospitable planet into a hot hell for all of us. But the myopic, self-annihilating greed and stupidity are general human features. My friend, Rex Weyler, reports a bumper sticker seen in Colorado on a black pickup with huge wheels and rattling muffler: “My carbon footprint is bigger than yours.” With the Amazon forest gone, parts of Colorado are likely to become a sand desert. Source: T.W. Patzek, 7/6/2019.





increases

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Figure 1. Here is the scope of our problem: since 2004 (the beginning of meaningful solar power) , the annual increases of total electricity demand have outpaced total electricity production from all PV arrays in the world. The only exception was the year 2009, when the global financial crisis was in full swing. Please digest this plot for a second or two, because it shows the height of the power mountain we are on. Data source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019; data extracted by my electrical engineer friend, Pedro Prieto, 6/13/2019.

10 percent of global coal consumption

Figure 2. Notice that international aviation (us flying and our Valentine roses being flown from Costa Rica), and maritime transport (our stuff being shipped everywhere throughout the global fossil amoeba) emit as much of carbon dioxide as the continent of Africa. Source: Ourworldindata.org

1 MWp

20 tons

40,000

20 square mile

6.5 tons

7,000 solar panels

300 million gallons

three species

1.3 billion

150 hectares

biggest carbon capture project

40,000 tonnes

22,000 cars

very hot and very cold days in some of the world’s most populated area

But BP’s analysis suggests at least in the short term, a warming planet could increase demand for fossil fuels

Figure 3. Petawatt hours (1 peta = 1000 tera = 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts) of electricity produced from all sources (red curve) and solar PV + wind turbines. As you can see, the contribution of "renewable electricity" is visible, but hardly sufficient to drive the Green New Deal even in Sector 1 of the global economy. I have put "renewable electricity" in quotes to stress that the solar PV arrays and wind turbines are machines that repeatedly produce electricity for 20-30 years, after which time they must be replaced, if it is still possible in the greener simplified economy with much less power throughput.

Deforested land in the state of Amazonas. The Amazon lost 837 square miles of forest cover between August 2018 and April. Credit Bruno Kelly/Reuters. Source: NYT, "Under Brazil’s Far Right Leader, Amazon Protections Slashed and Forests Fall."

Recently, I gave in Polish an opening lecture, “Can we salvage our global civilization?”, at a one-day conference of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU). The conference took place in the Isabela Lanckoronska Auditorium at the historic PAU building on Slawkowska 17 Street in Kraków. This conference, “Civic organizations and local communities faced with climate change disasters,” was organized by the Committee on Threats to Civilization of PAU. The last lecture was given by a young activist from a well-known non-profit, who manifestly misled the audience with his proposed implementation of the Green New Deal that would immediately shut down all coal-fired electric power plants in Poland, and replace them with wind turbines, PV arrays and geothermal wells. I pointed out to the nice young man that his radical solution would cause immediate power blackouts in Poland, and asked if he shouldn't have mentioned some of the problems with the transition? His answer was that the ordinary people were not ready to hear an inconvenient truth and thus must be fed reassuring fairy tales to move them in the right direction. Hmm, and then we wonder why so many people trust no one.The only answer to the harrowing, complex questions of the Big Transition in population, power and lifestyles is. Science is imperfect. Scientists make mistakes. Some scientists and their funding agencies cannot resist publicity ploys, and oversell their findings. Some scientists have big egos and claim that their particular answers are the only ones that will save humanity. But, science is the merciless quest for perfection, the continuous verification of all models, and the immediate disposal of failed assumptions and theories. Science is continuous doubt. I know the pain of doubting everything, because I am a scientist. In the end,. Without science, we are merely the dumb, suicidal lemmings that stumble in the dark, all 7.6 billion of us.So here is the latest science from EOS : "Legions of scientists have put together the computer model that simulates the planet’s climate: the Community Earth System Model (CESM). Last year, the latest version of CESM, CESM2, debuted. Results from this new version’s simulations point toward a much hotter future climate—driven by humans continuing to burn fossil fuels and pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—than any previous version of CESM. The jump comes aftersimulations in which researchersthe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, starting with levels that existed before the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. (Those concentrations were about 280 parts per million. Today, levels are about 415 parts per million.)Results from the same simulation from older versions of CESM were 2.9°C of warming in 2006, then 3.2°C in 2009, andin 2012. Now the projected warming is. The real planet has already warmed by." The difference between the two models is accounting for the super-bright, solar radiation-reflecting clouds made of supercooled water. These clouds disappear fast from the warming up atmosphere and its models.Thus, there are no other paths but to shrink, shrink more and transit away from fossil fuels. You can stop reading here, but if you are courageous enough to keep on reading you will understand a little better the Herculean difficulties with the shrinkage and transition.All right, here are more facts: since 2004, the annualof total electricity consumption in the world haveelectricity production by all PV arrays in the world, see Figure 1. And the 2.7 TW of electricity in 2018 was only 16% of total primary energy demand in the world. If you read Part III of this post, you'll understand that even in Sector 1 of the global economy (electricity generation) solar PV electricity has not kept pace with the incremental demand for electricity. As bad as this finding is, it merely illustrates the fact that without stringent population control in the poor countries and massive depowering of the rich countries there will becomprehensive Green New Deal or Energiewende. But I already made these difficult to swallow points in Part II Let's go back to the GHG emissions that have been increasing rather briskly at 2.7% in 2018 , also see Figure 2. At a recent Atlantic Council meeting, Mr. Spencer Dale, chief economist of BP, was reported to have said this "Dale closed his presentation with a discussion of the power sector, emphasizing the importance of its decarbonization. Despite the renewable energy surge in the last decade, the power sector fuel mix remains the same as twenty years ago. Dale argued that switching coal production to natural gas is key to cutting emissions, as switching justto natural gas would have the same impact on emissions as doubling the renewables capacities of China and the United States." See Figure 3, to understand the scales involved.My dear green friends, even though Mr. Dale works for the oil industry, he is telling the truth. I'll come back to him a little later. There is no other quick way of limiting GHG emissions from electricity generation, unless the rich countries insist on the immediate and deep, really deep, power cuts that would spell the end of the current global economy that our visionary (just kiddin') president Trump wants to kill. Please remember that a vast increase of solar power postulated in Part III, would require heavy subsidies from fossil fuels and the concomitant increase of GHG emissions by perhaps as much as 25%, see Part II.OK, let's move on. In Part III of this post, I offered you a magic conversion from coal and oil to equivalent solar electrical power. I expected a few of you to push me back by arguing that we do not need as much as 89 TWp (terawatt peak) of photovoltaic electricity to replace most of the 11 TW of global coal and oil. If you did, I would have answered, no, in fact we need several times more solar electricity during the day to run all the background processes of generation of hydrogen or other energy carriers to power the rest of the economy during the night and provide heat for other industrial processes. If hydrogen generated by the solar electrolysis of water were to leave the closed loop of generation/burning, the need for photovoltaic power would increase again, not to mention a steady waste stream of salts from the electrolyzed water, one way or another.For example, asolar plant can deliver at bestof oil equivalent (or 20 tons of gasoline equivalent) per year as liquid or compressed hydrogen. That's one tanker truck per year! As my Spanish electrical engineer friend, Pedro Prieto, calculates, a 1 MWp solar PV plant delivers to the consumers only 22% of its electricity production as usable hydrogen. I hope that you understand just how arduous and inefficient a large scale replacement of fossil fuels with hydrogen would be.In keeping with the tone of this four-part post, the ever-brilliant Onion tells us - the rich people - what to do in order to become more sustainable:"PROVIDENCE, RI—Redefining the necessary adjustments required to address the accelerated pace of the growing global environmental crisis, a report published Wednesday by researchers at Brown University concluded that awho wishes to do their part to stop climate change must removecars from public roadways and revives of coral reef. “As long as everyone on the planet intensifies their efforts by personally clearingof plastic from the ocean, installingin their community, and cutting back their use of fresh water by, the human race may still have a shot at slowing climate change,” said atmospheric scientist Dr. Lauren Moffat, who further noted that each person on the planet would also ideally commit to saving at leastfrom extinction every month while simultaneously working to reduce the world’s population byin order to forestall global environmental collapse. “Some believe it may be too late to reverse the damage humans have done to our planet, but individual change can start with something as small as picking up four tons of garbage every day. At this point, it’s a cultural imperative for everyone to pitch in by performing small but measurable tasks—such as replacingof industrial buildings with hardwood forests in every U.S. city—if we want to stall the meteoric rise in global temperatures for a few more years.” Moffat added that reversing climate change can be as simple as removing every single car from the road or perfecting cold fusion."OK, scientifically speaking, I may have some beef with the Onion, but in general they are soo correct. Except that their population reduction goal is way too small, and personal water use too high.Not to be outdone by the Onion, the Guardian proclaimed that"The UK’swill soon block thousands of tonnes of factory emissions from contributing to the climate crisis, by using them to help make the chemicals found in antacid, eyedrops and Pot Noodle. Within two years a chemical plant in Cheshire could keepof carbon from the air every year, or the equivalent of removingfrom the UK’s roads. ..."This real project will deliver roughly half of the personal goal set out by the Onion. We live in a world in which comedians tell the scientifically defensible truth, and the serious, independent media seem to suffer from acute meningitis. And so many others just want to manipulate us, truth be damned. Are we still laughing?On a more serious note, the Houston Chronicle published this analysis quoting the same Mr. Dale:"An economist with European oil major BP recently concluded an unexpected jump in global energy demand last year largely was due to a rise in the number ofs, including the United States, driving up consumption of power and heating fuels — and the carbon emissions that most of the world’s governments are racing to reduce “As they reach for the switch of the heater or air conditioner, energy consumption goes up,” Spencer Dale, group chief economist at BP, said at an event at the Washington think tank Atlantic Council earlier this month. “If there’s a link between the growing level of carbon in the atmosphere leading to the weather effects we saw last year that will signal the beginning of a more worrying, vicious cycle where increasing levels of carbon lead to more extreme weather patterns, which in turn lead to greater growth in energy and carbon.” Climate change and the global effort to combat it generally have been perceived as a threat to Texas’s sprawling oil and gas sector and other industries that produce large volumes of carbon dioxide.."I'll add that this "short term" could last for several decades, unless a major rearrangement of the status quo happens real fast. And we cannot afford several decades of annual increases of GHG emissions around the world.In conclusion, paraphrasing somewhat a recent email from David Hughes: "An increase of renewable power did account for 33% of the increase in electricity consumption in 2018 (Sector 1, please read Part III) , but renewables haven’t actually reduced non-renewable consumption. Unfortunately, that still leaves the 84% of delivered power that is non-electric (Sectors 2-4 of the global economy). And down the road when we all drive electric cars and fly in electric planes with our food delivered by electric drones, and create hydrogen via electrolysis for fuel to colonize Mars the annual increases are going to get larger." I would say many-fold larger. Did I mention the stupid lemmings stumbling in the dark?(7/7/2019) The "international aviation and maritime transport" slice of the CO2 emissions in Figure 2 appears to be in error. It replaces the original database description of "bunker fuels." Planes fly on jet fuel, which is a naphtha fraction similar to diesel fuel. Until January 1, 2020, ships will continue to use the black, gooey heavy oil fraction, called "bunker fuel." After this cut-off date, ships will have to switch to a cleaner, more expensive diesel fuel and will directly compete with planes. Thus, it is likely that the orange slice in Figure 2 pertains only to maritime transport. Adding planes will subtract from all other slices and double the thickness of the orange slice.(7/28/2019) Here is what greed, corruption and myopia do to the environment vital to the survival of us, the suicidal human lemmings. Please do yourself a favor and say a big fatto the nationalist scoundrels and neo-Nazi thugs in Brazil, USA, Russia, Hungary, Poland, UK, and wherever. Otherwise, we will all perish sooner rather than later.