So what is the state of carbon emissions since 2004?

Some bookkeeping is necessary when considering the units Pacala and Socolow use and those used elsewhere: The EIA uses million metric tons of carbon dioxide as a unit in its data for carbon waste dumping in the world's favorite dump, the Earth's atmosphere, whereas Pacala and Socolow use pure carbon as a unit. Carbon dioxide is 27.3% carbon, and this is the conversion factor between the two units, metric tons of carbon and metric tons of carbon dioxide: To convert from carbon to carbon dioxide, one divides the carbon figure in the paper by 0.273.

Thus if you are following along in the Pacala and Socolow paper, you may need to do some math to convert between the figures given by the EIA, or the even more recent figure given by the International Energy Agency, which is 30.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide having been dumped into Earth’s atmosphere in 2010, an all time record. (If you have joined Greenpeace, and are thus incapable of doing math, I suggest you open another diary, one with pictures of wind turbines in once pristine deserts for instance.)

International Energy Agency: Prospect for Limiting Global Temperature Increase to 2C Is Getting Bleaker.

The Socolow and Pacala value for this amount of dumping in 2010 would thus be 8.4 billion tons of carbon.

Don't worry. Be happy.

To understand the question on an even less speculative level, we may directly view the data from the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory, which measures carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. In July of 2004, the observatory reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide (seasonally corrected) were 377.05 ppm. In July of 2011, they were 391.84, an increase of almost 15 ppm in just 7 years. In the 7 years preceding 2004, the period from July 1997 to July 2007 the increase was 14 ppm. In the 7 year period before that (July, 1990-July, 1998), the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations was a little over 8 ppm. So we see that the rate of change is increasing not decreasing, any success of “wedgies” notwithstanding.

Mauna Loa CO2 monthly mean data

NOAA also maintains a file for yearly growth rates of measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a yearly average.

NOAA, Yearly Average Increases In Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, 1959-2010

In the twenty year period between 1960 and 1980, there was only one year that carbon dioxide increased by more than 2 ppm. That year was 1977. From 1980 to 2000, there were four such years 1983, 1987, 1988, and 1998. In the ten years since 2001, there have been 5 such years. 1998 was the record year, recording a single annual increase of 2.98 ppm, in second place was 2002 with a 2.60 ppm increase, followed by - in third place 2005 with a 2.50 ppm increase, and finally 2010 which comes in fourth with 2.43 ppm increase.

Heckuva job.

Don't worry. Be happy.

So that’s the background – independent of the wedgies themselves - as we examine whether or not “the next 50 years” are going well.

Now, about this diary: This particular diary will be one of a series of diaries, and they will examine each of three classes – of the “Don’t worry, be happy, wedgies” offered up as “solutions” to the climate problem in 2004 by famous Princeton scientists.

The total number of wedgies in the famous Pacala and Socolow paper is given in table 1 in that paper, and they fall into three general classes, with some overlap. Basically the classes are “conservation,” “wiser use of dangerous fossil fuels” and “use of (essentially) carbon free energy producing technologies.” This series of diaries will be essentially organized around the three classes, beginning with the “conservation” class. Again, you may follow these classes by reference to the Pacala and Socolow paper by clicking the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratories “free wedgie” link above. In some cases – cars with better fuel economy for instance – the categories will overlap, and I reserve the right to include any member of two classes in either reference diary.

Wedgie Class Number One:

Class number one consists pure Amory Lovins rhetoric, efficiency and conservation, wherein – and this is my spin of course - rich people "conserve" while poor people stay, um, poor and don't ever even dream of consuming like we have been doing for more than half a century.

To wit, and I quote the famous wedgie paper directly:

Category I: Efficiency and Conservation. Improvements in efficiency and conservation probably offer the greatest potential to provide wedges. For example, in 2002, the United States announced the goal of decreasing its carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit GDP) by 18% over the next decade, a decrease of 1.96% per year. An entire wedge would be created if the United States were to reset its carbon intensity goal to a decrease of 2.11% per year and extend it to 50 years, and if every country were to follow suit by adding the same 0.15% per year increment to its own carbon intensity goal.

The bold is mine. That might sound cute to Americans, whose average continuous power consumption (based on total energy consumption,, and not just electric power) is on the order of 11,000 watts. However, it might sound less than appealing to a citizen of say, um, Ghana, where the average power consumption is on the order of 225 watts. But of course, Americans expect the Ghanians to give up four watts a year, so they can follow our fine example, as the wedgie paper suggests they should.

I hear a lot of Americans here complain vociferously about those terrible Chinese and Indians and their coal burning, even though their average continuous per capita power consumption is on the order of 1000 watts and 500 watts respectively, 1/11th and 1/22nd of American per capita consumption.

For the record, US carbon dioxide waste dumping in the atmospheric dump fell from roughly 5,970 million metric tons in 2004 to 5,420 million metric tons in 2009, after peaking at 6,020 million metric tons in 2007. Many analysts attribute the 2009 fall to the financial meltdown in 2008-2009, so happily for Pacala and Socolow's "magic American conservation scheme" analysis, good times are here again.

Those nasty Chinese were unimpressed with our nobility however and increased their emissions to 7,710 million metric tons in 2009 from 5,089 million metric tons in 2004, meaning that their increase of roughly 2,500 million metric tons offset the more modest US "green" efficiency program. Of course, the Chinese might wish to argue that some of that increase may be attributable to their assumption of that transcendentally important duty of manufacturing plastic table top Christmas wreath thingies sold at Walmart, Walmart being that August American company which pays Amory Lovins (but very few other employees) oodles of money to have itself declared "green." And that's why Walmart sells green Christmas wreath thingies made in China just to prove the point of greenery.

Walmart, green. Keep that meme, you noble Americans!!!

Nevertheless, the Chinese have no right to argue with us noble conserving Americans, because their per capita carbon dioxide dumping, roughly 5.9 tons per person per year has reached a third of an average American's per capita carbon dioxide dumping, 17.3 tons per person per year, every man, woman, hermaphrodite and child.

How dare those Chinese dump almost as third as much dangerous fossil fuel waste as an American? Didn't they read about "wedgies?"

The poor people of Ghana - who will need to be so impressed by Americans that they will cut their dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping by 2% have a per capita rate of 0.33 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person. Ghana, by the way, has a population of roughly 24,233,000 human beings, men, women, hermaphrodites and children. If these people dumped dangerous, toxic, fossil fuel waste into humanity's favorite dump, Earth's atmosphere, as the same rate as our noble Americans, they would be dumping about 431 million metric tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste into Earth's atmosphere as opposed to the 8 million metric tons they dump now.

If Chinese people per capita dumped as much dangerous toxic fuel waste as Americans do on average, they would be dumping 23,300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, more than 3/4 of the amount now dumped by all the people - 30.9 billion metric tons, the highest value ever reported (as described above) - living on the planet right now, men, women, hermaphodites and children.

So how's the wedgie conservation thing working out? Smashingly, I guess, if your state of mind includes an interest in only Americans, and let's face it, who else matters? I mean it’s not like other people are quite so noble as to take time out of their busy lives to drive to protests against, say, oil sands. Nevertheless it seems to me that someone forgot to inform the average infrared photon that it should only respond to American carbon dioxide however, so were it up to me, I would rate this wedgie as a catastrophic failure.

Another wedgie is this one: Reduce deforestation from 0.5 GtC per year to zero. Establish 300MHa of new forests.

The actual situation is discussed here, in a release by the United Nations:

United Nations News: Deforestation in decline but rate remains alarming, UN agency says.

What we see is that nations like China, Vietnam, and India are aggressively trying to replant new forests, but they cannot compete the deforestation in nations like Indonesia and Brazil, with the former deforestation being tightly linked to the German “renewables portfolio standards.” I’ll discuss biofuels in the second part of this series.

In any case deforestation has not been reduced to zero, and the chance that 300MHa of new forests will be planted is effectively zero.

We should also note that it is far from clear that new forests can survive. The evidence is pretty clear that climate change is driving certain forest parasites north at an alarming rate.

One may also note that extreme weather events, in particular droughts, but also including floods and similar events may limit the success of any reforestation program, although all environmentalists should support the preservation and restoration of forests to the extent that they are even possible.

Number 4 of the "solution" is a dangerous fossil fuel scheme – I personally object to all forms of dangerous fossil fuels and believe they should all be phased out, which is technically feasible but not socially feasible owing to vast ignorance, fear and superstition - overlaps with "conservation and efficiency" meme, and it involves a thermodynamic consideration, however badly the authors mangled thermodynamic considerations in solution number 6 (Capture CO 2 at a Baseload Coal Plant) which I will discuss in a subsequent diary.

Here is “solution” #4:

Efficient baseload coal plants: Produce twice today’s coal power output at 60% instead of 40% efficiency (compared with 32% today)

Unlike many of the "current technologies" offered up in this 2004 paper, this one is actually demonstrated. A few - very few - IGCC "Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle" power plants that operate at fairly high thermodynamic efficiency have been built. Other coal plants operate boilers at supercritical water temperatures, relying on the properties of expensive "superalloys" to achieve this result.

(I know I have discussed superalloys somewhere on the internet on some blog or another - it could have been here or elsewhere - I can't exactly remember, as I run off at the mouth and the brain incessantly.)

Be all that as it may, almost of all of these existing IGCC plants have been "lipstick on the pig" approaches, wherein a coal reliant power company builds a small demonstration plant in order to pretend that the rest of their conventional coal fired power plants are "clean."

Sixty percent efficiency however is a pipe dream mostly. Even the World Coal Association suggests that only 50% efficiency is really possible for coal plants.

By adding a ‘shift’ reaction, additional hydrogen can be produced and the CO can be converted to CO2 which can then be captured and stored. IGCC efficiencies typically reach the mid-40s, although plant designs offering around 50% efficiencies are achievable. Reliability and availability have been challenges facing IGCC development and commercialisation. Cost has also been an issue for the wider uptake of IGCC as they have been significantly more expensive than conventional coal-fired plant.



It um, doesn't sound like a sound existing technology to me, not now, never mind back in 2004, but no matter.

In that dangerous fossil fuel hell hole with extremely expensive electricity - Denmark - the world's most efficient coal plant was built in 1998. It claims efficiencies of "up to 91%" but this is actually only true in winter, when the waste heat is used for district heating. The plant - it's a very small unit - 400 MWe - burns 800,000 metric tons of coal per year, meaning the "clean" power plant dumps as carbon dioxide, assuming that the coal burned has about 90% carbon, and correcting for molecular weight of carbon dioxide, 2.5 million tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into Earth's atmosphere.

Nordjylland Coal Station in Denmark.

The claim of "up to" 91% efficiency is almost certainly a misrepresentation, since - and note that I am big fan of district heating and other forms of cogeneration - the plant, along with the gas plants also on the site, dumps waste heat in summer and does not put it to use. We can estimate by direct calculation the actual thermodynamic efficiency of the plant by looking at its power rating, which is 410 MWe and the amount of coal the plant burns. A ton of coal has an energy content, according to the American Physical Society, an energy content of 27.8 gigajoules. It follows that 800,000 tons of coal contain as thermal energy, about 22 petajoules of energy. If the plant operated at 100% capacity utilization - it doesn't, but let's play pretend, since the point of the entire Pacala and Socolow exercise is to substitute a fantasy for a reality - then its thermodynamic efficiency would be 58%. If, as more likely, it operates at the capacity utilization of a typical coal plant, on the order of 80%, it's thermodynamic efficiency (as an electrical plant) is more like 46%. Since the World Coal Association complains about the reliability of IGCC coal plants however, it is quite possible that the plant operates at less than 80% reliability.

(In a bit of irony that tells you all you need to know about Denmark's "Drill Baby Drill!" mentality, the coal plant is surrounded by huge wind turbines that are only dwarfed by the pipes - smokestacks - for dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste directly into Earth's atmosphere, where it is accumulating at unsustainable levels, with no effort to contain it for the rest of history. We'll look at Pacala's and Socolow's analysis of wind, solar, nuclear and geothermal in the third part of this series, comparing their thermodynamically bizarre glib representations about its relationship to coal with what is actually observed, and even what is actually possible.)

And here’s the bottom line on the “all new coal plants” scheme that Pacala and Socolow proposed with the tacit approval of Al Gore: If we build “all new coal plants” – a practice that might be called the “German approach” since this is precisely what the Germans plan to do because of their anti-nuke ignorance, fear and superstition - what it means, and make no mistake about this, is a commitment to at least 60 to 80 years of more coal use. No one, absolutely no one is going to build a power plant with the idea that they will use it for just 10 or 20 years. A sixty to eighty year commitment to burn coal is very different than a commitment to phase out coal, and it is, in fact, a scheme to rob future generations not only of their land, but also of their atmosphere.

Heckuva job.

Speaking of "Drill, Baby, Drill!" another member of this class involves higher fuel efficiencies for dangerous oil fueled private vehicles. To wit, Pacala and Socolow propose:

Increase fuel economy for 2 billion cars from 30 to 60 mpg

With 14% of the "next 50 years" passed, there are, um, zero cars sold in the United States (or anywhere else) - never mind two billion cars - that get 60 mpg. The Toyota Prius, still as of 2011 the champion of fuel efficiency among mass produced cars, is rated at 51 mpg city, and 48 mpg highway.

Toyota recently celebrated the sale of the one millionth Prius. Thus, 14% of the way into “the next 50 years” we have only 1,999,000,000 cars to displace if we can actually produce a mass production car that gets the magic “60 mpg,” which, as of now, we have yet to do.

There's a dirty little secret though about Priuses and other hybrids, that nobody wants to talk about, and that is neodymium, to which I have referred before, since this remarkable metal has many interesting properties. Not only is neodymium mining and refining a rather, um, dirty process - albeit less so if the neodymium is isolated from used nuclear fuels - but the former "Rare Earth Metals," now known as "Lanthanide Metals" are in fact, becoming rare. The world supply is in largely in China, with some Indian reserves that interestingly are radioactive, since they contain large amounts of the nuclear fuel thorium, which India intends to exploit as fuel irrespective of what dumb, scientifically illiterate anti-nukes in the United States think. There is also talk of reopening lanthanide mines in California.

As hybrid cars gobble rare metals, shortage looms.

A typical Prius contains about 1 kg of neodymium. World production of neodymium is on the order of 10,000 metric tons meaning that if 10 million Priuses – last I looked 10 million was a very different number than the two billion that Socolow and Pacala think would be a good idea – would consume the world output of all the world’s lanthanide mines.

Um, um, um...never mind...

(The neodymium business also has some bearing on the wind energy fantasy, but we'll leave that for later, in the third part of this series. In the third part of this diary series, I will examine Pacala and Socolow's projections about what non-carbon sources of energy could do if all the wishful thinking they offered us 7 years ago were to have panned out. We'll hear what they had to say about nuclear, wind, geothermal and solar.)

The “efficient car” fantasy is related to the “efficient building” fantasy also covered in Pacala and Socolow’s paper is another “all new stuff” proposal. I have no idea how this one is going, beyond my perception that 14% of the buildings that were around in 2004 have not been demolished and replaced with “more efficient” buildings. The EIA data for buildings in the United States was last released for 2005, and the 2009 data will not be completely available until 2012.

Another Pacala and Socolow “solution” to climate change is “drive less.” This is necessarily a vague one to nail down as well. What we can say, is that in 2006, world oil demand was roughly 85.3 million barrels a day. In the 3rd quarter of 2010 it was 87.5 million barrels a day.

EIA: World Oil Balance.

Heckuva job, humanity, heckuva job.

I will return – when I have time – to other portions of Pacala and Socolow’s “next 50 years” – with 14% of them now passed – to discuss their “more gas” dangerous fossil fuel proposals (and other dangerous fossil fuel proposals), and the laws of thermodynamics (with which presumably Princeton Professors should have some familiarity) in the second installment. In the third installment, I’ll discuss the prospects for non-carbon energy production using nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar energy. The last one should be particularly fun, since I will produce something called numbers which will, I am sure, produce lots of gnashing of teeth, denial and whining from that subset of our party, the sun worshipers, whose failures are now, after 50 years of uncritical cheering, legion.

Next: Wedgie class number two, wiser use of dangerous fossil fuels.

For now, have a nice day tomorrow.