The New Republic

Are you shitting me? Doesn't coal provide about 70% of the US' electricity? What the hell do they propose that we use instead now that they also don't like oil or nuclear power plants? Hell, let's just give up on electricity and go back to burning leaves.  These pagan tree-huggers are the worst; their arguments are counterproductive in that many coal-fired plants are attempting to migrate to super-clean new plants which these idiots are trying to block.  Oh well then, looks like we'll have to continue to use the 50 year old soot-emitting plant.

- jwl2672

April 14, 2008 at 1:16pm

None of those new plants are "super-clean" when it comes to CO2. Less sulfur, less NOx, fewer particulates, sure, but IGCC plants still emit carbon--which is what Hansen's talking about. Carbon capture and sequestration may solve this problem, but that technology's at least a decade away, maybe more.

Also, the activists aren't shuttering the existing coal plants, just new ones (at least for now). They'd propose that efficiency improvements and renewables could satisfy new demand, which isn't totally unreasonable. Texas is doing it now, after KKR scrapped plans for all those new coal plants in 2006. Nuclear is more controversial, and enviro groups are a little more divided on that.

- Brad Plumer

April 14, 2008 at 1:23pm

The fossil fuel industries will develop sequestration and other CO2 technologies quickly, given the incentive to do so. Sequestration is close to commercialization without the need for subsidy. No other alternate energy even comes close without massive subsidies, which are ways to hide the real cost from the public.

Sequestration isn't cheap, but if used in combination with coal to liquid and/or gas to liquid technologies, would make a huge dent in our balance of payments by reducing oil imports. It will also create high paying jobs in high tech mining, process plants, infrastructure improvements and others including improved rail infrastructure and pipelines.

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 1:32pm

Well, absent a higher price on carbon, this sort of anti-new-coal-plant movement is the sort of thing that could give the coal companies incentive to develop CCS quickly, although right now the industry claims it needs billions and billions in subsidies to pull it off.

(Also, r-ennis, I don't get the argument that renewables are somehow illegitimate because they need subsidies to get off the ground. Coal has been very heavily subsidized since the 1930s, and currently gets more money from Congress than renewables do.)

- Brad Plumer

April 14, 2008 at 1:44pm

Pagan tree-huggers? Counterproductive arguements about lobbying for clean-burning power plants?

JW....does thy knee jerk so effortlessly? The reason coal provides 57% of the power supply today is because it's benefits from the heaviest Federal subsidies making it falsely affordable (both on the economic and environmental scale) in comparison to natural gas fired power plants or hydroplants. Coal plants are responsible for 93% of the sulfur dioxide emissions and 80% of nitrous oxide emissions in the U.S. alone. And that's "clean" coal. Think what the damage is when using the low-grade coal that China and India burn.

15 years ago, the Coal industry lobbied against stack scrubbers, efficiency upgrades and filtration retrofits because they "claimed" it would increase electrical costs. Well...electrical costs certainly didn't remain flat for those years that clean-technology requirements were tabled. Costs still went up, older plants continued to pollute and the newer plants still produce tons of emissions every day.

Requiring clean-burning technologies such as what IGCC plants provide is not counterproductive. What is does is force a higher level of efficiency out of the fuel source. Right now there are only two IGCC plants operating out of 100 in the U.S.. And you're flippant dismissal of burning leaves is actually a good suggestion. An IGCC plant in Holland supplements coal fuel with biomass. Imagine that...a power plant that has multi-fuel capabilities.

Many of the current plant operators are not making the move to clean fuel or clean burning plants until the older plants are decommissioned at the end of their life-cycle. They do this to avoid having to upgrade. What states are doing now, in addition to rejecting coal-fired plants, is requiring PUCs to provide more electricity from renewables. Cooperative Utilities are now on board for renewable generation and reverse-metering instead of supporting the costly and time consuming aspect of coal-fired plants.

The mix of renewables is slowly growing but will need more Federal subsidies to push near-zero or zero emissions energy generation to the forefront instead of the continued subsidization of fossil fuel industry that resists any legislative attempts to clean up emissions. Even modest attempts were fought for years.

And if you think coal's benefits outweigh it's negatives, ask the people living next to plants or find themselves downwind and downstream from coal plants. It  isn't a question of ridding the world of electricity it's finding better ways to produce it so the future energy streams are stable and constant.

- singlespeed

April 14, 2008 at 2:06pm

Brad... about your comment on nuclear. I'd add that it's not just environmentalists that are hesitant about jumping on the nuclear power bandwagon, it's also those in the international community that deal with nuclear proliferation and uranium enrichment into plutonium. Hans Blix was recently on NPR talking about the very issue of how you control the source of uranium for peaceful nuclear power generation and having an international governing body that oversees, and parcels out the sources to countries for nuclear power. Nationalizing uranium is difficult to do but if we want to address the issue of rogue states or developing nations having nuclear power it's a discussion to start now.

My problem with nuclear is that of all the power sources, it's the most expensive to build and the initial development costs and running costs are ridiculously expensive. They take decades to get through permitting and construction before they're even on line and by that time market and capacity requirements may not be met and the waste stream is beyond difficult to address. As it stands, there isn't a national depository for nuclear waste and the proposed Yucca Mountain has become nuclear in and of itself.

Having served on a citizen advisory board for the decommissioning of the Rocky Flats Weapons Facility, I can tell you it took an untold number of stakeholders to figure out a way to determine the best way to address the existing, on-site waste issues and all the environmental hazards that went with them. And that was for a facility that had stopped producing waste in 1991. Imagine then the waste stream for the current nuclear facilities. Beyond the half-life of uranium being only 704 million years, it stands to reason that the waste stream for nuclear is eternity by human standards.

While it makes sense to expand the capacity of nuclear, during the period of ramping up nuclear plants, in that 20 year span of permitting and construction, an untold number of localized renewable plants, wind farms and solar farms can expand and provide cleaner alternative sources to coal and oil fired plants. Keep and expand natural gas (while at the same time cleaning up its extraction process) and expand renewables while waiting for future nuclear plants.

- singlespeed

April 14, 2008 at 2:23pm

I know for a fact that coal companies are developing sequestration without subsidies. I do not know how much exactly and to what extent, in $ per mmbtu coal is subsidized. If you do know, I would appreciate your reply? I do not defend subsidies, past or present, and would prefer if there were no subsidies at all. The government is notoriously inefficient in getting technologies off the ground and we would be better off if it limited its influence to creating a level playing field.

If legislation is enacted, prohibiting new power plants from emitting CO2, and fossil fuel plants cannot compete, that would be OK with me. The industries involved would fight this, of course, but in the end they would comply and remain in business. Arbitrarily banning new fossil fuel plants in favor of grossly expensive technologies, is madness.

Stationary sources, in my opinion can be handled this way. The only practical way to reduce CO2 from mobile sources, is to drastically reduce fuel usage in cars, trucks and buses. This technology is available today and it is about time that the public get out of their huge gas guzzlers and into more fuel efficient cars instead of blaming oil companies for their problems.

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 2:23pm

r-ennis,

I don't think liquified coal will prove to be the boon that the industry plays it out to be. It's expensive and unreliable at the moment and doesn't necessarily address the underlying makeup of coal's emissions problems.

Australia just opened the worlds first carbon capture and sequestration plant by injecting liquid CO2 into an underground gas field. While it sounds great, the problems lie with high-pressure injection of liquids into subsurface geological structures and "hoping" they remain stable and it's extremely expensive. So why does a coal industry invest in this type of scheme with government support? Because it's cost benefit was perceived to be less expensive than retrofitting existing facilities and making them cleaner and also slowly weaning Australia off of coal.

I'm not completely buying the whole capture and sequestration problem because it reminds me of the solution to our generating more trash...dig a bigger landfill! It give the perception of solving things for the short term, makes us feel good about doing something but it doesn't address the issues of how we reduce waste and find more efficient means of doing things.

- singlespeed

April 14, 2008 at 2:41pm

Best estimates are $60 per barrel (2007 dollars) plus an additional $25 per ton for sequestration. CO2 is pumped into the ground now for tertiary crude oil recovery and there are many other sites presently available. It may be true that sequestration ultimately proves to be unworkable or too expensive, but that may also be the case with other alternates like wind and solar. Why not state the desired requirement, i.e. electric power without CO2 emissions, let them all compete on a level playing field without picking winners and losers and let the market decide?

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 3:17pm

Also, conservation would be a good thing even if there were no CO2 problem. The reason we are relatively inefficient in the US is because energy was very cheap, so the economy optimized around cheap energy. The transition to a more energy efficient economy is inevitable and the government has a role here.

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 3:25pm

singlespeed

Frankly, I don't see any viable substitute for coal anytime soon.  I am entirely for nuclear power but again, people living in the vicinity will not allow it.  I mean, we built an entire mountainside (Yucca) to house nuclear waste safely (safer than what we're doing with it now anyway) and there have been massive blocks from politicians in Nevada preventing us from using it.

Believe me, I want solar power as much as the next person but there is just no way it is going to provide sufficient power in the near future.  Ditto ethanol which turns out to produce more CO2 than the energy equivalent in oil does.  Ethanol gets a ton of subsidies, allegedly because it's "good" for the planet.

As for nuclear power, wasn't there a TNR article last week about why rogue states love the greens? Nuclear WMD's are just one step away from a legitimate nuclear power station.  Refine uranium sufficiently and it becomes weapons grade, capable of sustaining a chain reaction.

- jwl2672

April 14, 2008 at 3:34pm

Mr. Plumer. Thank you for the article "Climate change and trace gases". I do not pretend to understand the entire article but now, at least I have some understanding of the concern about sea level rise. However, I did a very rough calculation concerning the rate of melting.

At 150 cubic Km per year (2005 estimate), it would take over 12 million years for the seas to rise even one meter. Obviously, the present rate of melting is barely perceptible and I accept that. It would help, however, if you could direct me to an estimate of how much ice we are talking about in Antarctica and Greenland, so that a worst case scenario could be made on the basis of a heat and materal balance.

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 6:46pm

Mr. Plumer. Correction. It would take 12,000 years, not 12,000,000 years for the sea levels to rise one meter at the present rate of ice sheet melt. I apologise for the error, but my basic question is still valid.

- r-ennis

April 14, 2008 at 7:00pm

r-ennis, I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but here's Hansen's paper suggesting that a lot of predictions for sea-level rise aren't dire enough:

www.iop.org/.../erl7_2_024002.html

Key bit:

"Under BAU [business as usual] forcing in the 21st century, the sea level rise surely will be dominated by a third term: (3) ice sheet disintegration. This third term was small until the past few years, but it is has at least doubled in the past decade and is now close to 1 mm/year, based on the gravity satellite measurements discussed above. As a quantitative example, let us say that the ice sheet contribution is 1 cm for the decade 2005–15 and that it doubles each decade until the West Antarctic ice sheet is largely depleted. That time constant yields a sea level rise of the order of 5 m this century. Of course I cannot prove that my choice of a ten-year doubling time for nonlinear response is accurate, but I am confident that it provides a far better estimate than a linear response for the ice sheet component of sea level rise under BAU forcing."

 ----------------------------

As for how much ice there is in Greenland and Antarctica total--I think it's enough to raise sea levels 70 meters.

- Brad Plumer

April 14, 2008 at 7:19pm

R-ennis said: The government is notoriously inefficient in getting technologies off the ground.

Indeed.  And we're all posting this stuff back and forth on CompuServe, aren't we, because those private enterprise networks proved so much more efficient than harebrained govornment schemes like DARPA-net...  ?

In other news and history that's based on facts, or at least on the blind worship of things-other-than-mammon, the earth is round, and it turns out that Galileo was right after all.  I know this because the Pope said so in 1992.

Thanks for listening.

- zaiquiri

April 15, 2008 at 2:24am

R-ennis, your calculation (with the vital correction) seems about right. And sea level has been relatively static over the last 6000 years or so, because there hasn't been that much ice melt over the last several thousand years. 150 km^3 per year is not a lot compared to the volume of the ice sheets. In fact, the ice loss from Alaska/British Columbia/Yukon Territory ice fields and glaciers alone has averaged about 50 cubic km per year over the last 200 years.

We more typically look at sea level in terms of millimeters per year of sea level rise, and you get about 0.8 miilimeters per year from the ice sheets. Total sea level rise rates are in the range of 2-3 millimeters per year, depending on the time interval you average over.

The big changes in sea level will come if/when the ice sheets start melting in a more serious way.

- JEFF FREY

April 15, 2008 at 5:19am

Thank you Mr. Plumer for the info. As I said before, the whole issue of climate change is so politicized that it is difficult to come to a rational conclusion.  It is precisely because I do not wish to information fed to me at face value that I am asking these questions. I do not mind the ignorant insults.

- r-ennis

April 15, 2008 at 8:52am

JEFF FREY said: R-ennis, your calculation (with the vital correction) seems about right.

As stated in the article, the recently measured rate of melting from Antarctica and Greenland are each 150 cubic km per year.  That's a total of 300 cubic km from those two areas, which is still not counting the 50 cubic km per year from Alaska and Canada, or the not inconsiderable melting of extensive glacial deposits on the rest of the globe.  But let's be pessimistic and say global melt rate currently ~350 cubic km per year.  Noting that ice is only 90% as dense as water, that's an addition of about 315 cubic km of water to the world's oceans, which have a surface area of 360 million square kilometers.  That equates to a rate of sea level rise of 1 KILOmeter in only 1 million years.  That's a sea level rise of 1 meter in 1000 years (or 1 millimeter every year).  So.. while R-ennis' revised calculation is certainly closer than the original one, and I admit it's better to be off by a factor of 12 then a factor of 12,000, I'm still not aware of any field of endeavor where being off by a factor of 12 would be considered "about right".

Re: "the whole issue of climate change is so politicized", agreed.  It has been politicized by people who think that their own self interests or political agendas, should trump facts and hard science.  But wishing that the world is flat because it would be convenient for you if it was, doesn't make it so, and thinking that you can fly if you really believe you can, won't prevent you hitting the pavement hard if you jump from the top of a tall building.

True science does not bear any resemblance to the picture painted of it by the people who are trying to  politicize the debate over the realities of global warming.

It is unbelievably competitive, if not downright vicious at times.  People make it their life's missions, to poke holes in and disprove one another's theses.  There's no conspiracy going on.  Science is not a team sport.  It's a bloody, messy free-for-all where pretty much anything and everything is considered fair, as long as all are agreed that the one strictly enforced rule, is that everyone is playing the game for the sake of arriving at hard facts and truth.

In my experience, those people who claim that "those scientists" are all in cahoots together, foisting on the public foolish notions that can easily be disproved by anyone sitting at a kitchen table with a piece of paper and a TI calculator, come in two classes:

There are those who don't know any real scientists, and have never had any experience with what the practice of science, and the scientific community, is really like.

Then there are those who do, and who have, who are just plain liars.  These are the types of people who will say anything if there's somebody waiting in the wings with a pile of cash to hand out in exchange for saying it.  These are the kinds of people who can and will, with a straight face and all seeming honestly, tell you things like "Our company has done years of extensive research on this issue, and we find no evidence that nicotine is addictive..."

The difference between say, nicotine, and global warming... is if you believe it when a paid off talking head tells you that cigarettes aren't addictive and aren't harmful, then sooner or later down the road you'll die painfully of lung cancer or emphysema, and you suffer, and that sucks FOR YOU.

But if you believe a paid off talking head who tells you that global warming has not really been demonstrated, that the science is all suspect and so highly politicized that it's impossible to really make heads or tails of the issue, then sooner or later down the road, we ALL get to suffer, and that sucks for ALL OF US.

- zaiquiri

April 15, 2008 at 1:33pm

From the IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers

"Contraction of the Greenland Ice Sheet is projected to contribute to sea level rise after 2100.... If a negative surface mass balance were sustained for millennia, that would virtually complete elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheets and a resulting contribution to sea level rise of about 7m."

and

"Current global model studies project that the Antarctic Ice Sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting...However a net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet balance."

Given this information put out by reputable scientists, I would say that the debate is just as politicized by activists demanding precipitous action as by industry "paid off talking heads".  I, for one, was surprised to learn from Mr. Plumer, who was kind enough to supply me with relevant reports, that the melting of Polar Arctic Ice does not contribute to sea level rise. I am certain that most people who see the pictures of such melting are alarmed by the imminent threat of sea level rise, whereas reputable scientists state that such melting will occur over millennia. 7m over millennia

is no more than 3.5 mm per year, if by millennia, the authors meant to say 2000 years.

Not all people who question the panic scenario of some climate scientists do so for money. And not all climate scientists are free of ulterior motive either.

- r-ennis

April 15, 2008 at 2:52pm

zaiquiri, you are right -- I dropped an order of magnitude, which should teach me not to post late at night. If I was a candidate for President, my opponents would be attacking me for failing to keep track of powers of 10 properly.

In any case, less than 1 millimeter per year is right as far as the 20th century average contribution from the ice sheets. About half of present sea level rise comes from thermal expansion of the oceans, much more of an impact (thus far) than ice sheet melting.

I'll read the rest of your post after I take my kids to school.

- JEFF FREY

April 15, 2008 at 4:00pm

zaiquiri, read the rest of your post and you are 100% correct in your description of how science works, and the one thing I would add is that, while hyper-competitive, the rules are that you have to accept the conclusions that follow from the data. The hottest arguments result over ideas that can't yet be thoroughly tested against observations. Once the data are in, if your idea doesn't match what has been observed, then your idea is dead and you have to accept that. Unlike in some other fields, where ideas that fail to predict reality are never dropped (example: supply side economics).

r-ennis, I am not sure what you are complaining about in the last post. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have not contributed very much to sea level rise over the last century or so. But 3.5 mm/year is 35 centimeters in a century -- about a foot. That's in the range of the IPCC projections. And a foot of sea level rise is quite significant in low-lying areas, although nothing big in other places. You seem to be saying that there is a mismatch that leads you to suspect politicization, but I don't see it.

The potential crisis scenario as far as sea level rise goes is that melting may not be what determines how fast the ice sheets or other icefields put water into the ocean. The recent speed-up of glaciers in Greenland and other places suggests that accelerated glacier flow may significantly increase the rate that ice goes into the ocean (where it melts), compared to melting and runoff. The IPCC took a very conservative approach in its sea level forecasts, and assumed that there would be no change in the contribution of water to the ocean from glacial flow. But a lot of people, including most glaciologists, think that is just wrong -- they think the contribution to sea level rise from glacial flow is almost certain to increase, so assuming that it stays the same means you are almost certain to underestimate future sea level rise.

And, if you look at the latest data from Greenland and Antarctica, both are now losing mass faster than the older estimates suggest. In the case of Greenland, the mass balance has changed from nearly zero (accumulation and melting/flow loss balanced) to significant loss of mass. This is comparing 1990s data to the last several years. The conclusion is that Greenland wasn't contributing much to sea level rise over the 20th century, but is contributing now. The same seems to be true for Antarctica but uncertainties are larger.

But in any case, nobody is suggesting that sea level is likely to rise by tens of meters any time soon. But it doesn't have to rise by meters to make for dramatic impacts. And the other side of the coin is that in some places, like large delta systems, subsidence of the land may be much faster than sea level rise. This has been the case for the New Orleans area, for example.

- JEFF FREY

April 15, 2008 at 5:14pm

Not much to add except that zaiquiri and Jeff Frey laid things out very nicely.

- Brad Plumer

April 15, 2008 at 5:57pm

My calculation was based on 150, not 350 cubic km per year and I made a swag at the surface of the oceans. Not very scientific, I agree, but I was only interested in getting an order of magnitude number. It was arithmetic I was doing, not science. And the arithmetic does not add up to what the climate scientists are panicking us about.

It is not true that "nobody is suggesting that sea level is likely to rise by tens of meters any time soon." That is exactly what they are suggesting. Maybe not tens of meters but certainly several meters. The  whole argument that global climate change is an emergency is based on that misleading suggestion. And if someone reaches the common sense conclusion that we have a long term problem that should be dealt with, not a crisis, some schmuck accuses him of being in the pay of people bent on destroying the world. Those of us who object to being railroaded into panic mode have grandchildren too.

Mr. Plumer, thank you for the data you provided me and I hope that your blog will help clarify these important issues rather than politicize them even further. The way forward is to win over doubters like me and not alienate them.  

- r-ennis

April 16, 2008 at 9:48am

Lurking in the comments to this post was a lengthy discussion of how high and how fast sea levels could

- Anonymous

April 16, 2008 at 12:01pm

R-ennis wrote:  The  whole argument that global climate change is an emergency is based on that misleading suggestion.

-Your- argument seems to proceed like this:

Everyone including the 'panic mongers', agree that sea level rise is the only serious danger posed by global warming.  It's going to take millenia for sea levels to rise by any amount that would pose any danger.  Any danger that takes millenia to be realized, is by definition, not an "emergency".  Therefore, there is no emergency, and no need for immediate action to reduce CO2 emissions.

But I would argue that your opening premise is a mischaracterization of the issue.  In other words, yours seems to be a straw man argument.

Granted, sea level rise gets a lot of attention because it's one of the consequences of global warming that's easily and most dramatically visualized.  But there are many dangers from global warming, of which sea level rise is only one, and probably not even the most serious.

From my perspective, it appears an awful lot to me like you've picked sea level rise as your straw man because that is the danger that everyone agrees is going to be realized most slowly.  As the IPCC report which you've quoted makes a point of noting, because of the enormous thermal inertia of the ice caps and oceans, there's a long time delay between the immediate change in heat balance caused by greenhouse gas increases, and the effect of that change on sea levels.

It's like turning up the heat under a large stock pot.  You can turn up the heat to a level sufficient to bring the water to a boil, and yet it may still be a long while before you see any evidence of boiling.

You seem to be saying that until we actually see a good bit of boiling occuring, we shouldn't worry too much about continuing to turn the heat up.

To me, it doesn't take much more than common sense to see that that's a recipe for disaster.  

While a lot of noise is being made around the world about "addressing climate change", the simple fact of the matter is we have not even begun to address the issue in any meaningful way.  There has been a lot of feel good talk, and movies made, and soulful songs written, and "let's all turn our lights off for an hour to show we really care" type publicity stunts performed, but let's set wishful thinking aside for a second and look at the actual numbers.

The FACT is, we're not just continuing to turn the heat up, we are turning the heat up faster and faster with each succeeding year.  According to latest US DOE estimates released in 2007, 7.5 billion tons of CO2 were emitted in 2003.  7.9 billion tons of CO2 were emitted in 2004.

Two salient points to note.

The 7.9 billion tons emitted in 2004, the latest year for which we have estimates, represents an all time record for total annual emissions.  The 400 million ton increase in emissions from  2004 than 2003, is also an all time high record for the rate of increase in emissions.

In other words, all the hard evidence we have at this point indicates that as we sit here right now, global CO2 emissions are following an upward trending exponential curve with no levelling off even remotely in sight.

So, on the one hand, we have a fair amount of hard evidence accumulating that the situation with respect to climate may already be worse than we suspect combined with the fact that our emissions are following an exponential upward curve.  That's the argument for pressing for immediate action.

The argument against immediate action seems to go like this: "If the govornment tries to force action now, it'll wreck the economy and we'll all be the worse off and miserable for it.  We'll be up to our neck in owls, and nobody will have a job."

But what would happen if I interpreted that statement as a claim, and asked you to post concrete evidence in support of it?  Not hearsay, or speculation, but actual evidence?

Or let's entertain the following thought, would I be at all justified, if said these doomsayers of ecology-action induced economic catastrophe were nothing more than panic mongers, following a hidden agenda?

- zaiquiri

April 17, 2008 at 2:39pm