How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Rory]

Basically I was asking which specific category among your limited choices did you think I belong in, based on my years here at RigInt, and also my decade of published materials at the Daily Dirt (if you were a reader, and if not, no worries).

So am I a libertarian fucktard or a credulous simpleton?

I stated that the two largest groupings of climate change skeptics, are as above.

Jerky (my old pal), if you feel that either categorization describes your good self, then don't let me stop you from accepting it onto your persona with wild abandon.

Go hog wild, my beloved old chum.

[wintler2]

Rising ocean acidity will exacerbate global warming

Carbon dioxide soaked up by seawater will cause plankton to release less cloud-forming compounds back into atmosphere.

The slow and inexorable increase in the oceans’ acidity as they soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could itself have an effect on climate and amplify global warming, according to a new study. Acidification would lead certain marine organisms to emit less of the sulphur compounds that help to seed the formation of clouds and so keep the planet cool.

Atmospheric sulphur, most of which comes from the sea, is a check against global warming. Phytoplankton — photosynthetic microbes that drift in sunlit water — produces a compound called dimethylsulphide (DMS). Some of this enters the atmosphere and reacts to make sulphuric acid, which clumps into aerosols, or microscopic airborne particles. Aerosols seed the formation of clouds, which help cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight.

James Lovelock and colleagues proposed in the 1980s that DMS could provide a feedback mechanism limiting global warming1, as part of Lovelock’s ‘Gaia hypothesis’ of a self-regulating Earth. If warming increased plankton productivity, oceanic DMS emissions might rise and help cool the Earth.

More recently, thinking has shifted towards predicting a feedback in the opposite direction, because of acidification. As more CO2 enters the atmosphere, some dissolves in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This is decreasing the pH of the oceans, which is already down by 0.1 pH units on pre-industrial times, and could be down by another 0.5 in some places by 2100. And studies using 'mesocosms' — enclosed volumes of seawater — show that seawater with a lower pH produces less DMS2. On a global scale, a fall in DMS emissions due to acidification could have a major effect on climate, creating a positive-feedback loop and enhancing warming.

Katharina Six at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and her colleagues have applied these mesocosm data to a global climate model developed at their institute. In a 'moderate' scenario described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assumes no reductions in emissions of heat-trapping gases, global average temperatures will increase by 2.1 to 4.4 °C by the year 2100.

Adding in the effects of acidification on DMS, which the team calculated using three different estimates of the strength of the link between pH and DMS production, led to additional increases ranging between 0.23 and 0.48 °C. ..

This is a modelled rather than observed, & i believe theres insufficient data on atmospheric DMS to know to what extent it might be already happening. Not all clouds are equal re warming, IIRC low cumulous are net cooling (via albedo reflection off dense fluffy white) but high thin grey cloud can be neutral (lesser cooling effect offset by slowing infrared radiative heat loss).

[Luther Blissett]

All of those skeptical scientists' quotes presume a universe in which environmentalists are pleased by politicians' responses to climate change. Or in which our interests seem to be aligned by any degree. Or in which "the green movement" is progressing in exactly the manner in which environmental activists would desire.

None of those things represent a real existence for me. I've been an environmental activist since I was 14 and first signed up for the Surfrider Foundation. All I've seen since then is inaction on the part of civilization and regression on behalf of industry and the state.

Who is that aesthetic messaging for? My father believes that there is a monolithic entity preparing to destroy industrial civilization and install an authoritative figure who will force everyone to ride bicycles, eat kale, and live in Soviet-style block ashrams. He would and does respond well to the call to continue polluting, buy bigger trucks, frack all shale, construct more open-ocean shipping vessels.

[Iamwhomiam]

Australia Reverses Ban on Native Forest Incineration

- by Jenny Weber, Huon Valley Environment Centre

Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) state government has announced plans to allow native forests to be logged and burnt for electricity generation. Removing a ban on burning native forest wood for electricity would give a green light for the construction of electricity plants powered by native forests, proposals that attempt to prop up the collapsing export wood chipping market.

The NSW Government has opened a submission period through the Environment Protection Authority for comment on this plan to amend the regulation that currently prohibits use of native forests for bio-energy. The Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Regulation 2009 currently prohibits the use of “native forest bio-materials” to generate electricity.

The O’Farrell government is proposing to amend this regulation to enable the following vegetation on public or private land to be burnt for electricity generation: areas approved for logging for pulp products; vegetation that has been approved for clearing; offcuts and ‘waste’ from the timber industry.

This amendment would increase logging and devastate NSW’s remaining native forests. Far-reaching damaging impacts on native wildlife survival, the health of communities and the state’s carbon emissions are likely consequences of the logging industry based in burning native forests for bio-energy.

NSW forests are home to treasured native plants and animals, feed streams and rivers, and are storehouses for carbon — an important part of the solution to climate change.

The proposal will target trees that are currently used for wood chipping and species that are too hard or too red to be used in the paper and pulp production. This includes prime koala habitat such as the forests of red gum, iron bark, bloodwood, grey box and wollybutt.

The logging industry calls it a “common sense move” and claims “that sawmills will be able to use offcuts and woodchips that would otherwise have been left to lie on the ground.” However, these were the same claims that wood chipping was established on decades ago, and subsequently was the driver of wholesale destruction of forests across NSW.

Like other proposals in Australia for trashing native forests for bio-energy that have not reached this level of Government intervention, this proposal is about creating a new market for native forest wood products. It is a desperate attempt the allow ongoing logging of native forests as the collapsing wood chip industry is providing governments with a need to address the failed model they fund with taxpayer subsidies across Australia.

In NSW, despite receiving massive government subsidies, the Eden woodchip mill in far south NSW is currently running at a $2.6 million a year loss. In June 2013, Boral Timber sold its plant and equipment in the mid north coast of NSW, and closed its woodchip export business.

Intensive logging of the ecologically diverse forests on the south east and north coast of NSW has accelerated the loss of important intact native forest ecosystems. These forests provide habitats for koalas, possums, sugar gliders and powerful owls. As the forests are logged, wildlife is killed or displaced, destroyed habitats do not fully recover for hundreds of years — a timeline our global community in this age of climate change does not have to rely on.

The misguided and deceptive approach that surrounds proponents of burning native forests for electricity that it is clean green energy, the NSW Environmental Protection Authority claims that this proposal is consistent with the government’s plans to increase renewable energy generation to 20%.

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning native forest for electricity generation can be as much as 6.4 times greater than the equivalent-sized coal-fired power station.

[Jerky]

This is insane.

[Ben D]

Seems to make sense?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/oct/15/thisweekssciencequestions.uknews

How can burning wood help reduce global warming?

Kate Ravilious The Guardian, Saturday 15 October 2005

Use it to fuel a power station. On Wednesday, the energy company E.ON UK announced it was to build Britain's first wood-burning power station near Lockerbie. The 44 megawatt station will provide enough electricity for 70,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by 140,000 tonnes a year compared with a coal-fired power station of the same size.

"We regard biomass as carbon neutral," says Dave Reay an environmental scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the book Climate Change Begins at Home. "Trees take in carbon dioxide, which is released again when they die and rot down. This process has a cycle of around 100 years." By comparison fossil fuels took millions of years to lay down, but have been dug up and burned in just a few hundred years.

[wintler2]

Seems to make sense?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/oct/15/thisweekssciencequestions.uknews

How can burning wood help reduce global warming?

Kate Ravilious The Guardian, Saturday 15 October 2005

Use it to fuel a power station. On Wednesday, the energy company E.ON UK announced it was to build Britain's first wood-burning power station near Lockerbie. The 44 megawatt station will provide enough electricity for 70,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by 140,000 tonnes a year compared with a coal-fired power station of the same size.

"We regard biomass as carbon neutral," says Dave Reay an environmental scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the book Climate Change Begins at Home. "Trees take in carbon dioxide, which is released again when they die and rot down. This process has a cycle of around 100 years." By comparison fossil fuels took millions of years to lay down, but have been dug up and burned in just a few hundred years.

Symbolism - great; material reality - prob little if any benefit. If it were genuinely replacing coal or some other fossil fuel, great, however it is probably in addition to existing coal/methane. Also, their claim that it is carbon neutral is nearly certain to be false, they wont have accounted for emissions during harvest & transport (=diesel) of the fuel wood, or fertiliser production. It is govt regulation or GHG emissions trading that make such processes profitable, just like Aus & US ethanol production (regulatory capture = corruption), but they are no great leap towards lower emissions or sustainability.

[Sounder]

From Ben d

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/oct/15/thisweekssciencequestions.uknews

How can burning wood help reduce global warming?

Kate Ravilious The Guardian, Saturday 15 October 2005

Use it to fuel a power station. On Wednesday, the energy company E.ON UK announced it was to build Britain's first wood-burning power station near Lockerbie. The 44 megawatt station will provide enough electricity for 70,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by 140,000 tonnes a year compared with a coal-fired power station of the same size.

"We regard biomass as carbon neutral," says Dave Reay an environmental scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the book Climate Change Begins at Home. "Trees take in carbon dioxide, which is released again when they die and rot down. This process has a cycle of around 100 years." By comparison fossil fuels took millions of years to lay down, but have been dug up and burned in just a few hundred years.

I love it, climate change used as an argument to cut down more trees. Who could have expected something like that?

[Ben D]

It gets worse,..this gob smacking story from the BBC...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22630815

Renewable energy: Burning US trees in UK power stations

By Roger Harrabin BBC

Swamp forests in the US are being felled to help keep the lights on in the UK. Is this really the best way to combat climate change?

Environmentalists are trying to block the expansion of a transatlantic trade bringing American wood to burn in European power stations.

The trade is driven by EU rules promoting renewable energy to combat climate change.

Many millions of tonnes of wood pellets will soon be shipped annually to help keep the lights on in the UK. Other EU nations may follow.

Critics say subsidising wood burning wastes money, does nothing to tackle climate change in the short term, and is wrecking some of the finest forests in the US.

I have tracked the controversial trade from the swamp forests of North Carolina to the towering chimneys of the UK's biggest power station, Drax in Yorkshire, which is converting half its boilers from coal to wood.

The implications are complicated and disputed, but it is clear that EU leaders did not have burning American wood in mind when they mandated that 20% of Europe's energy should come from "renewable" sources.

cont....

Oh, and this story is discussed on WUWT, lots of interesting comments naturally from the skeptic community, perhaps worth a read...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/06/law-of-unintended-consequences-number-eleventy-zillion/

[wintler2]

Oh, and this story is discussed on WUWT, lots of interesting comments naturally from the skeptic community, perhaps worth a read...

[url]http://wattsupwiththat.com..

Sorry, i wont give even a click to that pro-polluter Heartland Institute funded confusionist.
Not like its a news anyway, Tilbury burnt Canadian wood pellets in Jan 2012..
http://www.pellet.org/wpac-news/tilbury ... lets-in-uk
Wonder if its still scheduled to close in 2015?

[Jerky]

[NeonLX]

[brainpanhandler]

[Iamwhomiam]

Yes, Jerky, it is insane. Biomasss, in this instance mature forests being cut to create pelletized fuel, is an absurdity. All biomass to energy projects, wood-fired boilers to create steam to energize turbines to create electricity, are unsustainable and in this case certainly is not carbon-neutral.

Really Ben, an eight-year-old article? Sheesh! I've got dozens of articles documenting the failures, explosions, fires and bankruptcies of such facilities from around the world that have occurred since 2005.

I imagine too, you are facing an onslaught of Gasification proposals. All terribly foolish financial and environmental debacles that waste energy and resources. Try measuring the carbon footprint of synthetic oil made from assorted single-use plastics fed into this still experimental and highly polluting thermal waste treatment technology. Then add it to it's pre-existing carbon footprint from its raw material extraction, manufacture, point of sale, use and final degradation after its single use life.

I've written before that biomass technologies are the most expensive of all technologies used to create electricity. Even more expensive than a nuclear power plant. Unbelievable? I thought so, but it's true.

A report prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and published in November 2010 proves this to be true, that waste incineration to create electricity is the most expensive of all methods used to create electricity. I also have a very nice graphic representation in .xls format that I cannot upload that was prepared from information it provides. The EIA report is entitled "Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Electricity Generation Plants" and it can be downloaded here.

Though they will claim they do not use full trees, we have photographic evidence that they do. "Cleaning" the forest floor of it's nutrition assures us the forest will never recover and that run-off from cleared forests will increase, causing its own negative environmental issues to deal with. A tree may not reach maturity as an effective carbon sink for 40 years.

Burn it and it will take 40 or more years to replace it. All its carbon is released immediately when burned as opposed to the very many years its natural decomposition would take. Harvesting the understory and detritus from waste woods left behind and by burning it and whole trees you remove the component most essential to the bio-diverse lifeforms that exists above and below ground in our forested areas.

I just received this article in an email an hour ago, European climate policy drives wood pellet boom in NC Please note the cost per ton to the fuel pellet manufacturer and compare it to the price they are selling it to the Brits and other Euros.

Oliver Munnion of Biofuelwatch.org.uk had this to say, "Enviva sell pellets for £110, more than twice the price of a tonne of coal."

Without government subsidies and tax credits we would not see any of these foolishly expensive, environmental and health damaging, resource wasting technologies proposed.

From the Charlotte Observer article linked to, "British officials say they are taking a closer look at their pellet policies. Ed Davey, the British energy secretary, recently called biomass an interim solution.

“Making electricity from biomass based on imported wood is not a long-term answer to our energy needs,” Davey told the BBC."

Perhaps someone will notify Mr. Davey and suggest to him that the UK meet their interim energy needs by utilizing clean-burning natural gas.

I'll try to find time today to locate some of the more 'explosive' claims made against this atrocious technology; published articles relating many tragic explosions and fires related to biomass energy production facilities.

Those of you opposed to biomass energy production, including synthetically derived fuels, might want to sign-on to the Energy Justice Network's Energy Justice Platform From that page you can navigate to much more on biomass and energy production.

Edited to add this US EIA link http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/mswaste/msw_report.html for more info.

Edited 2nd time to add last 5 words to my 2nd paragraph.

[Iamwhomiam]

Seems to make sense?

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/oct/15/thisweekssciencequestions.uknews

How can burning wood help reduce global warming?

Kate Ravilious The Guardian, Saturday 15 October 2005

Use it to fuel a power station. On Wednesday, the energy company E.ON UK announced it was to build Britain's first wood-burning power station near Lockerbie. The 44 megawatt station will provide enough electricity for 70,000 homes and cut carbon emissions by 140,000 tonnes a year compared with a coal-fired power station of the same size.

"We regard biomass as carbon neutral," says Dave Reay an environmental scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the author of the book Climate Change Begins at Home. "Trees take in carbon dioxide, which is released again when they die and rot down. This process has a cycle of around 100 years." By comparison fossil fuels took millions of years to lay down, but have been dug up and burned in just a few hundred years.

Ben, just to add to wintler's criticism, burning wood would be a good thing for combating man's contribution to the conditions changing our climate if it was carbon-neutral, but unfortunately it is not carbon-neutral, nor sustainable.

In our rush to find profit in waste we once found valueless we are irrevocably damaging the health of our ailing ecosystem and our health as well.