The second step in the climate swindle

There is a very strong relation between the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere which we saw in the previous post and the consumption of fossil fuels. 

 

You may recall the slight surge in CO2 in the atmosphere after 1900 and the subsequent flattening until 1950, followed by a strong surge that has continued until today.  Well, here is the same pattern in the CO2 emissions from the burning of fossils fuels and other industrial sources. 

If you try to link the emissions directly to the growth in atmospheric CO2 you fail. There are many "sinks" which remove CO2 from the atmosphere. One that is often overlooked is that higher CO2 levels in the air stimulate plant growth, so the more we emit, the more the plants mop up.Trying to follow the dynamics of all the sinks has proved difficult, so we do not have a really good chemical balance between what is emitted and what turns up in the air.

Fortunately isotopes come to our aid. There are two primary plant chemistries, called C3 and C4. C3 plants are ancient, and they tend to prefer the 12C carbon isotope to the 13C. Plants with a C4 chemistry are comparatively recent arrivals, and they are not so picky about their isotopic diet. Fossil fuels primarily come from a time before C4 chemistry was around, so they are richer in 12C than today's biomass. Injecting into the air 12C-rich CO2 from fossil fuels should therefore cause the 13C in the air to drop, which is precisely what is observed:

So the evidence that fossil fuel burning is the underlying cause of the increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere is really quite conclusive.  But does it have any effect? We will consider that in the next post.

Begone, prophets of doom!

The prophets of doom have a long history.  Job was prominent among those who suffered, yet remained confident even when his supposed friends told him the end was nigh. Recently, the breed has spawned a new source of doom - "The fossil fuel industry must be put out of business by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change" intoned one David le Page recently in the Mail &Guardian. He is part of a long tradition of those who have advised abandoning all hope when facing difficulties.  Fortunately history has a message for him and his kind – the human spirit is such that it can rise to almost every challenge.

Le Page’s thesis is that if mankind consumes much more fossil fuel, the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the average global temperature to increase more than 2^oC above what it was in the pre-industrial era before 1800.   It is a difficult thesis to substantiate, if only because we do not know exactly what the average temperature was in the early part of the 19^th century.  We only started to have some idea of the global temperature around 1860, when calibrated thermometers became widely available.  Since then, it has warmed by a little over 0.8^oC.

The million dollar question is how much of this warming is caused by added carbon dioxide.  Clearly not all of it, because the temperature shot up between 1910 and 1940, and there was little increase in carbon dioxide over that period.  So we don’t know how much extra carbon dioxide is likely to cause the atmosphere to warm by 2^oC.  It seems decidedly irrational to propose getting rid of fossil fuels, all our coal, oil and natural gas, to achieve a target which is so ill defined.

Proposing to get rid of fossil fuels becomes even more irrational once you realize than nearly 90% of all the energy we use comes from fossil fuels, worldwide.  South Africa uses fossil fuel for nearly 95% of its needs. So the world cannot be weaned off fossil fuels overnight.  Indeed, right now the use of fossil fuels is growing rapidly, and that growth seems likely to persist as China develops, India follows and Africa finally takes off economically.

There is a direct relationship between economic growth and the consumption of energy.  When nearly 90% of your energy comes from fossil fuels, then there is an equally close relationship between economic growth and growth in fossil fuel use.  So in calling for restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, Le Page is in fact putting in a plea for less development.  That is all very well if you are part of the developed world, but if you are in the process of developing, and have millions living in poverty, then you actually view such pleas as highly irresponsible.

Events in India illustrate this very well.  When China announced it would start to curb its growth in emissions after 2020, and would aim for zero further growth after 2030, India went on record as saying it was not in the least interested in any curbs on emissions.  Its development problems were such that eliminating poverty was far more important than addressing climate change. Recently, it has banned foreign funding of Greenpeace and other non-governmental organisations which it saw as posing a “significant threat to national economic security.”  A decade ago, India was emitting about twice as much carbon dioxide as South Africa; today it is emitting about four times as much and growing at about 100 million tons per annum.

We must not underestimate the benefits of fossil fuel use. If the internal combustion engine had not come into widespread use during the 20^th century, we would have seen massive starvation on earth.  In 1900, nearly half the area devoted to agriculture was used to grow fodder for draft and carriage animals.  By 1940, fodder was still vital.  Surprisingly, the largest use of horses in warfare was the German invasion of Russia in 1942, which involved about one million animals.  Fossil fuels have allowed us to convert huge tracts of land to the job of feeding people, not animals.  That, and the increase in productivity due to scientific farming, has meant that the supply of food has grown faster than the human population, so starvation is no longer a real threat for most people.

While renewable energy may have its place, we have to remember that modern economies need constant power.  The South African economy is stuttering right now because even the fossil fuel supply is intermittent.  Try to imagine what life would be like if the most of our power stopped the moment the sun went down.  Yes, we as individuals could probably cope with gas cooking and paraffin lamps or candles. However, most of the energy we generate does not go to individuals, but to keeping our developed economy going.  Less than 100 organisations in South Africa use about two-thirds of all the energy we produce.  Modern economies demand energy to generate wealth, and that energy needs to be available every hour of every day.  An intermittent supply is better than nothing, but much worse than a continuous supply.

Indeed, we can measure the cost of not having energy, and compare it to the cost of generation.  The loss of power early in 2008 hit the South African economy with about R75 for every kilowatt-hour that was lost.  Compare that to the approximately R0.60 that Eskom spends at present to produce a kilowatt-hour. It is infinitely better to have too much power than too little.

Of course, we need sustainable development. But there is no point in committing economic suicide in an attempt to sustain ourselves, as Le Page would have us do. According to the Brundlandt definition, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Yes, we have to worry about future generations, but we also have to do so without compromising our ability to meet our own needs.  My generation coped with the previous generation’s love affair with the Mutually Assured Destruction of nuclear weapons.  I have every confidence that my children will cope with the far lesser threats of climate change in ways that will amaze us.

Renewable energy is all very well , but .......

My good friend Anthony Keen has been trying to become as energy efficient as possible. His home boasts 3.8kW of photovoltaic cells on the roof, as well as the ultimate solar water heater. With the best will in the world, he has been driven to conclude that the awful, fossil-fueled grid is a blessing in disguise. Read on ....

Some promoters of renewable energy imply we can survive on renewables alone. I wonder how many of them have actually tried to live on wind or photovoltaic (PV) energy alone? Living on solar energy (by choice) has taught me some lessons.

We all know most renewables are intermittent, but do we really understand what that means? Your power just goes off, Poof ! when the sun goes away or the wind drops. Then you need at least one of three things:

(1) access to a nice stable grid running on coal/nuclear base power

(2) some means of energy storage or

(3) a stand-by fossil-fueled generator.

You don't like (1) and (3), so what about storage? Storage really is the key to all intermittent renewables. The only viable storage on a commercial scale today is the pumped storage system. Eskom has 1400MW pumped storage capacity and 1300MW being built. Cape Town has 160MW. These can only run for a few hours before the dams empty but that generation is vital at busy times.

Nice places to build more such expensive schemes are scarce, hence Eskom’s interest in seawater pumped storage on our coasts. A pilot seawater system has been running commercially in a nature reserve in Okinawa, Japan, for 12 years after successfully overcoming technical and environmental challenges. It can be done. Ireland, Hawai and Portugal are interested.

Commerce and industry cannot run on intermittent renewables without massive investment in (pumped) energy storage. A nice stable basepower grid can absorb up to about 25% renewables but after that the grid becomes difficult to manage and storage becomes necessary.

On a small scale and in specialised applications batteries are useful, but inefficient and expensive. Only when we have efficient and cheap large scale batteries will renewables come into their own. At a residential level, batteries are just acceptable, but if you wish freedom from worry you will need to spend as much on batteries as you spend on PV panels . Plus you still need the grid or genset (or candles !) as backup. All this effectively doubles the initial cost of solar or wind power and this true cost of reliable renewable energy is commonly overlooked. And batteries have to be replaced every few years.

A sad sight was some smart solar PV panels on the roof of a remote Cederberg cottage, some discarded (lead !) batteries lying in the dust and candles in use. Replacement batteries were unaffordable, the weakest link in the now useless chain. Many other promising energy storage technologies are being pursued but none are economic as yet.

Renewables do have their important place in an energy mix for a country, but without adequate storage (or friendly neighbours), I doubt they could entirely replace baseload generating stations. For baseload we need to be weaned off coal , and I see nuclear fission as a temporary but necessary lesser evil until we can copy the sun with fusion power.

Anthony Keen, Rondebosch