Today the US electorate will go to the polls in the mid-term elections. All the signs are that many intend to us this opportunity to wreak vengeance on a fallen idol. Harmless Sky is not concerned with American or any other variety of party politics, but in this case the outcome of the vote may have far reaching consequences for the climate debate. Already there are dark rumours of Republicans planning investigations by Congressional committees into the science that has led to concern about global warming. And Congressional hearings are not the genteel, and perhaps ineffective, talking shops that House of Commons Select Committee hearings seem to have become in recent years.
Roy Spencer has an excellent scene setter on his blog here:
Global Warming Elitism, Tomorrow’s Election, and The Future
The first part of this article also has resonance for a post that I put up a while back about A very convenient network.
H/t to Bishop Hill
_______________
For as long as I can remember, a breakthrough in battery technology that will soon provide a small, cheap and light means of storing large amounts of energy has been just around the corner. Although the demand for better batteries to power laptops has led to some improvement, the state of the technology still falls far short of what the electricity generation industry needs if it is ever going to be possible to iron out the problems created by intermittent supplies from alternatives like wind.
A newspaper report of a bright new idea caught my eye recently. This involves using surplus generation capacity when demand is low, but supply is high, to chill air to -196o C, which liquefies it. This is stored, and when demand is high and there is a shortfall in supply, then the liquefied air can be reheated, causing it to expand by a factor of 700. The ensuing oomph can be used to drive turbines.
This would seem to be one of those ideas that are either completely barmy – the developers only claim 50% efficiency – or just possibly a remarkable breakthrough. It would be interesting to hear an engineer’s view. I’ve put the text of the article here.
_______________
This letter appeared in the Sunday Times last weekend:
Sir – Last week DFID [Department for International Development] hosted an event for its staff on “Putting gender at the heart of climate change adaptation and mitigation”.
I am delighted that it is concentrating so effectively on its mission t fight poverty.
Maurice Taylor, Bristol
How long, Oh Lord! how long? will it be before MSM news editors start asking questions about his kind of thing in leading articles rather than leaving it to contributors to their letters pages?
_______________
(About ten days ago I hinted that there was an astonishing post concerning Ofcom and the Dimmock Case in the pipeline. It still is; perhaps it’ll be ready by the end of this week.)
Peter Geany,
You say “I can’t help but get the feeling there is a simpler solution to all this.”
Well yes. Maybe not so simple but certainly better. Its called nuclear power and has been used successfully for many years now.
You think people like James Hansen and many other climate scientists are arguing for civilisation to be shut down. They aren’t. They are saying switch to nuclear power wherever possible and emit less CO2 into the atmosphere.
Brute,
You can quibble all you like about the exact figure of US unemployment when President Obama took over but what is clear from both your reference and mine is that unemployment in the USA peaked around at just over 10% after he’d been elected for just one year and it has since fallen.
Looking back at the data from your reference a similar thing happened after Ronald Reagan became president. Unemployment peaked at at even higher level, and two years after he had been elected. So was that Ronald Reagan’s fault too? Much as I would like to say yes, it really wasn’t. The reason for high unemployment in 1982 was partly the result of world trading conditions and partly the result of the previous government getting it wrong.
The knives were out for Obama from day one. Maybe even guns by now if someone got the chance. You guys just don’t want anyone who’s just that little bit different from all previous presidents in that position. I don’t suppose you were a big fan of Bill Clinton either, which was of course fair enough, but I bet you didn’t name call him in the same vitriolic manner.
Brute
Here’s a view from one of Britain’s most respected financial journalists.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8108660/Feds-600bn-gamble-risks-throwing-away-Americas-biggest-asset.html
I must say I tend to agree with his diagnosis. The US really jacked up the debt levels following Clintons Ninja laws and Obama has followed the wrong strategy by putting America into a debt spiral it may not be able to pull out of this time round. The last thing you need is a socialist (by US standards) President spending money you haven’t got on fantastically costly ventures either into healthcare or Climate change.
(Which is not to say that Bush covered himself in glory with his economic policies either)
tonyb
Peter #16
“But I agree that energy storage is a key issue. If governments are looking to spend a bit of money to stimulate the economy I’d rather they put it into energy storage than yet another multi-billion dollar missile or military jet fighter program.”
I agree, developing batteries that can for instance store power from renewables is the way to go. Did you see my link to the fusion society of which I am a member?
Sufficient resources allocated to such ventures as this would greatly help to solve our looming power shortage.
tonyb
PeterM and Brute
Only you, Brute (of the 3 of us) are American, so you probably need to take anything Peter or I (as outsiders) say with a grain of salt.
It appears clear that the latest election result has been directly caused by a growing dissatisfaction in the US voters with President Obama’s economic programs.
One person who voted for Obama states
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/135117-lilguy/9773-behind-the-rising-dissatisfaction-with-obama-s-economic-policies
On the other end of the spectrum, conservative voters have also voted against Obama candidates, as in this case of the Pennsylvania senate seat.
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=261252
The point has been made by some Obama supporters that his unpopularity is “not his fault”, but rather caused by many factors unrelated to Obama or his policies. This premise is invalidated pretty effectively here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/244227/obamas-unpopularity-not-his-fault-daniel-foster
My conclusion out of all of this:
Obama promised “change” and a “yes we can” mindset (with a slick election campaign but without getting real specific on what he meant by “change”).
Many who voted for him now see that he has not delivered the “change” he promised and that things are worse off than they were when he took office.
Then there are those who were appalled when they found out what he really meant by “change” (i.e. spending his way out of a recession “like a drunken sailor” and bloating an already oversized Federal bureaucracy with taxpayer money largely coming from a shrinking and disgruntled middle class).
As a result, he went from being a “hero” to being a “goat” in two short years.
And I may be wrong, but I am convinced that he has no one to blame for this but himself.
Max
Max,
My disquiet isn’t so much about the result of the US elections. As I’ve already said, almost the exact same thing happened to Ronald Reagan in 1982. Except that unemployment was worse then. And I’m sure the Democrats would have made the most of the situation then. That’s part of the normal rough and tumble of politics and best left to Americans to sort out for themselves.
However, Brute has just called his own elected President “Obama-dinejad”. His religion is questioned , his middle name of Hussein is emphasised, as if there were something wrong with it. We get this sort of thing on a regular basis:
http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/homobama_bin_laden.jpg
Has any other US president ever been subject to this sort of vilification before? I’d say not.
It all looks pretty ugly to outsiders.
Brute and PeterM
As a concerned Swiss, let me give you my thoughts on the US deficit.
When George Bush took office in early 2001, the US deficit had essentially been erased.
Bill Clinton achieved this both by increasing taxes on corporations and high-income individuals, plus by across-the-board budget cuts.
The total Bush deficit (over his 8-year presidency) was around $800 billion (including $200 billion spent toward the end of his administration for TARP and an estimated total of around $580 billion spent for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars – see Wiki)
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/79359-these-are-the-true-deficits-bush-800b-obama-14t
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/
Barack Obama has been in office less than two full years and the latest forecast is that the deficit will have doubled to over $1.6 trillion by the end of 2010.
So in 2 years Obama spent as much as Bush did in 8 years.
TonyB (another non-USA guy) has written
Tony is dead right.
We non-Americans need to worry a bit about this, too. If the USA truly goes “belly up” because of rampant spending and money-printing, there will be an inflationary spiral that we will all feel (even in far-away Australia).
Prior to last Tuesday’s election, the deficit under the Obama administration was projected to accelerate and increase by over $6 trillion until fiscal year 2013, according to this economist (Michael Boskin):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123871911466984927.html
Boskin has calculated
Ouch!
No wonder there has been a backlash against Obama at the polls earlier this week.
Let’s hope a new Congress can put the brakes on this “spending spree” before it gets any worse.
Max
Peter G
“aligning it with the direct of rotation of the earth”
I think if you aligned it correctly, the earth’s rotation (coupled with gyroscopic precession) could make it rotate by itself – a possible power source even, although one that might slow the world down very slightly…
Pumped storage is used at Dinorwig to buffer nuclear power output, I believe, as it isn’t so easy to regulate as fossil fuel generation. You’d need a big pond to smooth out all the wind power irregularities, though!
PeterM
Sure. It’s part of the job description, Peter.
Roosevelt had his share of vitriolic critics, but WWII patriotism kept things from getting too far out of control during the second half of his presidency.
Truman was called every bad name in the book (but he had the skin of an elephant).
“Liberals” hated Eisenhower, whom they saw as a traitor to their cause, but as a war hero he was pretty immune to vilification.
Kennedy got off the hook, because was in office for too short a time.
Johnson “killed babies” (remember)? The anti-Vietnam war movement made him out to be the worst of all war criminals.
Nixon shoveled his own grave with Watergate, but he was thoroughly vilified in the process.
Ford was in office for too short a period and was not vilified as such (although the press made him out to be a moron).
Carter got a lot of heat for trying to “remake” Washington, dismantle the oil companies, set up a totally unmanageable “new oil / old oil” scheme, failing to free the Iran hostages, etc.
Reagan was vilified, especially by anti-war forces, who called him a war monger for taking a hard line with the USSR. At “anti Pershing missile” peace rallies in Europe he was hung in effigy.
And so forth…
Bush senior did not get much real vilification, maybe partly because he had been a WWII Navy pilot and because he presided over the collapse of world communism as a threat to the “free world”.
Clinton…well, he sort of caused it himself, but he certainly got pilloried over the Lewinsky affair.
Bush junior was also vilified, both as an intellectual dummy and as a war monger.
And now we come to Obama.
No change, really, Peter.
History repeats itself.
Max
Not OT, I hope – I just wondered what our Australians thought of this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/04/an-update-from-the-thompsons-down-under/
I thought it was only Europeans that had to put up with that sort of bureaucracy!
Not too OT, I hope – I just wondered what our resident Australians thought of this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/04/an-update-from-the-thompsons-down-under/
I thought it was only Europeans who had to put up with that sort of bureaucracy!
Sorry about the double post – I should have more faith!
Yep Pete, you’re right………
Obama is more sympathetic to the Jihad than to his own country and it’s traditions……he’s a politically correct, ideological, clown.
He’s never even operated a cash register, much less the world’s largest economy.
He’s surrounded himself with like minded (theoretical) socialist “advisors” who have no real world experience and have never had to make a payroll or a profit. They’ve spent their adult years hanging around with teenagers and knocking off naïve coeds……living off handouts and government “grants”.
He’s a welfare queen in a $3,000.00 suit.
He’s an amateur and in way over his head…………the American people recognized his weakness and called him on it Tuesday……………and tomorrow he’s off on “vacation” to India with the half of the Air Force and 34 warships with a total price tag of (estimates) 2 BILLION dollars while the American citizens have their homes forclosed upon and stand in unemployment lines.
Who’s “out of touch” here Pete?
Max, Sure politics can be a rough business and you’d need to have a thick skin to survive – but I don’t believe anyone has been vilified in the same way as President Obama -essentially for who is he rather than what he represents.
Much has been been made of his place of birth. I don’t really care where he was born – it is of no consequence. His opponent John McCain was born outside the USA too – but that was different of course. He had two “real American” parents. Not that I’m criticising John McCain. His campaign was fought on the issues and he rebuked his own supporters whenever they crossed the line.
And they’ve certainly crossed the line many times since with their racist bigotry.
PeterM
I do not believe that the primary reason for the rejection of President Obama’s policies by the American electorate in this week’s election has anything to do with racism.
Nor do I believe that he was elected two years ago for that reason, even though he received 98% of the black vote then.
I simply think that the tables have turned on him, largely because he was more interested in “pushing through” his own ideas of “change”, rather than listening to the American people on their ideas of “change”.
TonyB expressed it well, but I believe Brute caught the US voter sentiment even better when he wrote that Obama was simply “out of touch” with the US public.
It is a common somewhat presumptive and arrogant failing of many politicians to erroneously believe that they “know better” what is good for their electorate than the electorate themselves do. It is a failing which almost always backfires, as it did this week with President Obama.
There is no question whatsoever that Obama is a very intelligent and eloquent young man but the question remains: is he astute enough to learn from his mistakes and defeats and understand what has just happened? From his first post-election speech (pieces of which were broadcast here on TV) it appears not; he still seems to believe that he and his policies were on the right track for the US people, but that they were simply disappointed that he could not achieve them more quickly.
[This may truly have been the case for some of the disillusioned voters who wanted to see an immediate end to US military involvement in the Middle East, dissolution of Guantanamo plus sweeping reforms (such as health care and climate bills), but this group was a small minority of the American public, based on the articles I have seen. I’d have to concede to Brute on this (as an American who was there): I believe the majority of those who rebuked his party were expressing their discontent with his policies themselves – not with his inability to enact them.]
And I certainly do not believe that this had anything whatsoever to do with “racist bigotry” (as you suggest). That is a “red herring”, Peter.
Max
PS “Where he was born” is immaterial to me, as well, but it happens that the US Constitution requires that a US President be born in the USA (with a few very specific exceptions, such as those born abroad while their parents were in diplomatic or military service). If Obama was really born outside the USA (and not covered by this specific exception, then he would not be qualified to be US President (I can hardly doubt that this was the case, however, but maybe Brute knows more).
PeterM
Here’s a small example of Obama being “out of touch” with the US public.
Here we have an economic crisis with well over 10% of the US workers being unemployed with some threatened to lose their homes, but what does Obama do?
Instead of dropping all other agenda items and concentrating on those government actions that could directly create the conditions to help solve this crisis, he surrounds himself with “czars”, such as “science czar” John Holdren, a truly “out of touch” egghead who seriously suggests (believe it or not!) that massive amounts of sulfuric acid be injected into the stratosphere to reflect incoming solar radiation and save the planet from global warming. Obama was not foolish enough to go any further with this absurd recommendation, but he still kept the “climate bill” as a top priority, even though it was quite clear that the US voting public did not see this as an urgent priority at all.
“We [the political elite] know better what’s good for you than you [the electorate] do” rarely works, as this case has shown.
Max
Correction
To Obama being born ouside the USA, I should have written: (I can hardly believe that this was the case, however, but maybe Brute knows more).
Oh, I see………you’re someone who judges on the color of skin as opposed to content of character.
You disagree with George Bushs policies, therefore you’re a racist? Is that it?
You may as well surrender right now……when you claim racism, you’ve got nothing left.
By the way, the Constitution states that every US President must be “natural born”….that is, BOTH parents must be US citizens (Obama’s father was not) or born on US soil……so your opinion doesn’t matter……what matters is law.
Have a look at
http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf
for an idea for energy storage.
I think that it has probably died a death because they cannot patent the process that is at the heart of of it, the Sabatier reaction.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
My take on the idea is to build a humongous solar field in equatorial regions, create Methane gas, compress and ship it round the world using existing infrastructure, therby using the Methane as a way to store Solar energy.
Rick Thomas, #44:
Using solar generation to produce methane is new to me. Can you explain?
In my previous post I should have said that these plants should be built near the coast where there is as abundant source of water and port facilities.
Build a Solar power plant using existing technology to generate electricity.
Use that electricity to split the hydrogen from water, also use the electricity to power the capture of atmospheric Co2, or Co2 captured from industrial processes and shipped to the plant.
Feed the Hydrogen and Co2 into a Sabatier reactor. The output is Methane and pure water.
For nighttime use, power the electricity generators using Methane and Oxygen.
In the day, capture the Methane, liquefy it and ship it round the world.
If the carbon extraction technology could be made sufficiently efficient, then maybe the above process could be used as a way to store energy from existing intermittent generating sources like Solar PV and Wind.
Four your information look at the following links…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/7840035/Firms-paid-to-shut-down-wind-farms-when-the-wind-is-blowing.html
And
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1324264/Too-solar-power-overload-national-grid-warns-German-energy-expert.html
PeterM
Regarding the importance of Obama’s place of birth, Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#A2Sec1
Max
PS As far as I know the only exceptions made here are children who were born outside the USA to parents in the diplomatic or military service who are US citizens, as these are considered “natural born citizens”. Maybe Brute knows more on this.
Rick Thomas
The Green Freedom process description you cited for producing gasoline from water and air sounds fascinating, even if there are still some major snags. They claim they could produce gasoline at $4.60 per gallon at the pump, which is still very costly but not “out of this world”.
The proposed electrolytic stripping process looks good on paper, but apparently still needs to be tested
The write-up mentions that a major problem with the CO2 capture process (on Earth, where CO2 is only a trace component of air at 390 ppmv, rather than on Mars) is that enormous quantities of air must be handled at a fairly high cost.
Using CO2 captured from fossil fuel fired power plants or other CO2 producing industrial processes would make more sense to me.
Of course, then Green Freedom cannot claim that they are “producing gasoline from water and air”, but the net result is the same, as they are reducing the atmospheric CO2 load to produce the gasoline (which will again generate an atmospheric CO2 load).
The solar version to simply produce methane (which could also be used as a motor fuel) from electrolytically generated hydrogen by a Sabatier reaction would also seem feasible, as long as a high concentration CO2 source can be used as a starting point. With 35% on-line factor for the solar cells, that would mean that a lot of the produced methane would be needed to keep the electrolysis going when there is no sun, so I wonder what the overall economics would be (i.e. how would the net cost of produced methane compare with the cost of natural gas?).
The main “take home” that I get out of all this is that there are technologies out there, which can be developed to recycle the CO2 produced from fossil fuel combustion. If these can be made economically viable, then this sounds like a much better solution than CO2 sequestering schemes.
Of course, all of these schemes depend on the real (rather than simply perceived) need to reduce the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2 in order to mitigate against potentially dangerous anthropogenic global warming.
If this perceived need turns out to be based on flawed (or “torqued”) science (as it is beginning to look), and the combustion of all the fossil fuel reserves on Earth cannot cause serious warming, then a lot of the incentive to develop such processes disappears (at least until we begin to see ourselves approaching a “peak fossil fuel” crunch).
Just my thoughts on all this.
Max
Rick Thomas
Speaking of new processes to make fuels from atmospheric CO2, here’s one being pursued by ExxonMobil using photosynthetic algae. They claim 4.5 times as much fuel production per acre than sugar cane (which, itself, it quite successful in Brazil).
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_con_vehicle_algae.aspx
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=biofuels-algae-exxon-venter
Max