Does anyone remember the unanimous statement on decisive action to combat the global economic crisis that the world leaders handed down from their meeting at L’Aquila this week? You don’t? Well nor do I, actually.
But global warming has its uses if you are a politician stuck for some good headlines, and as second item on the G8’s agenda it seems to have come in handy to save the leader’s blushes.
Apparently the climate is not to be allowed to change by more than 2 °C, and everyone agrees that carbon emissions should be reduced dramatically by 2050; about the time that most of those gathered at L’Aquila will be learning to play the harp. As to what will be done to achieve this, how it will be done, or when it will be done, they are silent.
But for politicians, with a mighty spin machine to back them up and a poorly informed public as an audience, climate change is so much easier to deal with than economic woes. Here is a selection of first reactions after the meeting that buck the trend:
World leaders, including the developing nations, committed themselves only to “substantially reducing global emissions by 2050”, but failed to agree a specific target. The lack of a substantive agreement, other than the desire to keep global temperatures down, leaves world leaders facing daunting negotiations to reach agreement at the Copenhagen conference in December, which is due to set the entire climate change framework covering the period from 2012 to 2050.
Patrick Wintour and Larry Elliott, The Guardian, 9 July 2009
So all the “Gs” gathered in Italy this week appear to be floundering in their efforts to craft some sort of meaningful deal on climate change. Rich countries agreed to far-off, ambitious targets on emissions reductions, but shuddered at any more immediate commitments. Developing countries basically punted altogether. None of that bodes well at all for the year-end climate confab in Denmark.
Keith Johnson, WSJ Environmental Capital, 9 July 2009
Brazil’s chief climate negotiator criticized the Group of Eight rich nations on Thursday for not taking more forceful steps to curb global warming, saying proposed long-term targets were meaningless.
Does the 50% cut by 2050 sound familiar? The same countries agreed at the 2007 G8 summit to “seriously consider” such a target. By 2008, they had moved to “consider and adopt” it. Come 2009, well, we can consider it well and truly adopted.
So the planet is saved after all. Before you crack open the low-carbonated champagne, consider the weasel wording of the Group of Eight summit communiqué. Are such carefully-hedged words worth the paper they are printed on? What are these politicians committing themselves to do during their own term of office? Most will be dead and buried by 2050.
Paul Taylor, Reuters, 9 July 2009
And of course the BBC, who must have been at a different meeting:
BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin says the declaration is a significant step, with all big countries – rich and poor – agreeing there is a scientific limit on the amount we can warm the climate.
http://www.harmlesssky.org://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8143566.stm
(Hat tip to Benny Peiser of the incomparable CCNet)
La la land Tony..
not just warm words, hot air too!
Given the unproven emission reduction effects on global temperature – and the expense of emission reduction – the key is to engage in activities valuable in themselves, which also keep on track with emission reduction targets at minimal business disruption and expense.
Emission reduction could therefore also be much simpler, and easier to agree on – without emission trading complicating international trade relations.
Sufficient first phase 2020/2030 emission reduction is achieved by acting on ELECTRICITY generation (coal, gas) and TRANSPORT (mainly automobiles) alone, since these 2 sectors typically (as in the USA) account for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions.
The focus on electricity and transport gives several advantages:
1. Local environmental benefit from less pollution of sulphur and all else that’s in the emissions, regardless of the less certain or immediate global benefit from CO2 reduction.
2. Electricity supply alternatives which together with improved grid distribution gives better competition and keeps down electricity bills for consumers.
3. Transport alternatives (using electricity, hydrogen and other energy sources), which give variety of choice and competition advantages for consumers, additionally reducing the dependency on oil imports.
4. No trade problems: Unlike Cap and Trade, which involves cement, steel and other industries having to face imports from unregulated countries, the here suggested electricity and transport changes are not just more limited, but also largely local. Since there is little competition between say utility companies internationally, “best practice” results can be compared and shared.
Funding and Impact
Equity and long term loan finance can be used: Long term industrial loans from financial institutions, particularly if federal/state guaranteed, give low yearly interest repayments and lessen the effect on electricity bills or transport cost.
Compare with
today’s all-encompassing Cap and Trade (emission trading) suggestions, with unpredictability, expense, and needless disruption from normal business practice on one hand, or unnecessary profiteering from free allowance handouts with little actual emission reduction on the other hand – together with extensive -and unnecessary- regulation on what people can or can’t buy and use.
Understanding why proposed Cap and Trade is bad, in USA and elsewhere
http://www.ceolas.net/#cce5x
Basic Idea — Offsets — Tree Planting — Manufacture Shift — Fair Trade — Surreal Market — Real Market — Allowances: Auctions + Hand-Outs — Allowance Trading — Companies: Business Stability + Business Cost — In Conclusion
The Way Forward
http://www.ceolas.net/#cc10x
Introduction — Funding and Impact —No Energy Efficiency Regulation — A New Electric World
Electricity Generation — Distribution
Transport Power Generation — Regulation — Taxation
Peter:
I don’t expect that there are many of us who would disagree with the suggestion that reducing pollution would be a worthwhile course of action. The problem at the moment is that rhetoric, driven by concerns about carbon emissions, has got way ahead of technology. As a result, unsuitable alternative energy sources are being invested with a spurious credibility.
Wind generation is a very obvious example, although the recent report from Poyry seems to be an attempt (albeit very tentative and diplomatic) to address this.
Tony, mere words fail me when it comes to describing our politicians at present. This latest pronouncement is hardly surprising, given that they have never delivered on anything else. Also they know I’m sure that they will make this target, given what’s happening with the temperature at present, so they will be able to claim victory and tax us at the same time.
I’m a mechanical engineer and spent the first 20years of my working life in and around the diesel engine industry and in road transport. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power or any money to figure how we could save significant fuel and thereby emissions and help the environment. However by concentrating on CO2 one of the 2 non pollutants coming out of the exhaust of any internal combustion engine (the other being water vapour and ironically the primary greenhouse gas) we distort and hamper any attempts to create greater efficiency.
I will use 2 examples of how we could make significant improvements. Currently diesel engine exhausts on heavy vehicles being sold as of 2010 in the US (Europe lags the US on engine emissions and always has) are almost squeaky clean. In fact it would be impossible to measure any heath benefit to be gained by adopting these levels over the current levels. However that’s not a reason not to try. But and here is the cut, if the same energy was diverted into solely improving efficiency, then rather than a 1 or 2% gain in fuel consumption the new models are about to deliver we could have up to 15 or 20% over the road improvement. Also larger and heavier vehicles would help efficiency along with appropriate regulations.
What is not well understood is that each reduction in NOx, CO, HC and particulates reduces efficiency given no improvement in technology. Nobody denies that the diesel engine was a dirty old thing and needed cleaning up. However clean engines and brilliant technology has been available for years to make these machines supper clean and more efficient. Legislators just need to get off the political bandwagon and think for once in there lives. Often the technology could not be used as customers would not pay the premium and the European manufactures especially lobbied to continue using old tech at higher emission levels claiming they would be at a disadvantage. Of course these are the same manufactures that now lobby for tax relief on everything green and have us believe they produce pollution free vehicles.
Ironically it was this not having to spend on new tech that allowed these same manufactures to used the huge profits to purchase the hi-tech American manufactures who where vulnerable after having had to heavily invest to produce acceptable products and remain competitive in the face of a one sided legislative world. And it flies in the face of the notion that the US is responsible for most of the world’s pollution. And before someone goes into one, I am talking here about just one area of technology.
Example 2 is Coal for power stations. A new clean burn, properly designed and located close to the consumers heat and power station can be been super clean in terms of harmful emissions and supper efficient compared to the older stations. This will significantly reduce the amount of coal consumed for a given amount of power and heat produced. If we attempt the ludicrous carbon capture we will then burn more coal, hugely increasing costs, and because of all the energy needed for the additional extraction we negate the “reduction in carbon” This again is not hard to work out, but is always suppressed.
The sad thing in all this is that none of the measures for reducing CO2 emissions involve greater efficiency. They all involve processors that use additional resources. If fossil fuel is a finite resource, and there is some growing debate about that, then why introduce measures that waste it?
Even when talking about wind power the nutters ignore the cost of maintenance and the huge oil fuel burn that goes with it especially if the turbine is at sea. And never mind the cost of building the monoliths in the first place. Maybe it time to give up and go with the flow.
Peter Geany:
It’s good to have someone commenting with such passion on a subject that they are obviously very much at home with.
I’m sure that you are right, and that the myopic focus on Co2 that has become almost mandatory over the last few years is closing as many doors on useful and environmentally beneficial technology as it is supposed to be opening. By coincidence, the Poyry report ( which I posted about here ) and the forthcoming white paper on energy, seems at last to be forcing a reappraisal of the political rhetoric that so far has been just about the only attempt to address what we are supposed to believe is the greatest threat of our times. Apart from the initial BBC report on ‘Impact of Intemittency’ all the stuff I have seen in the industry media has accepted that this is an indictment of massive wind power development. Only the BWEA are attempting to say otherwise, and that will surprise no one who has experience of how economical that organisation can be with the truth.
Let’s hope that the same process is soon applied to road transport.
Tony, all the engineers I know, know this stuff, I don’t claim to be putting forth any sort of outlandish or revolutionary suggestions here, it’s just that none of them will speak out for fear of being vilified. None of the environmental activists I have personally met can hold a candle to most of the engineers I know, and it’s a shame that they don’t have any forum to cross examine our political leaders in public. Our Commons comities in particular are doing a very poor job at present and not getting at the truth and reality.
If I phone up the BBC and said I need to be on the Jonathan Ross show because we need to save the world I am sure I would be told to stop being annoying. Yet some idiot women (and I make no apologies for that description) came on as if it was some sort of last minute desperate plea to save us all, and spoke the most incredible nonsense that forced me to leave the room. (I wasn’t watching that stupid show but majority rule and all that that happens in front of the TV)
How on earth can a celebrity, who within 5 seconds of opening her mouth confirmed that she had zero grasp of anything connected with reality, be given this sort of forum without any challenge? It’s incredible, and I have complained to the BBC on many matters like this but they just completely ignore me. We need an opt-out from the licence fee I think. I have written to Harrabin and Black on several occasions now and explained that the tide is turning, and that ultimately if they don’t change tack, and put aside their personal views and give a balanced view they will be amongst the first to feel the wrath of the public. And this will be in a form of a cut or abolition of the licence fee.
You only need a loose idea of history to notice that windmills and water mills were a useful interim stage at the very start of the industrial revolution. But they were soon bypassed because they were not enough – industrialisation needed better sources of energy.
Politicos have no grounding at all in science – I just hope that lessons from history could maybe help…
I don’t understand this. Do you mean processes?
I would have expected that reducing emissions from fossil fuels would only be possible by burning less of them.
Jim
Burning less fuel has been the aim of most engineers since I was involved in engineering. To think otherwise is nonsense. The point I’m trying to make is that most of the schemes that are promulgated by the environmental lobby often result in the burning of more fuel for the same practical delivery of energy.
The classic example of this is the use electric Cars. Just at the point where we have the technology to make some sensational improvements in efficiency, manufacturers are wasting too much of their time on hybrids or electric cars. This is the political thing to do, but not the clever thing to do. But I guess that it’s easy for politicians to explain the savings these vehicles appear to deliver by ignoring the hidden costs. Hybrids for example use more fuel than the equivalent petrol or diesel only car using the same technology. And not only this, but the hybrid costs more energy to manufacture. Whatever way you look at it, hybrids are just a con trick if the real aim is to use less fuel.
Electric Cars have a place, or I could say HAD a place when zero harmful (CO2 is not a direct health hazard or constituent of visible pollution) emissions were the aim. During the 60’s and 70’s and often beyond the air quality in inner cities or confined spaces was poor and the case for the zero emission cars, buses or forklift trucks was powerful. Gas was the fuel of choice for the commercial world with electric fulfilling its role where appropriate. What was always understood was that the electric vehicle shifted its emissions from the immediate location of the vehicle to some remote location, usually a coal fired power station. What was also understood was that more fuel was needed to produce the same amount of physical work, although often the direct cost was less due to differences in taxation. These facts seem to be forgotten today, but even with our mix of coal oil and gas plus nuclear fuel, the CO2 cost of driving a mile in an electric car is more than the direct equivalent petrol or diesel engine car. And given that some of our coal stations are old the pollution would be more as well.
So whilst we focus on CO2 real engineering and real efficiency sufferer as we fumble around for a “political” solution. All I am trying to point out is that we are not being honest with ourselves over this whole subject.