energy & environment viewpoint

Lovelock's latest global heating book: A Final Warning

2009-07-03T00:54:00.000-07:00

I like the "global heating" books by the British physicist James Lovelock; cogent, convincing, and eloquently written. The Revenge of Gaia and now The Vanishing Face of Gaia: The Final Warning.

Global heating is quoted because it is Lovelock's favored term for climate change or global warming. He advocates that adaptation is more important than trying to "defeat" or "beat" global warming.

His more salient points and data analyses tend to stand out in stark relief. For example, we are already close to the point where the feedback effects of excess greenhouse emissions exceed manmade emissions -- methane or carbon dioxide (CO2) released from permafrost in the Arctic regions, the reduced albedo effect of the melting Arctic seas (the frozen white ocean reflects back 80 percent of the sun's heat; the dark exposed ocean only 20 percent); and the dramatic loss of algae from ocean waters.

Algae does not flourish in warming seas and is now diminishing to a large extent, according to Lovelock. Algae seeds clouds with a precursor chemical called dimethyl sulfide. The clouds in turn help reflect the sun's heat back into space.

Therefore, even a giant reduction of our own emissions will have no substantive effect on preventing further warming.

The exhalations of people, their pets, and domesticated animals represent about 23 percent of manmade global-warming emissions, according to the book.

I quibble with him on two major points however. He is strongly opposed to wind turbines, particularly European installations. I favor well-planned wind implementations in the U.S., such as in northern Maine and the Texas and Dakota plains.

Lovelock is heavily in favor of nuclear energy. I believe nuclear must be a part of the new energy mix (with a reduction in the use of fossil fuels). But I confess a strong ambivalence toward nuclear, NIMBY-like; I wouldn't want my children to grow up next to a reactor.

Vermont leads the way on alt-energy incentives

2009-06-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

Good ole leading edge Vermont has implemented a Europe-style "feed-in tariff" law that essentially pays renewable-energy generators a sustainable rate for any extra electricity they generate.

Why is this important? The present rate in most states for alt.energy systems such as wind and solar PV that use "net metering" is woefully, downright insultingly low, in the area of a wholesale price of six cents per kilowatt generated in Massachusetts.

Net metering means that your solar PV or wind system is connected to the electric grid. Any extra electricity you generate beyond what you use causes the electric meter to spin backwards, requiring the electric utility to credit you for those additional kilowatts.

A low wholesale price for alt-energy means that if I had a big solar PV system (instead of one that generates about 250 KwH per month) that generated about 200 extra kilowatt hours per month, then the electric utility would only have to pay me $12 per month for the energy.

Yet I pay them about 18 cents a kilowatt hour for the extra electricity my house uses beyond what we can generate with PV panels!

This is unfair because it provides no financial incentive for thousands of alt.energy generators to become small satellite utilities, which is just what this country needs to overcome its oil and coal addictions.

Vermont law H. 446 will pay $0.30/kWh for solar PV systems; $0.20/kWh for wind systems of less than 15 kilowatts; and $0.14/kWh for wind generated by the larger wind turbines. The law took effect on May 27, 2009.

Speaking of wind, the first floating wind turbine was launched in Norway. This allows wind farms to be located farther out to sea where the winds can be stronger, and also helps staunch the "not in my backyard" problems that plague some off-shore wind farms.

U.S. EPA Will Regulate Carbon Dioxide under the Clean Air Act

2009-05-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Let me slip this tidbit in first, before I discuss CO2 (it's good to be back after a bit of a hiatus from this blog!). U.S. gasoline prices have quietly leapt higher, from lows of $1.69 per gallon not too long ago to $2.15 per gallon (using the gas station down the street from me in Massachusetts as a gauge).

Quietly, because no one is really talking about "soaring gas prices" at the moment of a really bad economic downturn. Yet the current price represents a 27 percent increase in just a few months.

Much of the energy talk now revolves around which low-carbon strategies to implement in light of making an attempt to stem global warming.

However, oil is currently at $57 per barrel; any further increases will make it much more difficult for the world to recover from recession.

Speaking of global warming, the U.S. EPA in mid-April declared that it would regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and four other pollutants under the Clean Air Act. This declaration precedes a formal proposal to regulate the greenhouse gases, which include methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. The declaration will be accompanied by the usual quips about human exhalation of CO2 and how it can be controlled!

Here's the detailed EPA description of their decision.

It's a several-months long bureaucratic public process (I used to write about these regulatory issues in a newsletter) before CO2 emissions end up falling under a new final regulation.

However, the Obama administration has now made a complete about-face compared with the Bush presidency in an effort to regulate CO2 emissions and move to a low-carbon economy.

The next stage in this contentious legal arm-wrestling is a proposed "cap-and-trade" system for limiting overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Store Up Those Multivitamins, Including D3

2009-03-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

Buy affordable multivitamins and vitamin D3, including for your kids. Neither is very expensive.

Why would I write about vitamins in a blog about energy and the environment?

Because the way modern Americans and others obtain most of their food is based on a complex system that is highly vulnerable to disruptions, such as drought, loss of a key energy supply (e.g., fossil fuels that are used to fertilize farms then transport the grain, fruits, or vegetables), or the loss of financial credit required to buy those inputs (a more recent concern).

As a result, the hauling of food great distances could simply halt (how fast do you think anyone would warn you of *that*?), or be tremendously delayed.

I always keep lots of vitamins around because chances are you can always find something to provide calories on short notice, but it's not likely to be very nutritious, which presents the threat, especially for the young ones, of nutritional deficiencies over time. For example, my basal metabolic rate, the amount of calories I *would* burn just loafing around in bed all day (without hiking long distances or walking, for example), is about 1650 calories. I could always find 1500 or so calories in the form of rice, peanut butter, bread, crackers, in an emergency (lurching for the Velveta, so to speak), but I wouldn't want to have to live on simple or sugary carbs for a very long time.

I would want to give my family members and myself a multivitamin and a healthy dose of vitamin D3 each day with the food.
There is some conjecture, further, that vitamin D3 can be used as an antibiotic in a pinch.

Support Your Local (And Regional) CSA

2009-03-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

If you can afford it, invest in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

A CSA gives you a share of a farm or farm cooperative's fruits, vegetables, and/or meats usually during a growing season such as June through October in the northeastern U.S. In fact, even if you feel like you cannot afford it, co-invest in a CSA with a neighbor.

Here's how it works: you send them a single payment in early Spring (say $450 for a full share, the equivalent of less than one month of bad electricity bills here during the winter:), and thereby agree to share the farm's bounty and possible risk of failure, by drought say.

They do not have to repay you in the event they lose their crop to a killer drought or flood; however, you get a weekly pile of veggies or meats from the local farm(s), plus your's and others' investment helps ensure that a local farm survives (along with other advantages, such as having a person-to-person relationship with a food grower, and not having to rely on labels and faceless companies of questionable credibility to determine whether antibiotics are used, or whether cows, chickens or Elk for that matter are grass-fed).

In case you haven't noticed, you and your family need food to survive; you do not want to have to rely on the equivalent of 3,000-mile cesar salads, or grapes from Chile (however tasty they are), for your sustenance. A bad oil-related energy crisis could easily knock out or greatly stress food production and long-distance transportation in the U.S. The supermarkets' shelves in many places would be picked clean in a matter of days.

I have invested in two CSAs, one local CSA for veggies and fruits, and another in Vermont for grass-fed meats and eggs. I have a chest-sized freezer in the basement where I plan to store a lot of the bounteous local produce and protein. I'll let you know how it goes with my CSA shares. I will also re-plant my Summer garden; it provides about 10 percent or less of my calories.

Is the U.S.'s Third Largest Oil Exporter Teetering on the Edge?

2009-03-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Mexico's oil production is plunging. "Pemex extracted 772,000 barrels a day from Cantarell [in January 2009], the world’s third-largest [oil] field, a decline of 38 percent from a year earlier" (yikes!), according to the Bloomberg article, whose link I found at this blog.

Why should U.S. citizens care (the plunging rule of law on the U.S. border with Mexico is probably a more heightened near-term concern)?

Because Mexico is the United State's third largest exporter, behind Canada and Saudi Arabia. In December 2008, the U.S. imported 1.126 million barrels per day from Mexico, nearly 10 percent of all of its imported crude oil, according to the EIA.

To put that number into perspective, even Iraq exported only about half that oil amount to the U.S. during the same period.

Fueling cars and trucks, the transportation of much of our food, for instance, is about 97 percent dependent on crude oil.

The U.S. is dangerously dependent on foreign countries for this crucial energy source; two-thirds of all of our oil comes from other countries.

The top five exporters (including Venezuela and Nigeria, along with the previously mentioned three) dominate U.S. imports. "The top five exporting countries accounted for 59 percent of United States crude oil imports in December while the top ten sources accounted for approximately 87 percent of all U.S. crude oil imports," according to the Energy Information Agency. It's not like we can just grab more oil from another source who is willing to make up for Mexico's probable and eventual exit from the scene as a big U.S. exporter.

Mexico's need for its own dwindling oil supply will probably exceed its need for the revenue it can raise by selling its oil, particularly at the present low price per barrel of about $42. Experts call this condition "peak exports" (when important supplying countries are forced to consume their own crude oil rather than sell it). Despite the fact that the world is currently awash in relatively cheap oil, this is a problem the U.S. is likely to confront in the months and years ahead.

Renewable Energy Content In the Stimulus Law

2009-02-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law on February 17. The law includes about $60 billion worth of investments in energy efficiency measures and renewable-energy technology, out of $787 billion in total allocations.

Here is a detailed article describing the "clean technology" funding in the bill, including $5 billion towards the Weatherization Assistance Program, as well as $4.5 billion for activities to modernize the nation's electrical grid.

The Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) provides this summation of much of the law's "green" funding:

$6 billion for clean and safe water
$4.5 billion for greening federal buildings
$2.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy Research and Development
A multi-year extension of the renewable production tax credit
$6 billion in loan guarantees for renewables, transmission and leading edge biofuels
$2 billion for advanced batteries
$9.3 billion for intercity rail, including high-speed rail
$27.5 billion for highways (this large pot of money is not exclusively for highways, and states and cities must use this flexibility to invest in fuel-efficient public transportation)

Apparently, $50 billion for loan guarantees involving liquid-coal and nuclear energy has been removed from the bill, according to the NRDC.

Not That Climate Change Science Needed Anymore Bad Press

2009-02-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

Not that Climate Change science needs anymore vociferous detractors, but a $280 million carbon dioxide (CO2) monitoring satellite crashed into the sea near Antarctica today. You can read more of the bad news here at treehugger.

Climate Change Revs Up Beyond Earlier Predictions

2009-02-19T05:19:00.000-08:00

The global warming pot continues to boil, as people are otherwise (understandably) preoccupied with near-term crises.

A scientist points out in the The Washington Post that increased inputs such as coal-burning factories in the developing world are intensifying climate change beyond the most recent predictions of the IPCC.

This means that the latest climate models are probably underestimating the extent of temperature extremes, sea-level rises, polar melting, and other anomalies that climatologists expect to take place in the next 50 years (or sooner, or later).

The scientific evidence is ironic, considering that it has been since the 1980s and conservative Reagan years since I have sensed so many people wrapped up in the "climate change is a hoax" personal fantasy. The "feedback mechanisms" involved with excess greenhouse gases are likely to threaten the habitability of the planet for us and other species.

These mechanisms include the melting of massive amounts of permafrost, which releases more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere than mankind could ever muster; as well as the continued acidification of the oceans, which typically are a "sink" for CO2 in the atmosphere. The more acidified the waters become, the less CO2 uptake takes place in the oceans.

Further, the "albedo" effect by which snow cover reflects heat back into space is obviously reduced the more snow recedes and uncovers more forested terrain. Trees also become net CO2 emitters when the carbon saturation of the forest reaches a certain level. The Australians and to a lesser extent the Californians have experienced the extreme weather events that in all probability will increase in frequency over the next several years.

Gas Prices Creep Up: Oil Supply Crisis in the Offing?

2009-02-12T14:01:00.000-08:00

Gasoline prices have gone up quite a bit in the last few weeks here in the Boston area, from about $1.69 per gallon to $1.89 per gallon. What gives?

What will become of us if we are hit with an energy crisis on top of this horrendous, Depression level economic crisis?

First of all, gas is still very cheap for the beleaguered U.S. consumer compared with Europe. Gas is more than three times more costly there. But clouds are gathering on the horizon.

The New York Times reported back in December 2008 that "dozens of major oil and gas projects have been suspended or canceled ... as companies scramble to adjust to the collapse in energy markets [meaning the price of crude oil]."

This means that all those oil derricks that were sprouting up all over places like Texas, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota have ceased operations, not to mention big exploration and drilling projects throughout the world. What looks like a good deal at $147 per barrel suddenly does not make any sense at less than $40 per barrel.

As a result, it is just a matter of time before supply constraints send the price of the Western world's precious oil upwards again.

That is just what the realing economy needs, right? High energy costs. Actually, yes. This is a golden opportunity for the U.S. and other countries, when oil demand is historically low, to begin weaning themselves from this heroin-like addiction, via conservation mainly (smaller cars, better trains, telecommuting, eating locally grown food, and the like), before the unfortunate implications of a loss in oil supply become the second really bad crisis to come true.

Revive the U.S. railroad system

2009-02-05T14:53:00.000-08:00

The "stimulus" package that is presently being tossed back and forth as a political football in the U.S. Senate contains $18.5 billion of spending under a renewable-energy related title.

This spending would include $2 billion for renewable energy research, including biomass and geothermal projects; $6.2 billion to help make homes more energy efficient (via a weatherization type program); and $4.5 billion to modernize the electric grid (the so-called "smart grid" to help move solar-thermal and wind-generated energy to population centers).

Most of these provisions make sense and will presumably help create "green" jobs at a time of great economic suffering.

Most people agree that we can kill two birds (if not a whole flock) with one stone here; create energy-related jobs, give renewable energy a boost to reduce some of our self-destructive foreign-oil dependence (although only conservation can really make inroads there), and ameliorate some of the country's pressing infrastructure problems, like dangerous bridges and lousy railroad systems.

How does the stimulus address our antique passenger-railroad system?

I've been in Switzerland and experienced what a world-class train system is like. The system itself does not overly depend on oil (it is electrified with largely nuclear power and hydropower), the trains are a great way to travel anywhere, even to the smallest villages, and a Swiss does not have to own a car (although many do).

Suffice it to say, the U.S. does not have one of these systems. A bad energy crisis and consequent gas/diesel shortages could quickly lead to a food transportation crisis.

I love the Acela high-speed service to New York City, but this is a rare example in the U.S. of a modern rail system.

The New York Times reports that one of the stimulus bill's provisions that is likely to be dropped is $800 million for Amtrak, to reduce the cost of the $825 billion package and make it more palatable to lawmakers.

The Amtrak proposal would specifically be allocated only for "the repair, rehabilitation, or upgrade of railroad assets or infrastructure."

This sounds like a practical expenditure to me, considering that the federal government is willing to hand multi-billions of dollars to failing financial institutions, only to have those funds disappear into the ether. A country's train system, particularly a geographically dispersed country like the U.S., is one of its most essential assets.

Instinctive responses to global warming/cooling vary by region

2009-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

It is snowing again in the U.S. northeast, where we are having a winter more evocative of my New England childhood in the 1960s. No roofs are spared the ominous ice dams, and you can hardly see over the snowbanks. Much of the United States has experienced a similiarly rough winter. What happened to global warming?

Well, once again, ask the Australians. They seem to be living in the equivalent of Death Valley, California, with temperatures in Melbourne and Adelaide ranging from 109 to 114 degrees Fahrenheit, amid a 12-year-long drought. I hiked in Badwater, Death Valley this year where it was 109 F., and neither the landscape nor the temperature seemed to belong on Planet Earth.

The point is that weather is not climate, and that forming an opinion about global warming versus cooling based on the weather outside, however tempting, is short-sighted.

At any given moment you can find opposite representative examples of weather extremes in the world, such as Australia versus the top of Mount Washington (where Summer is really summery, and winter is really wintry).

The National Academies of Science and the Royal Society lean strongly toward global warming, as in forming a scientific consensus that unchecked manmade greenhouse gases can trigger dangerous feedback mechanisms.

As the AccuWeather global warming blog points out, a recent study indicates tht Antartica has indeed been warming during the last 50 years.

Finally, 2008 turned out to have been about the ninth warmest year globally since 1880.

Climatologist Hansen makes personal appeal to President-elect Obama

2009-01-02T03:39:00.000-08:00

It will be interesting to see the path that President Obama will take in dealing with climate change.

He's getting advice from all corners; everyone has their favorite strategies for reducing carbon emissions and fossil-fuel use: Al Gore (solar power, wind power and geothermal energy), Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute (a renewables strategy dominated by wind), even T. Boone Pickens the oil man, whose plan revolves around mainly wind energy and domestic natural gas.

Now the climate scientist James Hansen has written a personal letter to Obama with his own plan for mitigating global warming. His plan involves phasing out coal-fired power stations; implementing a carbon tax (he views cap-and-trade systems, such as this one in the U.S. northeast, as "ineffectual"); and developing fourth-generation nuclear power.

My own preference for the U.S. is to fully exploit the potential for concentrated solar electric utilities in the sunny Southwest; keep building wind farms apace in the Midwestern wind corridor and off-shore; upgrade electric utilities to be able to efficiently distribute this electricity, and greatly expand the use of solar module arrays and geothermal energy by individual buildings and homes. What's yours?

The USGS Assessment of Abrupt Climate Change

2009-01-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

A group of scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have released a report discussing the current knowledge of abrupt climate change.

You can download the executive summary here. The report analyzes the likelihood of "abrupt climate change," which it defines as:

"A large-scale change in the climate system that takes place over a few decades or less, persists (or is anticipated to persist) for at least a few decades, and causes substantial disruptions in human and natural systems."

I further quote from the executive summary:

"This report considers progress in understanding four types of abrupt change in the paleoclimatic record that stand out as being so rapid and large in their impact that if they were to recur, they would pose clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt: (1) rapid change in glaciers, ice sheets, and hence sea level; (2) widespread and sustained changes to the hydrologic cycle; (3) abrupt change in the northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic Ocean associated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC); and (4) rapid release to the atmosphere of methane trapped in permafrost and on continental margins."

The report reflects a greater understanding of abrupt climate change compared with five years ago, and goes into greater detail on this topic than did the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report.

The gist of the report is that:

1) the melt waters from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are likely to contribute to greater sea-level rises than previous assessments have stated;

2) the U.S. Southwest could experience more intense droughts;

3) the Atlantic "conveyor belt" of warm water flowing from the southern latitudes to the North Atlantic and cold water flowing south, or AMOC, is likely to decrease from 25 to 30 percent during the 21st century, but not collapse; and

4) abrupt methane releases from heavily laden sources such as permafrost are unlikely but cannot be discounted (methane has more powerful heat-trapping effects than carbon dioxide, and one of the catastrophic feedback mechanisms that scientists warn about are massive natural methane releases from permafrost or methane hydrates in the oceans, releases that are precipitated by manmade greenhouse gases).

Getting a dose of electricity power losses

2008-12-29T05:31:00.000-08:00

I now have the opportunity to answer my own question of a few blogs back; we lost power for 14 hours in our rental in Vermont. Energy is such an essential aspect of modern life, and electricity and its deliverance is a fragile commodity. We don't appreciate it until we lose it.

We were on our way to dinner in Waitsfield when suddenly my headlights illuminated power lines all over the road ahead of us. The lines were snaking in the high winds, which had knocked down a utility pole.

You see, it had been almost 60 degrees fahrenheit that day, and the rapid and unprecedented melting for Vermont (global weirding :) had apparently made the base of the pole unstable, so the wind easily knocked it down.

With the electricity off, we three-point turned away from the wires and drove route 17 west to Bristol for dinner. Then the fun started (for me at least). We returned to our little rented house, then by candlelight made a big "lodge fire" in the stone fireplace. The others took the two flashlights and went to sleep in the loft, while I slept by the fire and kept it going all night. It was wonderful.

I woke up when the sun came up and made camp coffee by heating the water in the fireplace. It was toasty and cozy in the room, and I didn't miss power for a second (although I am typing on a laptop right now). No vapid TV and blaring boom boxes; the cacophony of power excess. I was vaguely disappointed when the power came back on, although my family appreciated it, since my son had kind of a bad cold.

Everyone has to prepare themselves for a possible bad energy crisis, and more so, for gasoline supply shortages, which could happen within the year. What would you do if you suddenly couldn't get gasoline for several days or weeks? Have you even thought about it?

Another thought that came to mind was that a hybrid makes a pretty good energy-storage device.

When I turned on the Prius that night, it was the only robust power source on in that dark settlement, save for the amazing starlight. There are lots of proposals out to use millions of plug-in hybrids for energy storage during peak electricity demand, as well as to charge them up during off-peak hours.

Still dependent on fossil fuels after all these years

2008-12-21T12:33:00.000-08:00

We have an array of 22 solar photovoltaic (PV) modules on our roof here in New England that will probably end up providing more than 15 percent of our kilowatt hours in 2008 (an upcoming blog will inventory our 2008 energy use).

This is great production, don't get me wrong; we don't exactly live in sunny Vegas or Boulder. Yet as we sit here in two feet of new snow (pretty, mind you), it occurs to me that we are still not quite hopelessly dependent on fossil fuels.

solar modules we hardly knew ye

On days like this, our solar PV array, which often provides up to 100 percent of our daylight electricity, is completely knocked out. If one or two modules in a PV array are covered by snow, for instance, this usually disables the entire array until the snow melts off (or I roof rake it off, which is known to happen!).

Homeowners have an option, however, to place a free-standing solar array on their property, which can easily be shoveled off.

Consequently, our house is heated by two propane-burning Monitor and Rinnai heaters downstairs, a conventional heat pump (electricity) when the temperature needs to be raised upstairs, and a fireplace insert that I am sitting beside writing right now. None of the energy sources are renewable or really sustainable (except for the wood, which I speculate is responsibly rotated at the local farm where I buy it).

Although we buy "green energy" in Massachusetts, the typical electricity user in Massachusetts derives more than 80 percent of their energy, according to this site, from nuclear (28 percent), natural gas (33 percent), coal (12), and oil (10 percent).

Solar provides far less than one percent of the electricity in Massachusetts, which is why our 15+ percent is exemplary. However, if we depended on solar for a substantial chunk of our heating, say, to power our heat pump, we would freeze and our pipes would burst.

Thus, we are overly dependent on propane to heat the house. Propane is a byproduct of oil refining or natural gas processing, and is not a renewable fuel. When natural gas and oil inevitably peak and decline, so will propane. Although our small heaters do a very good job, their use is ultimately not sustainable.

Propane is expensive too; $3.15 per gallon on our last bill. A very cold winter month will result in the burning of 100 gallons of propane by our machines (we also use it for an oven). In addition, burning propane produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Further, since our country is dangerously dependent on oil and natural-gas exporters, then propane is also a part of this problem.

Propane is also potentially hazardous, as it will blow up a house if released in quantity and ignited (we store ours in two tanks on the side of the house).

The point is that the northeast U.S. is a very long way from being able to substantively provide heat energy from renewables: solar, or wind for that matter (ground-source heat pumps are a different story, and the subject of a future post).

That doesn't mean, however, that the sun belt of the U.S., including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, could not generate substantial amounts of energy from solar thermal plants in their deserts.

The latest cheap oil era may be fleeting

2008-12-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

Gas was $1.67 per gallon at my favorite station down the road. Crude oil has plummeted from its Summer high of about $145 per barrel (pb) to less than $40 pb. Yippee! Let's get the Hummers down off the blocks and hit the road! The era of cheap oil is back! (Writer's disclaimer: the last few statements are facetious. I drive a hybrid.)

Hold your horses. The New York Times reported on December 16 that the sudden drop in oil prices, the yo-yo effect that experts call "volatility," has abruptly put the kibosh on many oil production projects throughout the world. From off the coast of Africa to the Dakota's countryside, an oil boom that had commenced apace last Summer is grinding to a halt.

The result is likely to be a tight oil supply, once again, that will inevitably increase oil and gas prices precipitously. Ironically, some of the sting has been taken out of alternative energy projects, even though new energy sources to replace oil will be critical, now that the oil price has dropped again.

The International Energy Agency, in a study of hundreds of the world's largest and oldest oil fields, has also raised peak-oil alarm bells in its World Energy Report about the long-term prospects for oil supplies.

"Even if oil demand was to remain flat to 2030, 45 mb/d of gross capacity – roughly four times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia – would need to be built by 2030 just to offset the effect of oil-field decline," the above link quotes IEA Executive Director Nubuo Tanaka.

Four new Saudi Arabia's, in other words, would have to be found simply to compensate for the on-going decline of the world's largest fields. Wow.

The latest drop in gas prices appears to be a tantalizing mirage, or relief, for drivers, but not much more meaningful than that. Therefore, we have to keep our eye on the ball: plug-in hybrids, electrified transportation, and finding ways to conserve oil use.

What do you do when the electricity goes off?

2008-12-15T04:22:00.000-08:00

Many New Englanders were confronted with this problem just north of where we live, where an extensive ice storm knocked out electricity all over Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of Massachusetts for several days.

The experiences are emblematic of what could happen during an extensive energy crisis involving supply shortages of oil, natural gas, and other energy sources.

Watching the news coverage, I was struck by the vast differences in preparation among the citizenry. Many were bearing up well with good-humored Yankee stoicism, but were barely surviving with homes cold enough on the inside to see your breath, long gas lines (or no gas), and difficult treks to find food to restock the pantry.

A lot of people simply threw up their hands and crammed into any hotel with power that they could find. I joked with my family, rather lamely, that we would have just headed with our Prius into Boston in search of a Marriott, where I have a sort of "frequent stayer" program.

The good ole venerable wood stove

I was impressed by one fellow in New Hampshire who seemed to be actually having a good time. The reason was that he had a wood stove, a chain saw, and plenty of fallen-down trees to chop up and stoke the heater with. A wood stove will keep a fairly large area of a house, about 500 hundred square feet, toasty enough to live in, and you can heat up water, soup, and other stuff on its hot surface.

The man's family was simply sleeping in the vicinity of the stove, they had plenty to eat and drink, and he was not letting the fire go out. He talked about how everything for this long weekend had become "simpler," and that there was something nice and bucolic about how they were living (no TVs, video games, iPods, modern stresses, etc.).

Doesn't this observation remind you of the kind of post-Peak Oil scenarios people often talk about?

I vowed after listening to him to do two things: replace my wood-stove insert with a full-fledged wood stove, and get a couple of free-standing, perhaps kerosene burning lamps. My father, who passed away this year in his eighties, but lived successfully for decades on the wooded coast of Maine, in his infinite wisdom, gave me a kerosene burning lamp about 12 years ago. After not using it for a couple of years I donated it to a charitable auction, and now I'm kicking myself.

As one stranded person in northern New England put it this weekend, "You don't truly appreciate something until you no longer have it," and that's electricity.

Have I really conserved?

2008-12-14T12:10:00.000-08:00

By displaying how much gasoline I used on the year in the left column of this page, I'm helping myself reduce gas use by measuring my consumption, whereas also crowing about my accomplishment. I'd say I've reduced my gasoline consumption by about 175 or more gallons per year, compared with previous years.

But is 225 gallons of consumed gasoline in a year really a lofty goal? Not really. Let's do the math.

A lot of people in China want to realize the American dream and drive like Americans.

According to Lester Brown's book Plan B 3.0, if China reached the car-ownership rate of Americans (three cars for every four people) by 2030 China will have more cars than exist on earth right now (heading for 2009).

And to provide the space on which to drive them, they would have to pave over a lot of the acreage that they require to grow rice and feed their teeming throngs.

Now to my supposed reduced consumption. 1.1 billion cars is the projected number of cars owned in China given an average eight-percent economic growth rate from now until 2030. What if all of these cars driven by people in China used as much gas as I did in 2008?

1.1 billion X 225 divided by 365 equals 678,082,191 gallons of gas used per day. Since one barrel of oil produces about 20 gallons of gas (plus other products like heating oil), then China's 2030 consumption equates to about 33,904,109 barrels of oil per day.

This number exceeds present U.S. consumption by more than 10 million barrels per day, and would probably represent more than one-third of all the daily available oil in the world.

Therefore, not even my reduced consumption is impressive or sustainable, and I haven't even mentioned the associated carbon emissions, which is probably the most important aspect of reducing gasoline consumption.

When I'll consider changing my mind about "global cooling"

2008-12-07T15:13:00.000-08:00

One more word about global cooling and I'll clam up about it.

Until the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences come forward and say, "cool it folks (no pun intended), global warming is over, and actually, you better get your long underwear on," I'm not going to budge my position on global warming one iota (that manmade greenhouse gases pose a threat to trigger feedback mechanisms, such as vast methane releases, which will endanger civilization).

I listen to scientists, not Fox News bloggers.

A few more points about global cooling

2008-11-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more points about "global cooling" and whether global heating has "stopped," some anecdotal and another involving a reference to a more technical climactic discussion.

The take-away point is that weather is "noisy," it jumps around from one extreme to another in different regions of the world, and that you cannot make long-term climate predictions based on local regional observations.

It seems like the global-cooling advocates are cherry picking their data, and making the common mistake suggested by the latter paragraph.

For example, it is very cold in New England right now given the time of year. A hike on Mt. Washington right now is only for highly experienced and equipped winter explorers; it's killer cold!

However, just last week, I looked out my window and mosquitoes were swarming around my (uncleaned) gutters where water had pooled. It is unheard of in this region to still have mosquitoes in the winter (I grew up in this area), as we have the last several years. It was also 70 degrees Fahrenheit at night just a week ago, and I am 35 miles north of Boston, Massachusetts.

The point is that these weather extremes are caused by dominant air masses originating from Canada (when it's cold) and the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico otherwise, which are in turn affected by the position of the jet stream.
You cannot come to global cooling or heating conclusions based on these short-term differences. However, the long-term changes I have observed in New England, along with all of the other accumulated evidence (e.g., the melting in Greenland and of the North Pole sea ice; the substantial glacier melting in the Alps), have lead me to strongly embrace the theory of a global aggregate temperature increase.

The site realclimate.org says it better than me here:

"The climate system has enormous amounts of variability on day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year and decade-to-decade periods. Much of this variability (once you account for the diurnal cycle and the seasons) is apparently chaotic and unrelated to any external factor - it is the weather."

Hey wait, the earth is cooling...

2008-11-10T12:29:00.000-08:00

I have heard a few arguments for global cooling of late.

This is a huge issue because, for example, President Obama may propose a far-reaching cap-and-trade system for CO2. While any opposing theory deserves consideration, "global cooling" discussions should not become another excuse for inertia unless the evidence is extremely strong and a scientific consensus forms around it, because the stakes are too high for future generations.

First, all short-term anecdotal evidence, such as glaciation in Alaska, should be thrown out, because one or two years is just a nanosecond in geological time.

You can just as easily find anecdotal evidence for continued warming in other regions.
Tell the Australians that their continent is "cooling off," or the people in southern California or Arizona, whose forested regions are often on fire. There are a lot of villages in Alaska where the permafrost is melting, causing their abandonment.
I've visited a glacier in Switzerland for the last 15 years (it has lost 30 percent of its mass since the 1970s), and it added snow last year, but that doesn't mean that "phew, global warming must be over."

"Global weirding" I've heard is a much better term for what's happening.

In addition, weather patterns are heavily affected by the growth of algae in the seas (algae is an important CO2 sink, and is critical for the formation of reflective clouds because it generates the cloud-seeding precursor chemical dimethyl sulfide).
The upper layer of the oceans has warmed over the decades, creating vast "deserts" where algae plumes used to flourish. Some scientists have concluded that runaway global heating can occur partly because of this massive algae destruction. See James Lovelock's "The Revenge Of Gaia."

Obama energy plan

2008-11-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Now that the historically estimable Barack Obama will be the 44th U.S. President, what kind of energy decisions would he make?

We can draw some conclusions from the energy plan posted on his web site. Here is a sampling of their plan (with any of my comments in parentheses):

Help "create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." (An "Energy New Deal" is not out of the realm of possibility, as it accomplishes two goals at once; puts Americans back to productive work, and helps the U.S. become an energy superpower again.)

Get one million plug-in hybrid cars on the road by 2015, partly by providing a $7,000 tax credit for the people who buy them.

"Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025." (This is a fairly lofty goal, as we get far less than one percent of our energy from solar photovoltaic or thermal energy, for instance.)

Help "develop five commercial scale coal-fired plants with clean carbon capture and sequestration technology." (This is unlikely as carbon sequestration is problematical and has not been implemented, as far as I can tell, with a commercial-scale coal plant in the U.S. I always thought of "clean coal" as a contradiction in terms.)

Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. (It is possible that President Obama, with his electoral mandate, will be able pass through this cap-and-trade system.)

Introduction

2008-10-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

This is the introduction to my blog that was published in 2006:

I guess the best place to start is to explain the purpose of this page. What is the reason for taking up a space in the Web ether anyways?

Well, first of all, energy and environment are by far the most important issues facing current and future generations. Specifically, this page will discuss elements of E & E (as I'll refer to them from now on) involving the upcoming energy crisis or “peak oil,” as amplified by human-induced global warming.

These issues are much more important than international terrorism, for instance, or just about anything else you can think of, because they spare no person or species (in terms of warming) in the world their impacts, and literally “hit everyone where they live,” affecting how they get their food and water, how they stay warm in winter and cool in the summer, and whether or not people and their communities live in a stable habitat.

Why not write about the most important topic in you and your family's life?

I'll briefly summarize these two terms, peak oil and global warming. Then I'll provide you a little information about the writer, in the spirit of full disclosure, because it's only fair to convey to readers the background, biases, and motivations of the web page's producer.

Peak Oil

Peak oil refers to a milestone or point on a time line when the world is approaching or has already attained the peak production, the top of a bell curve, of the oil that it can extract from the earth. Simply put, once the world has attained oil peak, the amount of oil that we can take from the ground begins to wane at varying rates, and is of lower quality and more inefficient and expensive to extract.

This is geological reality; oil is a finite resource. Why does this matter? Because so much of everything we depend upon in daily life — manufacturing endless amounts of stuff, driving around in cars, heating homes, schools, and hospitals, and other critical forms of transportation like aircraft and shipping — run on oil.

This is a giant topic, but I'll try to make this little, admittedly inadequate definition as pithy as possible. There are a lot of good books out now, and apparently much solid evidence, that we have already or will shortly reach peak oil. The compelling nature of this issue is intensified by the fact that our governments and institutions have not adequately prepared for the impending situation when oil is not abundant and cheap. In other words, a substitute resource such as hydrogen or biofuels is not available to simply “step in” and run the global economy on, particularly faced with the rising oil demand from countries like China and India.

When is the last time you drove past a fuel station carrying gasified coal or tar-sands derived oil? Industry can begin immediately generating alternative fuels, but the transportation and distribution infrastructure is another ball game.

Global Warming

The Greenhouse Effect makes it possible for life to exist on earth. Global warming refers to the effect of the excess dumping or filling of the lower atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. This has a destabilizing effect on the climate, causing fluctuations that in all probability would not have occurred, or would not have occurred with the same intensity, if the atmosphere had not received this load of gases.

Scientists have pretty much reached a consensus that human sources, such as car driving, smokestacks, and the burning of tropical forests, are substantially contributing to the catastrophic part of the global-warming equation. Another crucial part of the equation is that global warming feeds on itself; for example, the warmer the atmosphere gets, the more permafrost melts; the more permafrost that melts, the more methane and CO2 gets released, and on an on.

Ice cores have provided a solid historical record of how global CO2 levels affect average temperature; the atmospheric scientists really know what they're talking about here. Global warming is one of the few technical areas where the experts are more alarmed than the average person, which tells you something.

Feeding Off Each Other

These two issues — peak oil and human-induced global warming — amplify each other. Destabilized weather patterns in the form of dramatic regional climate changes, rising seas, brutal storms, tropical disease migrations, and the like, make the stresses and strains of an energy crisis that much more difficult to deal with. This is why it seems natural, and more interesting to write and think about (like numerous people are) these two issues together.

Who Am I?

Now for the disclosure part; I am not an expert in these areas by any stretch of the imagination. I have degrees in liberals arts and software engineering, and I am a writer, but mainly in the last few years of software books. Years ago I wrote a popular newsletter for environmental managers, but that was more about the ins and outs of regulations than science. I am a father and a outdoors devotee. I run, climb, and ride a bike a lot. I'm like everyone else; I notice weird changes in my immediate environment, like mosquitoes that are still present in the marshes in New England in January. In fact, these are some of the things I'm going to be writing about in part on this page.

Biases and Opinions

My biases are thus: I advocate a tremendous and immediate investment in renewable sources of energy like small hydropower plants; wind farms; and solar thermal plants and arrays. I advocate foremost conservation, as in reducing the amount of energy we consume and pollution we emit as individuals. In other words, falling back in love with your bike. Conservation is probably the easiest way, the low hanging fruit, with which the human race can deal with peak oil and emitting fewer greenhouse gases.

This page will not be one of those holier than thou tracts; I pollute and consume as much as anyone else (oh, maybe a little less, as I drive a hybrid car, keep food waste out of landfills and in a glorified garbage pile called “compost,” recycle like mad, use compact fluorescent bulbs, and ride my bike and walk a lot instead of drive). I have ridden a bike more for that great outdoors feeling and competition than as a driving substitute, but lately I've been trying to do more errands on my bike.

They Shoot Messengers Don't They?

In general, I'm for confronting problems, finding solutions, not fearing change, and taking some of the heat (no pun intended) off of the future generations that have to deal with the implications of our largesse. Thanks for reading to this point.