A Musing Environment

There was a comment to the last post saying, among other things, that there isn’t enough uranium and that it costs more energy to refine uranium than nuclear power plants produce. I’ve seen a variation of this argument on anti-nuclear discussions.

From David Bodansky, Nuclear Energy (an excellent and easy to read reference book, get the second edition),

Adopting the probably conservative resource estimate of 20 million [metric] tonnes … A resource of this magnitude could sustain four times the present rate of generation for 80 years.

He then looks at research on extracting uranium from seawater, in very early stages yet, as it will be decades before this source is important. At current costs of $700/kg U, an order of magnitude more than uranium costs today, nuclear power costs would increase by 1.5 cent/kWh.

No one knows how much uranium there is because as long as there is enough for the next generation of plants, there is no incentive to go looking for more. Other technologies, such as extracting uranium from sea water, will only be studied for economic feasibility when other cheaper sources are exploited.

I don’t know the energy costs of refining uranium ore, but it would be surprising if countries such as France would continue to export nuclear power if they could have as easily have exported whatever energy they used to refine the uranium.

I highly recommend the Bodansky book.

Many Friends and others have questions about nuclear power. Many have been listening to anti-nuclear companies (such as many of the environmentalist organizations) for decades, and assume – as I once did – that they would not be so strongly against nuclear power without reason, and that the reason has to do with more than money flow. I will try to answer questions I receive, though some will take more time than others. As with these questions, I may do a little paraphrasing and rearranging. If you have insight you’d like to contribute, please comment and supplement my answers.

Nuclear power plants require a very high level of expertise to operate. In the U.S. the trend is for only a few companies to operate nuclear plants – many utilities are opting out of this responsibility. If the expertise is so specialized doesn’t this lead to an unhealthy dependence on an elite set of companies? In addition, with an unstable network based on a relatively few large plants there is the risk of a major failure of large parts of the system?

I would think that just the opposite is true, that limiting nuclear power in the US to companies with a good track record will improve its safety. One or more companies have sold their nuclear reactors because they failed to meet NRC policy, which rewards early reporting of problems and gives the (incredibly expensive) fine-toothed comb treatment to companies that fail to report problems.

Siting several reactors close to one another is thought to be safer because there will be more knowledgeable people in close physical proximity.

In the developing world this could be a much more severe problem – how do these countries generate a stable operational base? Would it be OK if countries like Mexico, Algeria or Georgia built and tried to operate these complex facilities?

I don’t know how we can prevent anyone from building nuclear power plants, if that is what they want to do. However, the nuclear industry has a strong investment in safe operation of nuclear power. Tens of thousands of Americans die yearly from coal pollution, and I hear no one cares – some may care, but I don’t hear it. Several workers in the oil refineries 10 miles from my home died in fires, but I haven’t heard from the public that we need to stop using oil, today. But a small leak of water with an insignificant radioactivity level, compared to our daily dose? Then I hear.

I would expect that nuclear power plants, should they be built in countries such as you name, would be run by groups from other countries, even if the country has a lot of home-grown talent. But none of these countries has a strong regulatory system. That said, I heard a physicist on NPR who went to China expecting to see a nuclear industry run somewhat on the same lines as their coal industry (which kills how many per year? many hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly at the very least from pollution, plus 6,000 miner deaths in accidents alone in 2004, and so many more due to coal miners’ diseases), though not nearly as bad. Instead he found conditions closer to the first world.

Advocating nuclear power does not mean advocating that anyone and his cousin start operating nuclear power plants. Indeed, there are many who advocate that technical countries use more nuclear power so that non-technical countries can use more than their share of fossil fuels.

Building nuclear power plants near populated areas seems to be another decision that ignores the risk of even a small radioactive accident. For example, if Rancho Seco was operational and had an incident that required the evacuation of Sacramento the economic costs would be very high. The agricultural products of the whole valley would be instantly suspect. Given the large population of Ca. where could plants be safely sited in California? These facilities generally require a lot of cooling water – where sites that are appropriate?

There have been accidents already in populated areas. For example the accident at Three Mile Island, an early nuclear power plant built and operated under an early regulatory system, generated panic (and from someone I know who was there, a sense that the government was lying every time they told the truth), but there was no major exposure to radiation.

California has nuclear power plants in San Luis Obispo and San Onofre, near San Clemente. I hear that there are people in San Luis Obispo who drive to discussions of the dangers of nuclear power, and this appalls me. I don’t know how dangerous a nuclear power plant accident in the US could be, but there is some danger. Since Three Mile Island, there was a required infusion of jillions of dollars to update nuclear power plants, and a similar infusion of regulatory energy into the then just formed Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Today, nuclear power plant operators are required to study as many hours per year as do airplane pilots, there is constant review. If the operators of the local oil refineries are now forced to take classes, I am unaware of it.

There has been a big change in the understanding of nuclear power plant designers as well. For example, they now assume that the operator is malicious, because there is no functional difference between a malicious operator and one who puts paper over the warning lights. New nuclear power plants are expected to be 10 – 100 times safer than the current generation of American plants.

All thermal power plants – nuclear, coal, natural gas, biomass (plant matter), and solar thermal (using mirrors to concentrate solar power on water turning it to steam) – must be located near water. Of these, nuclear power plants have the lowest operating temperature, and so must use the greatest amount of water to cool per unit energy produced. This is particularly harmful to local fish, which do not appreciate the increase in temperature from any power plant, but of course, the nuclear power plant does a little more damage. On the other hand, the use of fossil fuels is likely to lead to widespread extinction of fish species, notably cold-water fish.

Re suspect agricultural products, I have heard again and again from people who worry about the radioactivity dropped on Welsh cows, and such. We and these cows are exposed to radioactivity in our daily lives. There are huge variations in what is considered normal, with very high natural exposures in some areas without an increased cancer rate.

It is true that many people – and some describe this reaction as natural – might become afraid of eating food grown near a nuclear power accident, event though food grown near Three Mile Island, for example, would not have had an important exposure. It is our job to reach that which is human within us, to overcome fears that are innate or taught, so that we can be more effective at dealing with fears harder to see when the sky is blue, the weather pleasant if somewhat warm, and all around us looks lovely.

For most of us, it is easier to deal with fears of someone else causing an accident. However, reducing greenhouse gas emissions due to individual behavior, and the technologies that enable what we do every day — driving and flying and turning on the light — should be our focus.

A very intelligent people created a great computer in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “to calculate the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After 7.5 million years, it produced the answer, 42. “Forty-two!” someone yells.

“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

I often find myself wondering what the question was when I read solutions, changes in technology and behavior that will solve our problems, I can follow the logic in the policy community. Their question is, how can we cut world GHG emissions some by 2015 (US by 10%? 30%?) and 60% or more by 2050 (US by 94%).* The problem they want to solve is preventing catastrophic climate change.

An example of a different sort of answer comes from one of the environmental organizations, from their climate change page. It included much better efficiency, renewables, and carbon capture and storage for coal power plants, which together, they estimate, will cut US greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. So what is the question? Could it be, how do we cut GHG emissions in half just in the US (but not worldwide)? (But why ask that question?) Or what can we accomplish with these technologies alone before we figure out how much else we have to do? (But they vetoed other technologies as not being OK.)

Occasionally people produce even stricter answers, requiring all changes to be behavior changes, but again, I don’t know the question. If all Americans give up cars, and make no other changes in behavior, such as taking the bus, American GHG emissions go down 27%. What was the question?

My sense is that many in the public – and I count environmental groups – are more interested in their solutions than in solving any particular problem.

Suppose some of these individuals and groups are right, that there really is a solution that doesn’t require nuclear power. That is, we can prevent catastrophic climate change and we don’t even need nuclear power. I have two questions: first, what if there is a glitch in the analysis? If worries about wind power turn out to be important, or improvements in solar power or efficiency don’t come as rapidly as hoped? Secondly, why not prevent as much climate change as we can, not just catastrophic climate change?

Reconsidering opposition to nuclear power today can still alter the future. Regretting opposition to nuclear power after 2015, or even after 2010, may be too late.

*Assumptions: if the GHG emissions worldwide are 40% of today’s level, and population increases 40%, then per capita GHG emissions are 28% of today’s level. Since the US now emits about 5 times the world average, US emissions would be 6% of today’s level unless we continue to emit more than others.

I have been receiving a set of questions on nuclear power. I will be answering them over time in this space.

The danger of reprocessed fuel is nuclear proliferation in countries that don’t already have the bomb. Basically, reprocessing takes nuclear waste, and separates out the highly radioactive fission products, the small atoms. The uranium and transuranic elements are not very radioactive, and that portion is now safe to steal.

The plutonium in reprocessed fuel is contaminated with a large amount of Pu-240, while military grade plutonium is more than 93% Pu-239. Every country that uses plutonium to make bombs has a special reactor to make Pu-239, and all designs of bombs that have been tested use Pu-239. However, bomb specialists believe that a bomb, not very good, could be made with the contaminated plutonium, though estimates about the amount of fuel one would need are classified (as they are for bombs that have been built with military grade plutonium). The problem with too much Pu-240 is that it has a high rate of spontaneous fissions, producing neutrons. When these neutrons hit the plutonium fuel, “pre-initiation” may occur.

For a functional country, it’s easier and cheaper and more reliable to make the Pu-239, but for a dysfunctional country or a non-government, stealing may be easier. Overwhelmingly the best to steal, of course, is loose Russian nuclear weapons material. Perhaps second is stealing reprocessed fuel (not sure), if there were any reprocessing plants in countries with a loose rule of law.

The United States stopped reprocessing under Carter to “set a good example” for other countries, but neither France nor Britain, the other countries, stopped reprocessing. Additionally, US scientists believed it cheaper to toss used fuel into the ground than to reprocess. I don’t know how much this calculation has been affected by the protest (not based on the facts) of using Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository, or by technology improvements, but some US scientists are now seeing reprocessing as more attractive.

Update I have no opinion yet on whether reprocessing is a good option for the United States. I am waiting for the various arguments being made in the science and policy community to sort out better in my head, or even better, among the people studying it. I have read enough to understand why people in policy promote nuclear power as one of the solutions.

For those who want to read more, I highly recommend David Bodansky Nuclear Energy Second Edition.

Sharing an understanding of the heat wave that just hit us in Berkeley with people who don’t live on the coast has been a frustrating experience. Weeks of highs in the 80s and 90s, lows in the 60s, doesn’t look all that bad to people for whom summer always means warmth.

But plants and animals along the California coast settled in for the long haul — or a seasonal visit — in a climate without summer water but with highs rarely going above the high-60s or mid-70s in summer — yes, there would be a day or two during the summer of 100 or high-90s, but it didn’t last through the night. (October used to be our warm season on the coast.)

I expect that when the final count is taken, more than 100 Californians, and an enormous number of cows. will be dead. It will not be surprising if we see regional species extinction as well.

The Oakland Tribune quotes Peter Glieck, co-founder and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment & Security:

I’ve been thinking about climate change for a long time. But even I’m a little bit shaken by the extent to which we’re seeing climate impacts in so many different ways, and in ways many of us didn’t expect.

I don’t see any good news.

The SF Chronicle article Climate change seen hurting national parks looks at a report on what may happen to Western National Parks. Temperature increases to date in the West, 3 F since 1900, are double the increases for the US as a whole (and triple increases worldwide — oceans are warming more slowly).

More than 100 coal power plants are proposed in the US, and far more than that in India and China.

It is important that wealthy countries build power plants only with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and help fund third world countries so that they can as well. Let’s start with US behavior first.

How do we fight the proposed coal power plants built without CCS?

It makes sense for us to write our newspapers, and contact our legislators, pointing out the advantage of a system like in California, where utilities are required in making plans to assume an ever increasing carbon tax. It makes sense to point out that increased costs of mitigation of greenhouse gases and adapting to (or just plain losing out to) climate change will swamp the small savings in electricity costs.

Other arguments? Other people to argue with, besides newspapers and legislators?

Update — responding to the comments Why the opposition to gasification with carbon capture and storage? For a century or so, this is an option (or appears to be, a large test must be run, smaller tests have worked to date). Injecting oxygen rather than air (1/5 oxygen) produces 1/5 as much waste gas, and this gas can be injected into oil wells and coal seams. While not as low carbon as nuclear power, it is much better than current coal power plants, and presents a good option for countries with a lot of coal that insist on using it.

California’s Department of Water Resources has produced Progress on Incorporating Climate Change into Management of California’s Water Resources: detailed descriptions of expected challenges in water issues this century due to climate change and sea level rise.

I hadn’t considered the effect of El Nino, which blows the Pacific Ocean east and increases sea level, by 1/4 meter in January 1998. Climate models predict that El Ninos will become more frequent.

Caveat: The report focuses on the effect of a sea level rise of one foot, because the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report predicted a sea level rise of 4 – 33 inches. The 2007 IPCC report is expected to predict a sea level rise of up to 2 meters.

Comments that go beyond praise and nays
Ramsay Huntley from Carbonfund.org objected to my claims that the typical American could not offset greenhouse gas emissions for $100/year. His arguments are correct, but the mitigation costs he cites are the marginal costs of reducing GHG emissions. The average cost will be much greater, probably many hundreds of dollars per family per year for a partial reduction.

Carbonfund.org offers a service to those who have reduced their GHG emissions — using more efficient cars and appliances and light bulbs, insulating more, wasting less energy on empty rooms, driving and flying less — and would like to pay for the remaining GHG emissions. This is a commendable attitude and I should not have been so critical.

I hope that a sizeable percentage of people who go this route also find their way to laboring with legislators.

Update Carbonfund.org isn’t just about offsets:

The most important thing that all of us can do to deal with climate change is to use less energy. Here at Carbonfund.org, our motto is “Reduce what you can, offset what you can’t.” Our mission is to educate people about steps they can take to reduce energy use.

Further update I used the Carbonfund.org calculator. I have a spreadsheet which I use in classes and workshops so students can look at their own greenhouse gas and oil behavior. The Carbonfund estimate of GHG emissions is about 60% of what I get using A) buses and trains as well, and more importantly, upstream costs, such as the GHG emissions from drilling, refining, and transporting oil, or natural gas leakage. Then there is an enormous amount, about 45% of our GHG emissions, which show up in industry, agriculture, water (19% of CA electricity goes to water), going to work or to the hospital or the store.

Most people should multiply the Carbonfund.org value by about 3 to get a more realistic sense of their GHG emissions.

People wanting to reduce car plus airplane use of oil by 10% in a year have been expressing confusion about how to compare them. We could just add up gallons of fuel, but that is misleading from a climate change viewpoint because airplanes do more damage than cars per gallon of fuel.

(T)he overall radiative forcing by aircraft (excluding that from changes in cirrus clouds) for all scenarios in this report is a factor of 2 to 4 larger than the forcing by aircraft carbon dioxide alone. The overall radiative forcing for the sum of all human activities is estimated to be at most a factor of 1.5 larger than that of carbon dioxide alone.

Additionally, there is the age complication. Using 2001 data, the typical American drives 9,347 miles, the typical licensed driver 13,476 miles.

Age/Miles
16 – 19/7,600
20 – 34/15,100
35 – 54/15,300
55 – 64/12,000
65+/7,650
In areas with good mass transit, the typical driver uses the car less. In the SF Bay Area, this figure is 7,600 miles; in New York City, it’s even lower.

Per capita use of airplane in 2001 was 1,990 miles.

So how do we compare these figures? While waiting for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to narrow the estimate, let’s assume that one gallon of oil in a jet produces twice the climate change problems of one gallon of oil used in a car, what with extra water vapor, etc. Assume your airplane gets 23.4 passenger miles to the gallon.

The typical American (not licensed driver) in 2001 used 452 gallons in the car (more if they were age 20 – 60, less if older or younger) and used another 85 gallons in car equivalent gallons while flying. Total: 540 gallons car equivalent.

For those deciding to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to travel by 10% this year, don’t count miles used by public transportation — we can count that in future years. Friends (Quakers) have a history of laboring together on our behavior. Does it make sense to ask those who use more than 540 gallons car equivalent to consider reducing to 10% below the American average, to 490 gallons car equivalent? What are your feelings? Your understanding, both emotional and spiritual?

After all, few people use the car and airplane as much as we in the US do. Our use of oil (includes heating oil, etc) is about double that in the EU and almost 6 times that of the rest of the world. We’ve created a universe where reducing use of the car and airplane is difficult logistically and psychologically.

I am interested in comments on the method used. Should we calculate different values for parents with young children?

I am also interested in what comes us for people emotionally and spiritually when considering flying and driving less.

Another blog: Calvin Jones left a comment on the previous post advertising his blog Climate Change Action. He has some interesting posts, and emphasizes issues relevant to the European Union.

I recently was asked whether it makes sense to buy individual carbon offsets to compensate for one’s own flying. A complicated question.

For most Americans, the greenhouse (GHG) emissions we are responsible for fall into the following categories:

• carbon stored over several hundred million years as coal and oil; this will be stored again over tens to hundreds of millions of years. The sun has been warming continuously, and will continue to warm, yet the Earth is much cooler today than in eons past, because of the storage of GHG as coal and oil, and the accompanying positive feedback (feedback causing change in the same direction) of increased GHG storage in soil.

• pollutants such as NOx and ozone that accompany the burning of fossil fuels.

• addition of never before seen GHG such as the chlorofluorocarbons (these also damage the ozone layer), and some less common pollutants previously seen such as nitrous oxide from agriculture (and fossil fuel burning)

• reducing the carbon stored in plants, notably trees. First, climate change has led to more forest fires (the increase in forest fires appears to be related to changes in the climate which are likely to be associated with global warming, such as more extreme weather—more fuel buildup followed by more droughts, warmer weather leading to dryer soil in general, and greater stresses on trees which allow bark beetles and other pests to damage or kill trees, making them more susceptible to burning), and these fires are hotter and harder to extinguish.

Additionally, in the far north, bark beetles can now survive an entire generation in the longer summers, and are proliferating. Additionally, as winter temperatures rise, but stay below freezing, snow increases, damaging tree canopies and making trees more susceptible to infestation. Pests are killing more trees, and forest fires in Alaska are increasing.

Also, warmer temperatures decrease the carbon and methane stored in the soil as the Earth cooled. If this moves up the list in terms of importance, we will already be in big trouble from climate change. And getting into much bigger trouble.

And exporting agriculture to the tropics especially has lead to deforestation.

For Americans and most wealthy people, the biggest part of the solution is to reduce the amount of GHG we take out of long-term storage. We need to rapidly and radically cut back on the amount of fossil fuels burned. We could do this by capping our own use and trading permits to minimize costs. This would raise the price of GHG-emitting behavior, and could include an added tax if the US and other countries sell rather than distribute permits. This added tax could A) raise revenue, and B) aid consumers in seeing the costs of their behavior, as the price begins to more accurately reflect these costs, and make more efficient cars, light bulbs, and appliances more attractive (along with paying for research and development in efficiency). Charging for permits would speed the transition from today’s carbon intensive technologies, as lower GHG technologies become more competitive.

Especially important for people who use airplanes is to see that air travel is included in future cap and trade programs.

Alternatively, we can help pay for the developing world (and some of the less well off first world) to replace planned coal plants or other fossil fuel alternatives with solar panels and wind, replace more expensive incandescent bulbs with cheaper compact fluorescent bulbs (but these cost more for the first one), and so on. We can do this by taxing our own energy use. Or there are several ways to contribute voluntarily, such as Carbonfund.org. But these organizations generally state that it is possible for the average American to pay for GHG behavior with small annual fees, perhaps $100/year. Not likely.

Which is the most important, if you really need to fly? I would think that committing lots of time to laboring with national legislators (or in CA, with a few recalcitrant state legislators) on changing US behavior, making GHG cap and trade programs mandatory at a national level, along with involuntary taxes on our energy use, is important. Voluntary contributions are better than nothing, but not nearly as important as changing US behavior. (Though some of the trees projects that have been funded may have been worse than nothing.)

More on airplanes
Some discussions on air travel compare the merits of flying to driving. Airlines claim that because of higher seat occupancy, they get close to 47 passenger miles/gallon. This is misleading for two reasons. First, air travel is perhaps two to three times as bad as car travel per gallon burned from a climate change perspective, primarily because it deposits water vapor and other GHG so high in the atmosphere. See the Summary for Policy Makers and full report of Aviation and the Global Atmosphere, from 1999.

Secondly, people travel a certain number of hours, not a certain number of miles. People travel much further since airplanes have become available.

Whatever solution we each find must fit the goal. Step one of the goal is by 2015 to reduce world GHG emissions to 2005 levels, or even below. This will require major reductions in US GHG emissions and commensurate reductions in other rich countries.

Some economists have raised the question as to whether it makes more sense to pay for mitigation (reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases) or adapting to climate change. Everyone agrees we need to adapt some, as sea level rise up and changes in temperature and precipitation will require new water policies and shifts in agriculture.

Ironically, paying for adaption makes most sense if accompanied by an aggressive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, to keep cumulative temperature increase below 2 C (2oth and 21st century): reducing GHG emissions by 2015 to 2005 levels or even lower, and reducing GHG emissions 60% or more between 2015 and 2050. This means that American per capita reductions will need to be well over 90%, unless we wish to continue the current practice that we who are richer get to emit considerably more than our share.

John Holdren has calculated that if we pay the costs of preventing catastrophic climate change (though the polar bears and coral reefs are committed to extinction soon pretty much in any scenario), we will reach 2050 levels of prosperity in 2051 or 2052.

He doesn’t count the cost of adapting to severe rather than catastrophic climate change.

If we don’t keep cumulative temperature increase below 2 C, many adaptations become too expensive. If we reach 2 C by 2050, as we are likely to under business as usual, there is a decent chance (almost a certainty?) that there will be a cumulative sea level rise of 1 meter (from 2000 levels) by some time in the third quarter of this century. This means that enormous levees would have to be built to assure that agricultural water is available in California south of the delta (east of San Francisco). But if sea level rises that rapidly, the next meter rise may take only 25 or 30 years, and it won’t make sense to build the second set of protections which will last only a short amount of time, so it won’t make sense to even build the initial levees.

Adaptation makes most sense if we confront climate change, not if we avoid dealing with it.

Of course, there will be enormous costs before we reach 1 meter sea level rise. Some are thinking about adaptation, but such considerations are not prevalent or serious enough given how rapidly the climate is changing, and is likely to change in the next few decades.

What is it that we want our national legislators to do?

• Carbon cap and trade
• Double fuel economy for cars and light trucks and raise fuel prices so that we don’t increase driving as driving costs drop.
• Tax our own energy use to pay the developing world’s cost of reducing GHG emissions.

Carbon cap and trade, or greenhouse gas cap and trade, is the setting of caps on the amount of carbon dioxide/GHG that can be emitted in a country or economic sector such as electric power production, and then allowing the trading of permits so that industry finds the cheapest ways to reduce carbon/GHG emissions.

US per capita GDP is 30 times that in China, our share of the cumulative emissions to date is much greater than China’s, even though their population is greater. Who should pay?

Some Republicans are uncertain of the science, which if you avoid reading the science, is pretty easy. Some Democrats are more interested in making sure that solutions don’t include nuclear power, but there is no solution without nuclear power. Whatever their justifications, they have no excuses — we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels, or lower, by 2015, even as population and third world emissions increase. And then cut much more rapidly and radically by 2050. And then zero out carbon emissions.

Some legislators argue that we cannot afford these policies. John Holdren says that these extra economic burdens mean that we will not reach 2050 levels of prosperity until 2051 or 2052. What he does not say, but implies, is that without taking on these economic burdens to reduce the impact of climate change, we may never reach 2050 levels of prosperity.

What else can national legislators do? Require state policy — building codes and where people are allowed to live and water policy and… — to include adaptation to climate change. Adaptation will be required in the lifetime of buildings built today. Does it really make sense to resettle the coasts in Florida and Louisiana?

In some countries, fuel taxes are a significant source of revenue. Our legislators should at least request studies on the economic effects of phasing in high fuel taxes (on airplane fuel as well). Besides reducing other new taxes planned for January 2009, high fuel taxes lower the price per barrel paid to oil producers (European countries pay less for their oil than we do). High fuel prices provide stability, so that price increases due to political insecurity don’t have the same shock value, because prices start out high. High fuel taxes will be part of any carbon cap and trade program, but they can also be part of a more rational economic policy.

I hope to post on laboring with California legislators soon, but it may be August before I get it posted. Rule of thumb: support all of the new legislation being proposed to implement recommendations of the Climate Action Team.

• Definition of epistle from Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice: a public letter of greeting and ministry – such letters are sent from a Friends Meeting or organization to other Friends groups, to supply information, spiritual insight, and encouragement.

• The nine-year window of opportunity mentioned comes from the analysis of climatologists and policy people. In order to keep cumulative temperature increase below 2 C, we must do the following:

Step 1: reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 to 2005 levels, or perhaps 10% lower than 2005 levels, even as population and per capita consumption continue to increase. Without success in step 1, there is no step 2 that will work.

Step 2: reduce greenhouse gas emissions 60% or 60%+ or 60%++ by 2050 or earlier. Even as population and per capita consumption continue to increase.

Step 3: zero out carbon dioxide emissions to protect the oceans, which are acidifying as they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The writers of the epistle wanted to keep it short, and so emphasized only the first timeline; many Friends and many in the public believe that we have less to do and longer to do it in.

• Re Bob’s comment on the last post — he is right that people deserve acknowledgment for changes already made. (Brief pause to consider these changes, whether they were easy or hard, but to take credit for either.)

However, I have cut my own emissions and see clear means of cutting my emissions by 10% or more. Perhaps others do as well. I would think that most Americans, including those who emit less than the American average, could reduce our GHG emissions 10% without substantial harm or inconvenience.

I would be surprised to learn that changing policy is considered a third option. As I understand it, all need to be done simultaneously and immediately.

• Al Gore tells us in An Inconvenient Truth to labor with our legislators, and if that doesn’t work, replace them. To get some idea where your Senator is on climate change, see how they voted on the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. If your Senator voted against it, they may have justifications. They have no excuse.

The earth is growing hotter as a result of choices we have made. The signs are all around us in rising yearly average temperatures, melting glaciers, expanding deserts, increasing rates of extinctions, and weather extremes. There is unity within the scientific community that this is serious, that it is caused by human activity, and that the consequences of a failure to address global warming will be catastrophic.

We have a small window of opportunity. Over the course of the next nine years, if humanity fails to significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions, the result is likely to be a sea level rise of 10 to 13 feet per century until the level stabilizes at 80 feet above today’s level. Loss of productivity in ecosystems and crops worldwide will also occur, resulting in mass starvation.

We appeal to all Friends to make this concern a priority in our families, communities, and meetings, and to commit ourselves to learn more about this urgent planetary crisis, so that each of us may discern further actions that will be required of us.

Some actions that we can recommend at this time include:

• Reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in the coming year by cutting driving, flying, and residential energy use. Walk and bicycle more, use mass transit and fluorescent light bulbs.

• When we have cut our own use of fossil fuel, labor with others to help them do the same.

• Labor with our legislators and if that doesn’t work, replace them.

We urge Friends as individuals and as meetings to engage the conversation and to stay with it. Meetings should institute quarterly threshing sessions to discern how we are led corporately to act.

Some of the changes that concern us deeply we can not escape. But others we can if we act responsibly now and into the future. The consequences of not acting are unthinkable for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

Friends, we urge you to attend to our call. For the love of everything you hold most dear, please take up this concern now and carry it back to your meeting.

Shared with Friends at the Concluding Meeting for Worship,
2006 Friends General Conference Gathering
Tacoma, July 7, 2006

Many references are available on this topic such as www.climatecrisis.org, www.pathsoflight.us/musing, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found at www.unep.ch/ipcc/. This document can be found on www.LeavesofGrass.org.

*from the participants in the Gathering workshop, Changing Climate, Changing Selves to Friends General Conference.

Switching to more efficient light bulbs around the world can save 10% of the world’s electricity.

That’s a lot.

Energy-efficient lighting can seem such an obviously good idea that it is hard to comprehend why it is not used everywhere.

Note: statistics are for the world, and vary tremendously by country. A greater percentage of energy and greenhouse emissions in the first world comes from flying and driving.

James Hansen has written an article for the New York Review of Books. His article is better than my summary.

First, the other species:

Studies of more than one thousand species of plants, animals, and insects, including butterfly ranges charted by members of the public, found an average migration rate toward the North and South Poles of about four miles per decade in the second half of the twentieth century. That is not fast enough. During the past thirty years the lines marking the regions in which a given average temperature prevails (“isotherms”) have been moving poleward at a rate of about thirty-five miles per decade…

As long as the total movement of isotherms toward the poles is much smaller than the size of the habitat, or the ranges in which the animals live, the effect on species is limited. But now the movement is inexorably toward the poles and totals more than a hundred miles over the past several decades. If emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase at the current rate—”business as usual”—then the rate of isotherm movement will double in this century to at least seventy miles per decade. If we continue on this path, a large fraction of the species on Earth, as many as 50 percent or more, may become extinct.

Hansen mentions the previous mass extinctions that accompanied temperature increases of up to 10 F,

when between 50 and 90 percent of the species on Earth disappeared forever. In each case, life survived and new species developed over hundreds of thousands of years. The most recent of these mass extinctions defines the boundary, 55 million years ago, between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs. The evolutionary turmoil associated with that climate change gave rise to a host of modern mammals, from rodents to primates, which appear in fossil records for the first time in the early Eocene.

If human beings follow a business-as-usual course, continuing to exploit fossil fuel resources without reducing carbon emissions or capturing and sequestering them before they warm the atmosphere, the eventual effects on climate and life may be comparable to those at the time of mass extinctions. Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed planet. For all foreseeable human generations, it will be a far more desolate world than the one in which civilization developed and flourished during the past several thousand years.

What about the direct effect on people, outside of our need for and appreciation of other species? If the temperature rises 3 C this century, 5 F, sea level is likely to rise 80 ft. There go the East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and pretty much all of Florida. One sixth of Americans live less than 80 ft above our current sea level. In China, 250 million people live below that new sea level, Bangladesh 120 million (out of 140 million), and India 150 million. This process would begin slowly, then (according to evidence from past ice sheets), sea level could rise 1 meter/40 inches, every 20 years.

The increase in melting is already being seen. Summer icequakes in Greenland registering at least 4.6 on the Richter scale, from the ice lurching forward and then stopping, have quadrupled since 1993.

The alternate scenario, the one where we are responsible and cut our emissions, leveling off this decade and then decreasing rapidly over 3 decades,

with (added) global warming under two degrees Fahrenheit, still produces a significant rise in the sea level, but its slower rate, probably less than a few feet per century, would allow time to develop strategies that would adapt to, and mitigate, the rise in the sea level.

Moreover, things could get really serious if warming this century is as little as 3 – 4 F, then,

all bets are off.

The 55 million year ago mass extinction was caused, it is thought, by the release of frozen methane hydrates (natural gas frozen into water) in the Arctic, and it may warm enough before this century is over to release significant amounts. If this happens, we cannot create a good scenario no matter what we do.

We need to level greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 and then cut them rapidly afterwards.

Questions: What are you hearing in the media about the degree and speed of needed reductions? Are you hearing that since 30% of cumulative GHG emissions are American and since we’re richer, that we will pay for much of the developing world to shift to lower carbon energy sources, and that Europe will have to as well?

“The Earth is warming,” a self-professed skeptic said last night when nine of us met to discuss the Gore movie, “but how do we know it is not from natural causes?” I’ve rephrased what he said as a question, but he didn’t actually have any questions, which may make him less a skeptic and more a denier.

So is there a way to differentiate, do the different causes of climate change have different fingerprints which can help us distinguish among them? Yes

For example, if increased solar activity had heated the Earth almost 1.5 F from 1900, which would be warming faster, day or night? winter or summer? Would the stratosphere be warming along with the troposphere (lower atmosphere)?

The results are different from what increased solar activity would produce: nights and winters are warming much faster. The stratosphere is cooling because the increase radiation from the sun is relatively small compared to the increase in the amount of heat that the Earth is holding onto.

Additionally the tropopause is rising. The tropopause is the boundary between the troposphere, where temperature goes down with altitude, and the stratosphere, where temperature goes up with altitude. The mixed in GHG have spread to the top of the troposphere and a little beyond, and now it’s larger, 200 meters higher than in 1979.

A lot of it is the decrease in atmospheric ozone — but look at the graphs a little over midway down to see the enormous effects of pollution (sulfate aerosols) on cooling the Earth — this is only temporary, if we stopped using coal today the pollution would go way down and the GHG would stay for much longer. Also coal power kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, and many many many more each year in China, and continuing to kill these people so we can continue to mask the effects of rising GHG doesn’t seem like such a wonderful solution.

The tropopause information is very detailed. The ozone depletion contribution is stronger in the southern hemisphere. The effect of sulfate aerosols is stronger where most people live, in the northern hemisphere. Because the data that allowed the tropopause conclusion is so detailed, it allowed scientists to identify another fingerprint of global warming caused by GHG.

The denier excepted, I was heartened so many came together with a desire to “do something”. An easy something to start with is to begin the conversation with people you know. I heard once, and it may even be true, that when 20% of a group changes its mind, the group begins to respond.

I’ve posted on peak oil before, but I am hearing about it more frequently, so perhaps it’s time to post again.

In 1997 I read the Campbell article in Scientific American, and it made sense: there’s a limited amount of oil, the most optimistic believe that we’ll reach this peak within 30 – 40 years, even if the peak is decades away, it makes sense to cut back on oil use now. By a lot.

I wasn’t enamored by the solutions of the peak oil advertisers, retreating into small villages. The solutions seemed recycled Y2k, in fact, these solutions appeared shortly after 2000 if I have my history right. This makes them look like solutions in search of a problem.

I understood some of the scientific arguments against an early peak – world oil reserves are not as well explored as American ones had been when Hubbert produced his analysis of when the US would reach peak oil (and as one scientist peak oil aficionado pointed out, Hubbert’s analysis wasn’t all that good, he was lucky in predicting US peak).

I was challenged by the total lack of interest in this topic in the policy and climate change community. They kept saying peak oil is not a problem, but burning the oil is. I knew these people to be numerate, yet they were not interested in a topic that seemed common sense to me.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned why. We can switch to plants-to-fuels, or biofuels (after some point, this will cause damage to water and land). We can switch to coal-to-fuels, or synfuel (we can capture and geologically store the carbon dioxide produced in producing this synfuel, though we can’t capture and store the carbon dioxide produced in using fuels in a car, airplane, etc.) It will be long after my death when we run out of relatively cheap fuels – relatively cheap may be more expensive than they are today, but they still will be relatively cheap.

Long before, we will have emitted enough carbon to devastate the Earth. The issue won’t be regional solutions. Instead, water availability, or too much water, or both floods and drought in the same area will be problems. The productivity of crops and ecosystems everywhere will have declined or plummeted. And the important problems will not be whether the rich can continue our lifestyle, but whether the poor can find a way to live.

Some feel that it’s OK to focus on peak oil because the solutions are the same. The only solution that overlaps is to drive less, and if peak oil people do this, fine. But solutions such as synfuels, solutions such as using the tar sands of Canada to produce our oil, as we are now doing, are not solutions to climate change. And devoting energy to building a local community structure may be useful, but how will we solve problems if hundreds of millions Chinese need to move because they don’t have water. If 100 million Bangladeshi (population 144 million) must move because of a sea level rise this century of 1 meter (or more). Such predictions are not yet into IPCC reports, but the predictions now coming out of the scientific community are that we may see a sea level rise of 2 m, as we learn more about ice sheet instability. How will your small town deal with agricultural water no longer available south of the delta in California (east of San Francisco) with a 1 m rise? The problems are global. The solutions must be global.

The most important solution is, of course, for the rich to burn considerably less fossil fuel or to store the carbon emitted (a temporary solution for perhaps a century). And for the rich to subsidize the poor so that they can burn less fossil fuel. There is no way to store the carbon emitted by automobiles and airplanes and motorized boats. We can use biofuels – storing carbon dioxide in plants and then releasing the same carbon when burned – for only some of our transportation needs. Perhaps a better use of our energy is to lobby our legislators hard to double fuel efficiency of cars. And reconsider our own use of transportation. And labor – badger nicely! – with others on their transportation modes. Not because others are evil, but because all of us do not want to harm the Earth, we all want to be part of the solution.

Bob Seeley looks at the other side of peak oil, those who believe physical reality is too confining, and that there is a Bottomless Well.

Last Sunday, Berkeley Friends Meeting had a called Meeting on the environment. I will say a little more about this later.

Catharine Lucas gave ministry on the importance of education, and I asked her to write up her ideas:

On-going education – of ourselves and others – is the cornerstone of any meaningful response to the current environmental crisis, and the proper preparation for our Leadings to operate on informed and receptive consciousness. Without constantly educating ourselves, we run three great risks:

Risk #1: The Risk of Under-Reacting. If I do not regularly check reliable sources for updates, it will be easy to forget the urgency and value of taking action now; I can fall into complacency, listen selectively, heed false reassurances, stay stuck in comfortable denial, hide behind skepticism, imagine that alarming facts are not known for sure – when actually they may be known quite well.

Risk #2: The Risk of Over-Reacting. If I do not regularly review reliable sources of information, learn to interpret the news in an informed and measured spirit, I may get caught up in imagining the most unlikely outcomes, may heed false alarms and pass them on. This will cost me credibility when others discover I’m out in left field. Worse, I can fall into despair, believing there’s nothing to be done.

Risk #3: The Risk of Mis-Reacting: Without constant re-education as more is learned about causes and effects, I risk directing my energy and resources inappropriately, adopting practices or campaigning for solutions that have little effect, or even negative effects on the goals I want to achieve. I may attach too much importance to one small act while failing to discover additional acts that I could easily practice with far greater effect on global warming. I may devote great attention to debates over the relative virtues of plastic vs. paper bags for groceries, but forget to carry my cloth bags, buy more bulk foods, or – far more significantly – discover I can shop some days on foot or by bus, or carpool with a neighbor. I may invest thousands in solar panels – when I might reduce my carbon emissions more by installing flash-heating for my hot water. I might oppose efforts to make nuclear energy a safe option while ignoring the greenhouse gases and deadly pollution from millions of traditional coal power plants. I may “fight to save the polar bear,” not realizing its fate is already sealed, in part by cars, planes, coal-fired plants, in part by rainforest-burning. How do I help stop the burning of rainforests?

Education is worrisome, when we think of all the things we’d rather not know.

Education is worrisome, when we don’t know whom or what to believe; when we don’t trust our tired minds to keep straight the bombardment of information available.

But driving downhill toward a cliff with blinders on is more worrisome still.

Elizabeth Kolbert closed one of her many New Yorker pieces updating news on global warming by marveling — that the United States has poured more money than any country in history into state-of-the-art scientific research on climate, obtaining the most accurate and reliable data now available to humankind, creating the most sophisticated and reliable models for prediction we have ever benefited from – And then chooses to ignore the information thus obtained.

How can we help each other stay aware, awake, alive to passionate leadings, able to engage in informed action with open hearts and joyful spirits?

A summary of the losses that many scientists are seeing as inevitable, at the top of a post rather than at the bottom

Climate scientists and those who study species extinction use the term committed to refer to the inevitable. A species is committed to extinction in the wild when there is no longer enough connected habitat to support it. Relic individuals may continue for generations after a species is committed to extinction.

The temperature of the Earth has increased by 0.8 C, and is committed to 0.6 C more. The Earth may be 2 C (or more) hotter in 2050 than in 1960 (and committed to more), and 3 C (or more or much more) in 2100 and committed to even more.

The following comes from John Holdren’s talk at UC, Berkeley June 23, but others have said it as well. I will link to his talk as soon as his presentation is posted.

When the increase is 1.5 C, the polar bear and the coral reefs will be committed to extinction. With a 2 C increase, the Earth may be committed to catastrophic sea level rise of 3 – 4 m/century. At 2.5 C, agricultural productivity is expected to decrease pretty much everywhere on Earth (regionally, this change has already begun).

No one holds much hope for the polar bear or the coral reefs. The goal now is to keep the temperature increase below 2 C.

I address how to begin in If We Could Move Like Centipedes.

The John Holdren portion is long enough to separate out.

Business as usual could increase the 2004 emissions of 6.4 (metric) tonnes C (this counts just the carbon portion of the CO2 molecule) to 21 tonnes by 2100. Today’s figures also include 1.6 tonnes from deforestation and 0.2 tonnes from cement production. Deforestation is expected to decline by 2100, presumably because the Earth doesn’t have that many forests. Climatologists are worried that small changes in temperature can lead to changing the state of the climate – big changes in precipitation patterns, ocean upwelling, etc. Many of the pollutants we have added to the atmosphere reflect back sunlight, partially offsetting and partially masking climate change. But these pollutants kill people and their use will drop.

In order to reduce carbon emissions, we can reduce population, GDP/capita, energy/GDP, or carbon intensity/energy. The fastest and cheapest changes will be in the energy intensity of GDP. More slowly we can change the mix of energy sources to include less carbon, or carbon capture and storage. A population of 8 billion is easier to deal with than 10 billion, and fortunately some of the paths to lower population, such as educating women, are good in their own right.

Soot is an important contributor to climate change, from two-stroke and diesel engines [note; much, much less so from the ultra low sulfur diesel], biomass, agriculture, and fossil fuel use in general. With technology change there can be sharp reductions.

Many technology suggestions won’t work as hoped. Increasing building reflectivity (light roofs) is important for the urban heat effect, but has small global benefits. Scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere is 5 – 10 times as expensive as carbon capture and storage. Experiments with ocean fertilization [adding iron and other nutrients to increase photosynthesis to absorb carbon] indicate that it will be of limited benefit. Afforestation and better agricultural techniques was assumed by the 2001 IPCC reports to take up 100 Btonnes of carbon by 2050, but this estimate appears to be 20% optimistic.

How much mitigation? We signed and ratified the 1992 UN Framework, and it is the law of our land. We agreed to stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The temperature increase has already been 0.8 C, will be 0.6 C more due to thermal lag in the oceans. Under business as usual by 2050, the increase will be 2 C, and 3 C by 2100 over pre-industrial temperatures. [Note: these are lowish values for BAU estimates.] A temperature increase of 1.5 C will drive the coral reefs and polar bear to extinction. A 2 C increase could lead to catastrophic melting of 3 – 4 m sea level rise/century. A 2.5 C increase would decrease crop yields worldwide.

Until a few years ago, a 3 C increase in temperature (about 550 ppmv) was seen as a compromise, as both the highest increase we could live with and the fastest mitigation possible. Now 2 C is seen as the maximum safe increase over pre-industrial times, with the atmospheric concentrations maximizing at 400 – 450 ppmv by 2100. [Note: ppmv is parts per million volume – out of every million pieces of air, 400 would be carbon dioxide.]

Temperature increases as a function of atmospheric carbon concentrations are obtained by using probabilistic modeling. The main uncertainty is about the size of the masking. Climate sensitivity is thought to be between 1.5 and 4.5 C [note: the increase in temperature after doubling atmospheric carbon], but it may be above 4.5 C, which means maximum safe levels of atmospheric carbon are even lower.

There is uncertainty about the movement of carbon into and out of the atmosphere. Feedbacks not accounted for may require even lower levels of stabilization.

The cost of delay is likely to be substantial. [Note: assume this is an understatement.] Further delay may make the 450 ppmv goal impossible.

Emissions cap and trade or a tax is necessary. There are many policies that are considered win-win. [Note: win-win polices satisfy other goals, such as lowering prices and decreasing pollution.] If the proposed solution is not equitable, it won’t be achievable. All people must have an equal right to put carbon into the atmosphere.

Again: Paul Baer focuses on ecoequity as first-third world squabbles could easily preclude any climate change solution.