Do You Believe in Magic?

Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. has written a good article over at Environment 360 called "The Folly of ‘Magical Solutions’ For Targeting Carbon Emissions".

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2175

Dr. Pielke discusses the problem of international climate conferences that come up with 'goals' for CO2 emissions reductions without any meaningful plans for meeting them and in some cases, it appears to me, without any meaningful intentions of meeting them. He discusses the abuse Japan got for their more modest emissions reduction goals. When he examines the detailed road map that Japan provided for their goals, it turns out they actually have very aggressive plans for carbon free electricity and hybrid vehicles and energy efficient housing.

When he discusses the underlying problem, it sounds like a common problem on many political issues and not specific to climate issues. There are certain people who have the need to show they "care" about a problem and aren't actually interested in the work involved in fixing the problem. Symbolic actions to show they "care" is what they are interested in and once that emotional need is satisfied they move on to Darfur or the rain forests or DDT or whatever. It's politics reduced to a fashion accessory. Does global warming go with these shoes? Does starvation if Africa match this dress? They live in a consequence free zone, where expensive energy doesn't cause people to starve to death and DDT bans don't cause children to die of malaria. In that world, it doesn't matter that windmills don't cause any coal fired electrical plants to close. We could build them out of cardboard and they would still serve their purpose. Potemkin Enviromentalism rules the roost.

Okay rant off.

Another recent example of what Dr Pielke is talking about is what happened at the G8 summit. they declared that global average temperatures should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2020 and a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent worldwide, and by 80 per cent among industrialized nations, by 2050. They didn't mention how they plan to do that. At least King Canute knew he couldn't actually make the tide go back.

Go read what Dr. Pielke says and also check out his blog.

Links:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/

Large Object Hits Jupiter Without Warning

Here is a picture of the impact mark that the object the struck Jupiter on July 19th left. This picture was taken on July 23rd by the Hubble telescope. What I find interesting is that no one noticed it until after the object struck Jupiter. Even then, it was an amateur astronomer in Australia, Anthony Wesley, who first noticed it and notified the professional astronomers that something had happened.

From what I read the object was described as the size of several football fields, which means that the object was probably a few hundred meter across. They also mentioned that the force of the impact was thousands of times more powerful than the Tunguska event of 1908. Since the Tunguska event is usually estimated as 10 to 15 megatons and it knocked down trees over 830 square miles, that is a pretty serious hit.

The various places I've read describe the mark as twice the length of the United States or nearly as big as the Pacific Ocean. Now if an object of this size struck the Earth, it probably wouldn't hit nearly as hard, since the escape velocity of Jupiter is 5.3 times as high as the Earth's escape velocity. Some comets are moving much faster than Jupiter escape velocity to begin with, so it could hit nearly as hard.

What is interesting, is that when an meteorite explodes before it gets to the ground it may actually do more damage than one the hit the ground. The Tunguska object exploded 4-6 miles above the Earth and the damage was similar to that caused by an air burst of a thermonuclear bomb. It turns out there are meteorite explosions in the 20 kiloton range happen every year, but too far up to cause damage. Some estimates put the Tunguska object as about 60 meters across.

Based on what I have read, you would need something at least 30 or 40 meters across to do serious damage and that would depend on exact trajectory, velocity and composition of the object and of course if the impact point was inhabited. Also, even if we had significant warning, I suspect that we could not pinpoint the impact point very closely. We are talking about the the impact point predictions that might cover a 100,000 square miles. This makes the usual hurricane evacuation scenario look tame by comparison. We can only hope that the next time is over the ocean or in a sparsely inhabited area.

Links:

Addition: July 29, 2009:
Jonah Goldberg has column in the LA Times on the same subject:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg28-2009jul28,0,3694237.column

Hubblesite:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/23/image/a/

Wikipedia-Tunguska Event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

Original Report from Anthony Wesley
http://jupiter.samba.org/jupiter-impact.html

NY Times Infrared Picture
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/science/space/22jupiter.html

A Nuclear Reactor That Never Needs to Be Refueled

I was over at the Energy From Thorium discussion forum and saw a posting for a job for an engineer to work on a project for a traveling wave reactor (TWR). I'd never head of a TWR, so I started searching the web to figure out what it was. Here is little video about it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/video/?vid=266

The idea is that you have a long tube full of depleted Uranium (U-238) with a little fissile Uranium (U-235) at one end to function as a kind of starter yeast. You start the chain reaction in the U-235 and it produces neutrons that convert the U-238 into Plutonium (Pu-239) which is also fissile and can be burned in the reactor. In effect you have a wave of fission that moves from one end of the reactor to the other, converting the U-238 to Pu-239 and burning it.

Now this the slowest wave you ever heard of. Depending on the design, it takes the wave from 40 years to 100 years to work from one end of the tube to the other. 60 years seems to be the magic number, since that is the normal operating life of a nuclear reactor.They mention less than a centimeter per month, so that works out to 7 meters in 60 years. This means that you take the reactor to the operating site, with the fuel already loaded and start it up and you don't have to ever worry about refueling it. When the fuel is expended, you haul it off and get a new reactor.

Now the idea of converting U-238 to Pu-239 and burning if for fuel isn't new. That is the basic concept of how a breeder reactor works. The new part is coming up with a way of setting it up to load the reactor with all the fuel it will ever need. This obviously simplifies the operation of the reactor since it doesn't have to be shut down to be refueled and reduces the weapons proliferation risk, since there are no fuel rods traveling around that can be diverted into weapons programs.

The United States already has huge stockpiles of U-238 in storage, so we already have all the fuel we will need waiting to be used. The Department of Energy has 728,000 tons of depleted Uranium stockpiled. If you figure you can supply all the electricity the United States uses in a year with less than 400 tons, then we have enough fuel for 1800 years before we have to worry about reopening a Uranium mine. Depleted Uranium is a byproduct of the enrichment process we use for our current reactor fuel. It is actually less radioactive than natural Uranium, but has few current uses except as a penetrator on an armor piercing rounds and even that because the US military essentially gets it for free, so it's cheaper than Tungsten. They also mention that the TWR might be used with Thorium which is several times more common than Uranium.

The TWR reminded me of ""small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor"(SSTAR) concept promoted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The SSTAR only went up to 30 years and 100 megawatts. For the TWR , they are talking about 100 megawatts of electricity to 1 Gigawatt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSTAR

When I tracked down the patent for the TWR, I wasn't surprised to see that some of the names mentioned are LLNL alumni.

http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080232535

I also found a slideshow about the TWR here:

www.nuc.berkeley.edu/files/TerraPowerGilleland.pdf

If you happened to look at the patent link above, you might have noticed that one of the names listed was Nathan Myhrvold. If it sounds familar, it is because he used to be the CTO of Microsoft. This was a hint that these aren't some guys working out of their basement.

It turns out that TerraPower is a subsidiary of Intellectual Ventures LLC in Bellevue, Washington and Intellectual Ventures has people like Bill Gates and companies like Microsoft, who have invested in it to the tune of 5 billion dollars. So it's quite possible that these people are actually working on a solution to global warming and the energy crisis.

http://www.intellectualventures.com/default.aspx

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE55O0BL20090625

Why is Climate Skeptic An Insult?

I'm writing about the usage of the term "Climate Skeptic". In my experience it is usually used in a disparaging way to describe people who disagree with majority of climatologists about significant parts of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis.

In this case I'm not interested in the people who are called climate skeptics, but the people who used the term as an insult. Below is from Wikipedia about Scientific Skepticism:

A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation. The scientific method details the specific process by which this investigation of reality is conducted. Considering the rigor of the scientific method, science itself may simply be thought of as an organized form of skepticism. This does not mean that the scientific skeptic is necessarily a scientist who conducts live experiments (though this may be the case), but that the skeptic generally accepts claims that are in his/her view likely to be true based on testable hypotheses and critical thinking.

To my way of thinking, this is a pretty good working definition of a scientist. Not all skeptics are scientists, but all scientists should be skeptics. Obviously no one can be a perfect skeptic, there is not sufficient time to test every hypotheses. At some point, you have to assume the published numbers in the handbook are correct and concentrate your skepticism on the object of your research.

If all scientists are skeptics, then why would skeptic be an insult? The obvious reason is that the people who use the term are not skeptics, but "climate believers". These are people who have accepted the meme of AGW without the skeptical science that created the hypothesis. For the believing mind, skepticism is not part of their mental outlook. Once something is incorporated in their belief system, questioning it, testing it, trying alternative explanations are not normal scientific inquiry, but heresy to be punished. Scientists are reduced to button counting and butterfly collecting, since real research is dangerous to the believers. If the scientists find results that challenge the AGW hypothesis, then the results must be reinterpreted to fit the consensus or buried.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism#Scientific_skepticism

More Davis-Bacon Prevailing Wage in Waxman-Markey

There are actually Davis-Bacon restrictions in 5 places in Waxman-Markey. Check out pages 103, 267, 293 and 549 and 1024. On page 1025 They say that Davis-Bacon doesn't apply to retrofits of existing homes. They don't mention new homes for some reason.

You can peruse the Davis-Bacon rates here: http://www.gpo.gov/davisbacon/allstates.html

A bricklayer in Orange County,CA gets $46.11 an hour in wages and benefits, while in Orange County,FL they get $12.50. It looks like your renewable energy expenditures will go a lot further in Florida than California.

Useful Summary of Waxman-Markey

I found a useful summary of the Waxman-Markey written by the law firm of White & Case LLP. The PDF is 8 pages long. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to have ax to grind, which contrasts with most other writing I've seen on Waxman-Markey, including mine. At the bottom, they have this note:

This Client Alert is protected by copyright. Material appearing herein may be reproduced or translated with appropriate credit.

So make sure you are clear that White & Case LLP wrote this if you quote from it.

http://www.whitecase.com/Publications/Detail.aspx?publication=2415

Waxman-Markey - Clean Transportation

Subtitle C—Clean Transportation (page 108)

SEC. 121. ELECTRIC VEHICLE INFRASTRUCTURE. (page 108)

I have to admit, I can’t work up any enthusiasm for electric cars at this time. The weight, cost, driving range, durability and charging time for batteries just aren’t there yet. An electric car with a fuel cell makes more sense, but they aren’t talking about that in this section. I could change my mind if there is some breakthrough in battery technology. I also considered flywheels, which are replacing batteries in some applications, but there are issues with using them in a vehicle.

SEC. 126. DEFINITION OF RENEWABLE BIOMASS. (page 122)

I’m still not too keen about cutting down trees for fuel. As far as I’m concerned they are natural carbon sequestration system. W-M can’t seem to make up it’s mind, because in other places they have subsidies for planting trees.

SEC. 127. OPEN FUEL STANDARD. (page 126-128)

Salt Mines? It looks like someone inserted a floor speech here about how we need ethanol, biodiesel etc. for our national security. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find somebody’s shopping list in here.

SEC. 130A. REPORT ON NATURAL GAS VEHICLE EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS. (page 136)

Actually compressed natural gas isn’t that bad an idea, but right now hybrids produce less GHG . They actually built a CNG Prius, but it only dropped from 104 g/km to 92 g/km of CO2. I’m leaning to Ammonia as a longer term solution. It doesn’t produce any CO2 at all, just nitrogen and water. Natural Gas does make sense from an energy security point of view and less environmental impact than ethanol.

References:

Ammonia

http://nh3car.com/FAQ1.htm
http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/blog2/?s=ammonia

Waxman-Markey Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Subtitle B—Carbon Capture and Sequestration

It is interesting that they can write detailed laws concerning technology that doesn’t exist yet.

I can’t quite figure out what they are doing about coal that isn’t used for the generation of electricity. About 10% of coal in the US is used for industrial process heat and other applications.

(6) CORPORATION. (Page 64)

They are creating a Carbon Storage Research Corporation (CSRC) to develop CCS technology. This seems to be duplicating some of the stuff FutureGen is already doing.

(1) AMOUNT.—(A) (page 76)

The are assessing power companies for each KwH produced to support CCS technology. This seems to punish companies that that use more efficient technologies that generate less CO2 per KwH. I think an assessment per ton of CO2 produced would be fairer and also cover coal applications that don’t generate electricity.

(l) DAVIS-BACON COMPLIANCE (page 86)

CSRC will comply with Davis-Bacon for it’s activities.

(3) COVERED EGUS INITIALLY PERMITTED FROM 2015 THROUGH 2019. (page 99)

50% reduction in CO2 emissions from coal seems a pretty silly goal when Natural Gas can do that right now and probably cheaper than coal when you add in the CCS overhead. With a CCS system a lot of the energy goes back into the cycle to power the CCS, which means you burn more coal to make up the energy lost. Plus you are generating more of the pollutants that actually harm people.

(j) DAVIS-BACON COMPLIANCE. (page 103)

It looks like commercial CCS projects will have to pay prevailing wage rates also.

References:

FutureGen

http://www.futuregenalliance.org/

Waxman-Markey Sections on Renewable Energy

I've reviewed the Subtitle A of Waxman-Markey and put my comments below. My comments are highlighted. I've included my comments on "Central Procurement State" from my previous post in this post.

SEC. 3. INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION. (Page 11)

China and India have adopted greenhouse gas emissions standards at least as strict as those standards required under this Act.

I notice they use the word adopted and not enforcing. It looks like China and India are covered as long as they have a law on the books.

TITLE I—CLEAN ENERGY Subtitle A—Combined Efficiency and Renewable Electricity Standard (page 12)

Distributed Renewable Generation Facility (page 15)

It looks later like you get triple renewable credits if you put the windmills or whatever close to the customer. See comments aboutpage 34 below.

SEC. 610. COMBINED EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY STANDARD. (Page 16)

(7) CENTRAL PROCUREMENT STATE.—The term ‘central procurement State’ means a State that, as of January 1, 2009, had adopted and implemented a legally enforceable mandate that, in lieu of requiring utilities to submit credits or certificates issued based on generation of electricity from (or to purchase or generate electricity from) resources defined by the State as renewable, requires retail electric suppliers to collect payments from electricity ratepayers within the State that are used for central procurement, by a State agency or a public benefit corporation established pursuant to State law, of credits or certificates issued based on generation of electricity from resources defined by the State as renewable.

I found this rather opaque and naturally tried to Google "Central Procurement State" and found that no one had figured out what this sentence meant and were somewhat dismayed. I took this as a challenge and set down and proceeded to attack this sentence with all the wit at my command.

After several readings, I finally got the concept that utility companies, instead of managing their own renewable energy programs, would collect surcharges from their customers and give that money to the State. The State in turn would use this money to create renewable energy programs. I read the various references to "Central Procurement State" in Waxman-Markey and they seemed to be consistent with that interpretation.

The next question that came to mind is what is the purpose of this sentence? On closer reading I decided that the "January 1, 2009" implied that there was already a state that met this definition, but Rep. Waxman didn't want other states becoming "Central Procurement States". There is a convention in legislation, that when you are creating a bill that will only benefit a single entity, that you can't actually say that it is only for California or Boeing or Henry A. Waxman of Los Angles, CA. You have to craft a definition so that only that one entity meets it. Since Representative Waxman is from California, I naturally suspected that California would meet this definition. After a little web searching, I discovered that California has a renewable energy program that is financed by rate surcharges charged by the utility companies on their customers!

RENEWABLE BIOMASS.— (page 23)

It looks like you can chop down trees and call them renewable biomass.

(17) RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCE. (page 24)

Nuclear really get it in the shorts here. You can generate a Gigawatt of carbon free energy and it is worth less than a one windmill.

(4) STATE PETITION. (page 28)

It looks to me that utility companies need to stay on the good side of the Governor , since he can give them a get out of jail free card.

REQUIRED ANNUAL PERCENTAGE. (page 31)

Starts at 6% in 2012 and ramps up to 20% by 2021. This seems kind of unfair to utilities that were already generating most of the power from nuclear or hydroelectric and weren’t generating greenhouse gases in the first place.

Frankly I’m not too clear how this works, since this seems to work on a state by state basis and electricity does cross state lines.

(4) CREDIT MULTIPLIER FOR DISTRIBUTED RENEWABLE GENERATION. (page 34)

Like I said above 3 for 1. It could be very advantageous to put windmills or solar power plants on or near the customer.

(9) TRADING.

You can sell renewable energy credits.

(5) STATE ADMINISTRATION. (page 42)

The state can take over monitoring the renewable energy program.

(g) ALTERNATIVE COMPLIANCE PAYMENTS. (page 44)

(1) IN GENERAL.—A retail electric supplier, or a central procurement State that, pursuant to sub section (g), has assumed responsibility for compliance with the requirements of subsection (b), may satisfy the requirements of subsection (b) in whole or in part by submitting in accordance with this subsection, in lieu of each Federal renewable electricity credit or megawatt hour of demonstrated total annual electricity savings that would otherwise be due, a payment equal to $25, adjusted for inflation on January 1 of each year following calendar year 2009, in accordance with such regulations as the Commission may promulgate.

You can buy a credit for $25 per MWH. If I’m reading this right you can buy the credits for 2½ cents a KwH Even with the distributed renewable 3 for 1 you would have to generate electricity for 7½ per KwH to break even. It sounds cheaper to buy the credits than generating them. Maybe I don’t understand this.

(h) INFORMATION COLLECTION, (page 49)

The Commission may require any retail electric supplier, renewable electricity generator, or such other entities as the Commission deems appropriate, to provide any information the Commission determines appropriate to carry out this section. Failure to submit such information or submission of false or misleading information under this subsection shall be a violation of this section.

This is pretty sweeping language. The Commission can require anybody to tell them anything they want to know. This needs some clarification about what kinds of information are appropriate.

(k) SAVINGS PROVISIONS. (Page 51)

States can have more stringent renewable requirements if they want to.

SEC. 103. FEDERAL RENEWABLE ENERGY PURCHASES. (page 54)

The federal government will use renewable energy except when the President decides they can’t.

Links are available below

Text of Waxman-Market as passed by House

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h2454eh.txt.pdf

Central Procurement State in Waxman-Markey

I have been trying to read the final version of Waxman-Markey and I was doing okay until I got to page 16 of 1428 and hit this sentence:

(7) CENTRAL PROCUREMENT STATE.—The term ‘central procurement State’ means a State that, as of January 1, 2009, had adopted and implemented a legally enforceable mandate that, in lieu of requiring utilities to submit credits or certificates issued based on generation of electricity from (or to purchase or generate electricity from) resources defined by the State as renewable, requires retail electric suppliers to collect payments from electricity ratepayers within the State that are used for central procurement, by a State agency or a public benefit corporation established pursuant to State law, of credits or certificates issued based on generation of electricity from resources defined by the State as renewable.

I found this rather opaque and naturally tried to Google "Central Procurement State" and found that no one had figured out what this sentence meant and were somewhat dismayed. I took this as a challenge and set down and proceeded to attack this sentence with all the wit at my command.

After several readings, I finally got the concept that utility companies, instead of managing their own renewable energy programs, would collect surcharges from their customers and give that money to the State. The State in turn would use this money to create renewable energy programs. I read the various references to "Central Procurement State" in Waxman-Markey and they seemed to be consistent with that interpretation.

The next question that came to mind is what is the purpose of this sentence? On closer reading I decided that the "January 1, 2009" implied that there was already a state that met this definition, but Rep. Waxman didn't want other states becoming "Central Procurement States". There is a convention in legislation, that when you are creating a bill that will only benefit a single entity, that you can't actually say that it is only for California or Boeing or Henry A. Waxman of Los Angles, CA. You have to craft a definition so that only that one entity meets it. Since Representative Waxman is from California, I naturally suspected that California would meet this definition. After a little web searching, I discovered that California has a renewable energy program that is financed by rate surcharges charged by the utility companies on their customers!

Now onward to page 17 of 1428.

Links are available below

Text of Waxman-Market as passed by House
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h2454eh.txt.pdf

California Renewable Energy Program
http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/index.html

Database of Renewables
http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=CA05R&re=1&ee=0