An Upchurch Chrestomathy

Comparing GISS, HADCRU, RSS and UAH Temperature Records

2012-02-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

Another update including data through November 2011. The indexes are getting closer together. They range from 0.0137 to 0.0158 degrees per year or 1.37 to 1.57 degrees per century. Another interesting thing is the UAH 12 month moving average shows almost exactly the same temperature for 2010 as 1998.

Comparing GISS, HADCRU, RSS and UAH Temperature Records

2011-06-01T16:07:00.001-07:00

This is just an update from my post of January 2010 with the source data updated to March 2011 and adding the RSS temperature data to the other three indexes. All four indexes are presented in the form of a 12 month moving average with a linear trend fit through all four datasets. The data is downloaded from http://www.woodfortrees.org/ and imported in Excel and formatted in a way, that in my opinion, more readable. I suggest opening the graph above in a seperate tab to study it in more detail.

A remarkable thing is how closely all four temperature indexes resemble each other when presented this way. The reason I find this remarkable is that these indexes are derived from two independent set of data. HADCRU and GISS use readings from ground based sensors, while the RSS and UAH indexes use satellite data. The resemblance argues strongly for the validity of the data. The satellite data begins in 1979, which is why I use that as the starting year of the graph.

Also note that the slope of the linear fit for all four temperature indexes are similar. They are all within 0.003 degrees centigrade per year of each other. If you project all 4 slopes out for 100 years then the result is 1.37 to 1.65 degrees hotter than now. Of course, a linear projection in this case is almost certainly wrong, but a temperature increase of between 1 and 2 degree centigrade seems reasonable. Standard climate models assume the temperature increase with increases in carbon dioxide is logarithmic rather than linear, so a 1 degree temperature range includes a wide variety of different emission scenarios.

I guess there is such a thing as bad publicity

2010-12-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article in the New York Times on December 1st where an online vendor was bragging about how all the bad online publicity was improving his page rank on Google and actually getting him more business.

Google Acts to Demote Distasteful Web Sellers

Today I read where he was arrested by federal agents.

U.S. Arrests Online Seller Who Scared Customers

A friend was complaining to me this morning about the awful experience he had with a mover. I typed their name into Google maps and the first comment was "They SUCK". Other comments were, "Crooks", "Horrible Company", "They are awful", "Cheaters", "They are Thieves". I told him it was his own fault for using someone without checking on them (empathy isn't one of my strong points). When he checked later at the BBB, it turned out they had an F rating. Now days any business that does much business will have some online reviews.

I have a problem when one of my friends wants to go out to shop for electronics. What am I supposed to figure out by looking at it? I want to check out both the user and professional reviews and shop around for price. By the time I go to the store, I already know what I want and I called ahead to verify it was in stock. Of course, a lot of user reviews are written by idiots and you actually need to read them. A lot of them are written about the product missing some feature that they would have known if they had read the spec sheet before buying it. But other often mention something about it that turns out to be very important to me also. A good trick is to check amazon.com even if you don't plan to buy from them. They usually have a lot of user reviews.

Buying cell phones without researching them drives me up the wall. How can you check reception in the store? They always put their stores in places with great coverage. If a phone can't make and receive calls reliably what does it matter what else it does? It is a good idea to see what phonescoop.com and cnet.com say about a phone before you buy it.

Dumb Criminal Day in the Orlando Sentinel.

2010-07-17T15:38:00.001-07:00

I expect a certain number of dumb criminal stories in the Orlando Sentinel, but today, they have outdone themselves. I've included a screen shot to prove all the stories were in my Sentinel iGoogle feed today. Here they are in ordering of ascending dumbness.

Search continues for handcuffed man who escaped from police car

The reason this is on my list is because he was under arrest for shoplifting a pair of sunglasses from Altamonte Mall, so he just converted a misdemeanor into a felony. I may have to give the police an honorable mention on this one, since he seems to have masterminded his escape by complaining he couldn't breathe and getting them to roll the window down part way.

Deputies at Sonny's arrest man after they smell pot smoke

Volusia County deputies arrested a man because they could smell the pot over the barbeque.

Man, 64, accused of having sex with dog named Christie Brinkley

This man was arrested because when a staffer at the veterinarian was asking him about his his dog's health, he replied that she doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as she used to when they have sex.

And the winner is:

Porn actors accused of killing Florida tattoo artist with sledgehammer

The reason this one wins is because among the evidence submitted were transcripts of the text messages they sent discussing how they were going to commit the crime.

Distracted Driving

2010-05-24T08:16:00.000-07:00

I was reading the news today about a local man who, while reaching for his cell phone, managed to sideswipe three other cars, including a Florida Highway Patrol Cruiser, a Windermere police car and one other car, sending three people to the hospital. All he needed was a FBI agent to score a trifecta.

This brings up the issue of distracted driving. As people spend more time in their cars commuting to and from their jobs, for many people the car is actually the normal place to make phone calls. I have friends, who if they didn't call me from their cars, I would never hear from at all.

Some studies have shown that making cell phone calls while you're driving actually impairs your attention as much as being legally intoxicated. The trouble is that the legislative response to this problem has been to require using hands-free cell phones. Other studies have shown that this is useless because the problem is caused by the driver being distracted by the phone call, not the fact that one hand is holding the phone. When people are engaged in a conversation, most of their brain is occupied processing the verbal information. The eyes still see, but the brain doesn't process the information.

The fact of the matter is, that if there was a ban on using cell phones while driving that the worst offenders probably would be our state representatives. As I see it, the problem isn't with the talking while driving, but with the driving. Driving is an enormously boring activity that screams for distractions. Before cell phones, people would be listening to the radio, eating breakfast, doing their makeup or shaving or even reading the newspaper while driving.

As far as I'm concerned, the only long-term solution to the problem is Robocars. Go check out Brad Templeton's blog on Robocars linked below. The main problems with Robocars is legal not technical. A Robocar can be 10 times safer than a car with a human driver, but that 10% is a rich target environment for liability lawyers. Our current legal environment requires perfect safety or nothing can be done. Liability lawyers almost destroyed the civil aviation industry in this country, before Congress passed special legislation to protect them. This means Robocars will appear in other countries before ours. We are hamstrung by our lawyers.

Driver distracted by cell phone plows into FHP trooper, Windermere officer, other car

Robocars

http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/

How Well Did the Tsunami Warning System Work

2010-02-28T04:54:00.000-08:00

I was curious to see how well the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center worked in the aftermath of the Chilean eathquake yesterday. As you might recall the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting tsunami killed 230,000 people. Many of whom would not have died if the Indian Ocean had an effective tsunami warning system.

I went to the website site of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in to check what time the bulletins went out after the tsunami. The Chilean earthquake happened at 6:34 UTC. The first tsunami warning went out from the warning center at 6:46 UTC. That means they will issue a warning 12 minutes after the initial earthquake. Actually issuing the warning 12 minutes after the earthquake seems like a pretty good response to me. Here is a link to their initial warning.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1&id=pacific.2010.02.27.064454

As the day progressed the warning area was expanded, until four hours later when it actually when it was expanded to a Pacific wide warning.

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/?region=1&id=pacific.2010.02.27.104329

I was curious when I noticed that the Pacific wide alert went out at 12:45 AM Honolulu time. I talked to friends of mine in Hawaii and emergency sirens didn't go off till 6 AM that morning. I did some investigation and apparently there was nothing sinister involved. The Hawaii civil defense people were on the job, but didn't see any reason to get people out of bed when the tsunami wouldn't be hitting Hawaii until 11 AM.

Tsunami response flaws draw review

It seems kind of silly for anyone to worry about an earthquake that happened 6600 miles away but 61 people were killed in Hilo, Hawaii by the tsunami from the 1960 Chilean earthquake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was actually created as a response to a 1946 tsunami that hit Hilo killing 160 people.

Another interesting aspect to the Chilean earthquake is that the earthquake was hundreds of times more powerful than the earthquake that happened earlier this year in Haiti with the death toll was hundreds of times less . There are actually several news articles analyzing this.

Chile's quake 500 times more powerful than Haiti's

Infrastructure helps to stem casualties

New York Times Article on Radiation Therapy Problems

2010-01-28T12:30:00.000-08:00

There is an interesting article on issues with radiation therapy machines in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27radiation.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all

You may need to register to read it, but is is free (for now).

Most of the issues came down to poorly trained people using new machines with confusing software.

The story has extensive anecdotal evidence, but little sense of how extensive such problems are. Indeed one of the thrusts of the article, was that the current patchwork of regulations and non-regulations make it difficult to determine how big the problems are. The video that goes with the article implies the error rate is lower than other medical procedures. I didn't find this totally reassuring. There are also issues with some types of radiation therapy being regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and other types being regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

I was disappointed, but not surprised by references to software problems with the therapy machines in some cases. The FDA passed extensive regulations on medical software after the Therac-25 accidents back in the eighties. I read the standards that the FDA published and they required extensive documentation of the design and testing process for software. As with ISO9000, there seems to be a part of the bureaucratic mentality that assumes that you will get a quality product if you document it enough. Indeed, their operational definition of quality seems to be how much paperwork is generated. I'm a little surprised that the NY Times didn't mention the Therac-25 for historical background. Many people were injured and at least two were killed by the Therac-25. There was a software bug, where the machine would sometimes dose people with a 100 times the radiation prescribed. Previous versions of the Therac had the same bug, but there was a hardware interlock that prevented the failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

The End of Magical Climate Thinking

2010-01-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

This is just a heads up to go read a very good article in Foreign Policy called "The End of Magical Climate Thinking".

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/13/the_end_of_magical_climate_thinking?page=0,0

This paragraph sums up the article:

In this, Obama was following two decades of magical thinking among both greens and liberal Democrats about energy technology. In this view, energy efficiency pays for itself, solar and wind power are already nearly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and both can quickly and cheaply reduce emissions. This Pollyanna view of fossil fuel alternatives and efficiency, which makes going green seem cheap and easy -- little more than the cost of "a postage stamp a day" -- has provided the justification for green-policy advocacy that has overwhelmingly focused on pollution regulations and carbon pricing while ignoring serious investment in energy research and development.

This article tends to confirm my belief that the whole Waxman-Markey fiasco was a non-sequitur as far as actually actual substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The trouble is that Congress is populated by people who not only don't understand the basics of climate science, but don't have the educational background to understand the explanations. Law school just doesn't equip you to make intelligent decisions on scientific topics.

The Big Bang Theory TV Show Map

2010-01-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

View Big Bang Theory Locations in a larger map

This is kind of silly, but when I'm watching the show, I try to figure out where the locations they mention are, so I put them in a Google map. I try to limit myself to locations close to Pasadena. I can't find a Bob's Big Boy or a Shoes 4 Less close to Pasadena, but they do exist in the LA area.

Please put additions or correction in the comments. If you aren't into The Big Bang Theory or maps please ignore. Click on the link above to view the map full size.

Comparing GISS, HADCRU and UAH Temperature Records

2010-01-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

I happened to download the monthly temperature anomalies records from the University of Alabama in Huntsville the other day and plotted it in Excel. I then did a linear trend that through the data and also did a 12 month moving average. I thought it might be interesting to do the same thing with the data from the Hadley climate research unit and also with the GISS data and plot them on the same graph.

The data is based on satellite data that has been collected since December 1978 through November 2009. I set up the other two data sets to start and end on the same months. You can see the resulting graph above. Please click on it to view it at full size.

Each data set uses a different time period to compute the offset for their anomalies, so each data set is offset from the other two. You will notice that all three data sets tend to resemble one another, but the UAH data shows that sharper transitions even when we are looking at the moving average.

You can generate different slopes depending on what start year you use. If you use 1992, which was a year after the Mount Pinatubo eruption, you end up with a much stronger positive slope. If you select 1998, which was a year of the El Niño, you can actually produce a negative slope. 1979 seems like a pretty mediocre year so it seemed like a good year to start with and it lets me use all of the satellite data.

I thought it might be interesting to take all three temperature data sets and project their trends forward to the year 2100 to see how much difference in temperature each one would predict.

It is interesting to note that all three temperature data sets agreed to less than half a degree centigrade in terms of predicting the temperature for the year 2100.

2010 to 2100 Temperature Change

GISS 1.611

HAD 1.422

UAH 1.143

Range 0.468

It is interesting to note that the worst "prediction" from these three data sets is a warming of 1.6°C for the year 2100.

Here is where I downloaded the data from:

UAH:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

GISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

HADCRU:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly

I also uploaded the data in a spreadsheet, so you can download it and draw your own graphs with minimal work. Doing it yourself for the UAH and HADCRU is easy, but I had to massage the GISS data a little to get it into the same format.

Link to Spreadsheet:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ajn-XlBIM9nGdHhkYm5RR1Exdl9SdDdRTWozY3YtLVE&hl=en

Greenhouse Gas Footprint for Cheese

2009-12-02T00:46:00.000-08:00

I was discussing with a friend of mine the other day the environmental impact various kinds of meat. I read an article in Scientific American that showed the greenhouse gas produced in the production of various kinds of food. Half a pound of beef created 7.4 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases, while half a pound of chicken only produces point .55 pounds for a difference of 13 to 1. This is mainly because cattle produce huge amounts of Methane which is 23 times stronger than Carbon Dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Argentina, which is a cow intensive country may be getting 30% of its greenhouse gas emissions from cattle.

Chickens are apparently amazing protein factories. A broiler chicken can be produced in as little as six weeks while beef cattle take from 1 1/2 to 2 years to raise. I therefore concluded that chicken should be the meat of choice for an environmentally responsible carnivore and beef should be eaten only on special occasions. She listened to what I said and replied, "What about cheese?" I was dismayed by this, since I don't eat beef that often anymore, but I use a lot of cheese, so I decided to find out the greenhouse gas footprint of cheese.

I didn't find any link giving me the number for cheese. It is only recently that scientists have started trying to account for Methane output from food production.

First I found a number for how much milk a cow produces in a year. The number I found was 8,992 kilos of milk. It apparently takes 12 kilos of milk to produce 1 kilo of cheese which works out to 749 kilos of cheese per cow per year. The Swedish study lists the cheese on a Big Mac at 14.5 grams per slice. That works out to 69 slices per kilo or 51,681 slices per cow per year. If you get 440 pounds of meat at 14.8 pounds of Carbon Dioxide per pound, then one beef cow is equal to 6,512 pounds of carbon.

I wasn't sure how the GHG footprint of dairy cows compares to beef cattle, but the EPA seems to think that dairy cows produce 4 tons of Carbon Dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases per year, since their regulations kick in at 100 tons per year and they want a license for 25 dairy cows. They estimate 2 tons per beef cattle which comes out to 1.6 years to raise a cow for beef, which is about right.

If you use, 1652 pounds of cheese per year per cow, that that works out to 4.8 pounds of Carbon Dioxide equivalent per pound of cheese as compared to 14.8 per pounds of Carbon Dioxide equivalent per pound of beef or about 1/3 as much GHG emissions. This is worse than pork which is 3.8 pounds. Of course, very few people eat cheese by the pound. At 14.5 grams per slice, that would work out .15 pounds of GHG compared to 3.7 pounds for the 4 oz patty. The fat free singles I buy weigh 19 grams and work out to .2 pounds of GHG.

It looks like putting a slice of cheese on your sandwich is not a major environmental sin.

References:

How Meat Contributes to Global Warming:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger

Meeting the demand: An estimation of potential future greenhouse gas emissions from meat production
http://www.nathanfiala.com/Meeting%20the%20Demand.pdf

Energy Use in the Food Sector:A data survey

http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/pdf/energyuse.pdf

Cow Backpacks Trap Methane Gas

http://www.physorg.com/news135003243.html

How much milk do cows produce?

http://www.moomilk.com/faq.htm#How much milk do cows produce

EPA Proposes "Cow Tax"

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/EPA-Proposes--Cow-Tax/2008-11-18/article_FeedByproducts.aspx?oid=556872

How many hamburgers can you get out of one cow?

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_hamburgers_can_you_get_out_of_one_cow

The Electric Highway Part 1

2009-09-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting article about running electric cars without batteries. Here is a quote.

The Korea Advanced Institute of Technology (KAIST) has developed a revolutionary electric vehicle that neatly side-steps the looming political/economic issue of scarcity of advanced battery materials, as well as the practical limitations imposed by battery weight and life, by dispensing with batteries altogether! The OLEV (On Line Electric Vehicle) draws power from cables buried in the road-bed, differing from existing electric train and bus technology in that the power is transferred by magnetic induction without physical contact of any kind. KAIST claims to achieve 80% efficiency of power-transfer across a 1cm gap, and 60% efficiency across a 12cm gap!

http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/1034778_korean-ev-runs-without-batteries-by-induction-charging

It occurred to me that the two biggest limitations with Plug In Electric Vehicles are the limitations on range from current battery technology and the lack of stations to recharge their vehicles.

What if we made our whole freeway system into an electric road? Electric cars would only run off of batteries on surface streets. Once they got on the freeway, they would use power from the roads and recharge their battery at the same time. We could set up an e-pass like system at the entrance and exit ramps to read the vehicle ID and battery state and bill automatically for the electricity consumed. You could drive coast to coast and never use a KWh from your batteries.

My next thought is how do you build such a thing without it costing 10 trillion dollars? I started visualizing a large machine that would move down a lane on the freeway at a mile per hour and cut a slit a couple of inches deep in the pavement, lay the cable and seal the trench behind it. We probably need different machines for concrete or asphalt. Every five or ten miles you connect the road to the grid. If one section goes out, then cars only need to go five or ten miles on battery to get to the next section. If you operate the machine outside of rush hour you could run it 10 to 15 hours a day. On rural interstates you might be able to operate it close to 7/24.

How much would it cost?

The next part was doing a back of the envelope calculation about how much building such a grid would cost. I made a guess of 10,000 dollars an hour or 10,000 dollars per lane-mile to operate the machine. I figure double the number to account for grid connections, so I’m up to 20,000 per lane-mile. Next I check Wikipedia and it says we have 75,000 miles of freeway. Multiply by 4 and I’ve got 300,000 lane-miles. I know some freeways have more than 4 lanes, but I’m just trying for a ballpark number. That comes out to 6 billion to electrify all the freeways. This sounds low, but unless they use the same guys who did the Big Dig in Boston, it shouldn’t go over 24 billion. Once you figure in four lanes, then you end up with 320,000 dollars a mile. This actually seems plausible, if you contract the whole thing out at once, instead of piecemeal. Of course, every road construction company in the United States will scream bloody murder, but it doesn’t make much sense to do it any other way, since the construction machines will probably cost over 100 million per unit unless other countries jump on the band wagon and buy them. Also you hook all the lanes to the grid at the same time, which should reduce the cost.

How long would it take?

You would have a lot of development time up front. You have to design the whole infrastructure up front and make sure all EV makers design their cars to hook up to the system. You have to figure out a billing system that will work anywhere you can drive in the United States and the transponders it will need. You have to design the construction machines and build them. I’d say at least 10 years. I’ve got the total freeway system in the United States up to 300,000 lane-miles. I assume each construction machine handles 10 miles a day and I’ll assume we spend 1 billion dollars and buy 10 machines and electrify 100 lane-miles a day which would come out to 3000 days or 8.2 years.

Of course, it doesn’t actually happen this way, since the construction machines don’t all get built at the same time. Also it makes sense to build out the local area until you reach the critical mass where a lot of people want them. Keep in mind that electric motors are more efficient than internal combustion engines and if you don’t need a big battery pack, they may cost less to purchase as well as operate. The reason a Prius is expensive is that you are buying an electric motor and an internal combustion engine and stuffing them both under one hood. Once you have the local grid built out, then a lot of families will want an EV as their second car. Once the grid is totally built out, then they will want one as their first car.

Anyway , assume the first machine goes to Los Angeles and starts electrifying the Southern California freeway system and maybe they put several machines on the West Coast and work their way East and then put some more on the East Coast and work their way West. Unless, of course, it looks like a close election, and then Florida and Ohio get the machines. In any case, figure 15 years to build out on the whole freeway system.

So we are up to 2035 and the whole freeway system is electrified. Obviously we don’t quit at that point and we start electrifying the major surface streets. The E-pass doesn’t work for this, but by the time we need it, we can figure it out. Maybe we put meters in each car that keep track of where the car is and how much electricity it is using from the grid. Maybe we put sensors every 50 yards to figure when you enter and leave the grid. In either case, you might consider walking, if you plan on going anywhere where you don’t want your wife or the police to know about.

By now, we are up to 2045 and most of our cars are electric and the rest are running on Biodiesel from algae. Our electricity is from nuclear power, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is going down. For Part II, I'll calculate how much power such a system would use.

References:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/7271/kaist-korean-electric-vehicle-project.html

http://www.kaist.edu/english/01_about/06_news_01.php?req_P=bv&req_BIDX=10&req_BNM=ed_news&req_VI=2056&req_PC=20&req_CG=&sCATE=&sCHAR=

A Strong Meaningless Message

2009-08-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

I was perusing Science Daily this morning and was reading an article entitled "Humans 'Damaging The Oceans' In Profound Ways" concerning a paper in Current Biology titled "Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Organisms and Ecosystems" by when I came across a statement that said:

“At current emission rates it is possible we will pass the critical level of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by 2040. That’s the level when, it is generally agreed, global climate change may become catastrophic and irreversible,” they add. “At that point we can expect to see the loss of most of our coral reefs and the arctic seas.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090729092538.htm

Since I hadn't heard before that there was a 450PPM line of death and a "generally agreed" one at that, I stopped to figure this one out. Since our current CO2 level is around 390PPM and increasing at around 2PPM, I would rate the chances of hitting 450PPM by 2040 as likely, rather than possible.

I went to find the paper and located it here:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01181-6#sec1

Oddly enough there wasn't anything in the paper that said exactly that, but there was this statement:

It has been suggested that a CO_2[atm] of 450 ppm is a critical threshold beyond which catastrophic and irreversible change might occur [7] this would bring a global mean temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial values. At present rates, this threshold will be passed by 2040, but climate-related systems are notoriously non-linear [14]. By 2040, some particularly sensitive marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and ice-covered polar seas could already have been lost, and other unexpected consequences may arise [15].

Now to me, "suggested that" and "generally agreed" don't mean the same thing at all, so I was wondering where Science Daily got the quote from. I looked at the article more closely and found this "Adapted from materials provided by ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.". That made it clearer, they are quoting from a press release about the paper and not from the paper itself. It also appears that whoever wrote the press release took some artistic license with the content of the paper. I found the press release and it implies that "generally agreed" is a direct quote from one of the authors.

http://www.coralcoe.org.au/news_stories/seachange.html

The whole 450ppm statement annoys me even more because I agree with a lot of the things the authors say. I'm a lukewarmer myself, so I think the biochemical impacts of CO2 increases will hit us before we actually start getting serious negative consequences from actual warming. The vague specificity of the 450ppm statement is alarming without giving any guidelines for actions. It makes them sound more like carnival fortune tellers and less like scientists. Assign a range of CO2 values where a certain catastrophe is likely and go through all the possible catastrophes and do the same for all of them. If you don't know enough to assign some probabilities, then go back and do some research and some experiments until you do know enough. It is worth spending billions of dollars to decrease that uncertainty.

Frankly a lot of things the authors say don't make any sense if they actually believe in the 450ppm catastrophe. How could ocean fertilization experiments be too risky if the alternative is a certain catastrophe? There are parts of the ocean that are near deserts any way and experiments could be done there with limited impact on other species. You need to balance the risk of actions against the risks of inaction.

If you truly believe that increases in CO2 is a clear and present danger, then what options should be off the table? Frankly every Nuclear reactor that is built should result in a coal plant of similar capacity being taken offline. The NRC shouldn't have any requirements for building a nuclear power plant except to verify that the containment is built to specification. It is sometimes hard to remember that no one died at Three Mile Island even though there was a complete core meltdown. Shucks the reactor next door is still operating.

BTW, would it have killed them to call it the "ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies"? Organizations that use the the term "Excellence" or "Quality" in their title have the about the same effect on me as car dealers who have "Honest" in theirs.

Do You Believe in Magic?

2009-07-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-07-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-05T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-02T17:05:00.001-07:00

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

Final Version of Waxman-Markey as Passed by House

2009-06-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

The final bill with the amendments collated in is now available. I'll add comments when I have some time.

References:

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

Last Minutes Amendments to Waxman-Markey

2009-06-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

Well it passed. There were over 300 pages of amendments made to the 1200 page bill at the last minute, so it fairly safe to say that no one in the House really knew what they were voting on. I skimmed through the amendments and have a few comments below.

Page 36: High Efficiency Gas Turbine Research. They are shooting for 65% combined cycle efficiency. Not a bad idea, but not exactly something private industry is neglecting. I checked carefully and as far as I can tell they didn't repeal the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Page 42: Authorizes the Secretary of Energy to do a study on thorium fueled nuclear reactors.

Page 64:; there is "Sec 27. Clean Energy Manufacturing Revolving Loan Fund Program". It doesn't say anything about nuclear power, but if you go down to paragraph (J) on page 65 it looks like Secretary Chu could apply it to nuclear power if he wants to.

Page 114: Looks like the feds will help you if you buy a house closer to work (Location-Efficient Mortgages).

Page 133: And help with the landscaping. I'm now totally confused about when you are supposed to protect trees and when you supposed to cut them down and burn them for renewable biomass. Since they use the term "indigenous trees", I assume a Dutch Elm is renewable toast.

Page 170: Sec. 299F. GAO Reports on Availability of Affordable Mortgages. I don't know what this is doing in this bill. Maybe it was a cut and paste error.

Page 210: It looks like Subtitle A is trying to keep manufacturing from moving offshore to countries that don't punish CO2 output. It looks like if you are competing with a foreign company that doesn't have to pay carbon offsets, then you can get some sort of rebate on the offsets. The government offsets the offsets so to speak. It seems to me that it would be cheaper to not make you buy the offset in the first place.

Page 260: Changes to Earned Income Credit. I don't know how they are going to figure out which households have experienced a reduction in purchasing power because of the bill and why doesn't that apply to people with kids also?

Page 268: Carbon offsets for agriculture are administered by the Secretary of Agriculture, not the EPA. This has upset some environmental groups.

Page 271: Ocean fertilization doesn't count as biological sequestration.

Page 276: Insert your own joke about manure management.

Page 289: Section 506 Verification of Offset Practices. When you think about it, The compliance and enforcement costs for carbon offsets are going to cost more than $176 per household. The time filling out the paperwork, the time reviewing the paperwork, the field inspectors to check that what people are doing matches the paperwork. This makes the IRS look simple by comparison.

References:

Amendment Text:
http://www.rules.house.gov/111/SpecialRules/hr2998/waxman1_hr2998_111.pdf

Text of original bill:
http://www.eenews.net/public/25/11457/features/documents/2009/06/23/document_daily_03.pdf

Waxman-Markey Goes to Floor Vote

2009-06-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 goes to the House Floor for Debate Friday June 26th. I'll probably have more comments when I have a chance to compare the new version to the old.

June 24, 2009 4:30
On page 245, that they have added a clause requiring companies using the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to pay the "prevailing wage" for the project. Won't this greatly increase the cost of the projects using this program, since I understand the usual interpretation of "prevailing wage" is the union wage?

June 25, 2009 15:00
I just realized that most people don't know Title XVII is. Among other things it has 18 billion for nuclear power plant construction. I've also found analysis of Waxman-Markey at the The Breakthrough Institute, which I have linked below.

Text of Bill
http://www.eenews.net/public/25/11457/features/documents/2009/06/23/document_daily_03.pdf

Ny Times
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/06/23/23climatewire-house-dems-release-revised-climate-bill-as-f-15591.html

Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090622-716255.html

My previous comments
http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2009/06/waxman-climate-bill-and-war-on-trees.html

The Breakthrough Institute on Waxman-Markey
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/waxmanmarkey_climate_bill/

The Upchurch American Energy Act

2009-06-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Since the Republicans have proposed the American Energy Act, I thought this is a good time to put forward my own proposal. I think I can safely say that my plan has just as much chance passing in the current Congress as the Republican plan. I'm cribbing most of this from the French, since 78% of their electricity is from nuclear power. If you add in the hydroelectric power, then nearly 90% of their electricity is generated without producing carbon dioxide.

1. Create a Federal Power Authority.

The Federal Power Authority would be have the power to build and operate nuclear power plants anywhere in the United States. They wouldn't be involved in selling electricity to end-users and would sell electricity to the electric power utilities at wholesale, with one possible exception I will note below. If the wholesale pricing is good, then I anticipate little resistance from local power companies, since their focus is on selling power, not on producing it. Power companies focused on sales to other utilities will be less thrilled, since the FPA is going to be an 800 pound gorilla.

I was concerned about how to go about creating such a large federal agency from scratch, when it occurred to me that the nucleus of the FPA already exists in the Tennessee Valley Authority. They have been in the business of generating electricity since the thirties and they already operate 6 nuclear reactors at 3 different locations in two states. We would expand their authority to build nuclear power plants anywhere in the United States and keep the power of eminent domain and to issue bonds they already have. Their authority would be expanded to include the ability to issue tax exempt bonds to build nuclear power. The FPA would retain the other missions of the TVA besides power generation, but only in the Tennessee Valley.

The FPA would stay at their current headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. Since the whole purpose of expanding the TVA, is so the FPA can hit the ground running relocating the authority would be counter productive. There is also big advantage in being just down the road from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ORNL is part of the Department of Energy. I haven't figured out exactly what will be the relationship will be between the FPA and the DOE.

2. Spent Fuel Storage and Reprocessing

The FPA would be responsible for accepting spent fuel from their own reactors and from other operators and storing it in their own storage site. They would also have a fuel reprocessing plant at same location and a reactor that would use reprocessed fuel. Colocating the spent fuel storage and fuel reprocessing is just common sense and also putting a power reactor on the same site will create employment for the county that hosts the facility. An ideal candidate would be large and sparsely populated county, with less than 10,000 households.

A lot of the resistance to nuclear storage facilities is that the local residents see it as an all pain/no gain situation. This approach will mean that a large percentage of the local residents will be FPA employees, their families and people providing goods and services to them. Also the FPA will sell electricity to local homes at a rate determined by incremental cost of production for the first 2000KWH and at the wholesale rates over that. Since they are using reprocessed fuel, the incremental cost may be less than 1 cent per KWH. I hope this spurs some competition about which county gets the facility.

Notice I said waste storage not disposal. 95% of spent fuel rods are Uranium or Plutonium which we can reprocess. Most of the remainder can be used in an Integral Fast Reactor which we will also build at the facility. It may be 50 years before we find out what is actually waste and not more fuel and by then we will have the technology to convert that into something harmless.

3. Licensing

The FPA will only use reactor designs approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The FPA will be self-licensing as far as site and operating licenses are concerned. They are already a licensed operator and we can beef up their Inspector General's department to make sure that they observe best practices. The current TVA Inspector General is a presidential appointee and that would be continued in the FPA.

Frankly, with their current workload, there is no way the NRC could process the extra 10 to 12 site licenses that the FPA would generate. It takes the NRC years to turn around the current applications. Adding to their workload wouldn't actually get more plants approved. It will just increase the approval time and cost.

We might also want to try some different ways to encourage good safety practices. For example we might require all managers at a reactor to live within 10 miles of the facility and try to have some of the managers working in inspection during construction.

4. Reactor Selection

One thing the French experience proved is that if you want to keep costs down, pick a single design and build a lot of them. With economies of scale and learning, the last plant is going to cost a fraction of the first plant. With quantity purchases we can get better prices from our vendors and have specialized construction crews moving from site to site during the construction.

I'm inclined to go with the Westinghouse AP1000 for a few reasons.

It's already approved by the NRC.
It's a generation III+ design which is much simpler and safer than older designs
It has a modular design which make it faster and cheaper to build.
The Chinese as already building one, so we can take advantage of what they learn while building them.
The Chinese plan to build 100 AP1000 reactors. If we build 100 also, then cost of the components should really come down. They should literally be coming off an assembly line.

5. Federal Lands

Whenever possible, the FPA should try to build their reactors on land the federal government already owns. This will save billions in purchase costs and cause less PR problems than exercising eminent domain would.

6. Future Plans

There are a lot of things the FPA and the DOE need to work on.

Design a nuclear reactor that can be used to retrofit existing coal plants to use nuclear energy.
Build an Integral Fast Reactor as mentioned above.
Design a reactor that produce electricity as cheaply as coal and is proliferation resistant and transportable for the export market. This will probably use a Thorium fuel cycle.
Design a reactor optimized to produce hydrogen for automobiles. #3 should also be able to produce hydrogen.
Work on all the spent fuel reprocessing I mentioned in #2.

References:

American Energy Act:
http://www.gop.gov/energy

Why the French Like Nuclear Energy
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

Tennessee Valley Authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

Nuclear Fuel Cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle

NRC License Review Budget Constraints
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2009/06/living-renaissance-nrc-license-review.html

Babcock & Wilcox mPower Reactor

2009-06-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Since I was talking about small nuclear reactors in my previous post I thought I might comment on their announcement of the mPower system. The newspaper stories about the announcement made it difficult to heads or tails of what features the mPower reactors had.

The mPower is a light water reactor with a projected output of 125 Megawatts of electricity. This is abbreviated as MWe as opposed to MWt which stands for thermal or the amount of heat the reactor can produce. The MWe number is usually 1/3 to 1/2 the MWt number. This is less than 1/9th what a large reactor like the AP1000 can produce.

Buying a series of small reactors instead of of one large one can have advantages for a utility company. They don't have to make a huge financial commitment upfront and the interest charges that entails and often ending up with more capacity than they require for current demand. Units can be added as needed, while the earlier units are paying down the debt for their construction. This can save years of interest charges.

There is also the advantage that with several mPower units installed, you don't have to take them all offline at the same time for maintenance and refueling, which means much better availability numbers. This can be critical in third world countries where there isn't a large national grid to take up the slack when you have a large reactor offline.

This approach also can have big advantages for B&W. The reactor is small enough that is can assembled in a few major modules which can be transported to the construction site and only the final assembly is done on-site. Not only do you achieve much lower component costs when purchased in quantity, but the quality control can be much more through in a factory setting, which will improve safety and reliability.

The mPower represents an intermediate step between the AP1000, which has modular subunits and the SSTAR that Lawerence Livermore is designing which is assembled prefueled at the factory and only needs to hooked up to the turbines and generators at the site.

This brings me to the most interesting feature of the mPower: All the components will be made in North America. During the long dark night for nuclear power in the United States following Three Mile Island, we lost almost all domestic capacity for making the components for nuclear reactors. The Republican energy bill has a provision to waive tariffs for nuclear reactor components, where there is no domestic manufacturer. B&W just went back into the business of building heavy reactor components a couple of years ago after leaving the business 20 years ago.

Rebuilding our nuclear infrastructure is important not just from a buy American point of view. There is a lot of demand worldwide for reactor components. The last time I looked the lead time for a reactor pressure vessel was three years. Being able to supply their own heavy components gives B&W a big leg up.

The next feature of note is that reactor is designed to be built underground. The picture at the top is a 500MW underground facility with 4 mPower reactors. It looks like the generators and maybe the turbines are above ground. I suspect that the underground design is a reaction to the new rule that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced in February 2009, that new reactors designs must be able to withstand the crash of a commercial jetliner. B&W probably decided it was prohibitively expensive to build an above ground containment for a low cost reactor to meet that specification and that building below ground was cheaper. I have reservations about this requirement. It isn't obvious to me that crashing a jetliner into a nuclear reactor would actually cause more loss of life than doing it to a natural gas storage facility.

I live in Orlando, Florida and I wonder how practical this is for this area. I'm not a civil engineer, but anytime someone digs a hole around here, it fills up with groundwater. It would be a pain to shut down the reactor because the sump pump failed. It also looks like the spent fuel storage is underground. I don't know if this creates a risk of groundwater contamination if there is a leak.

I often find it useful to look at vendor literature and note what they don't say. Since it against human nature to emphasize the weaknesses in your product, silence often speaks louder than words. The thing I notice is not mentioned is the size of the mPower. There aren't any people in the renderings to give a sense of scale. This combined with the vagueness on the construction costs and the fact the they said that they would be submitting their application to the NRC in 2011 indicate that the mPower design is in the early stages.

Overall I think the mPower is a good thing and hope it moves along smoothly.

References:

B&W Modular Nuclear Reactors
http://www.babcock.com/products/modular_nuclear/

Company Calls New Small Nuclear Reactor a 'Game Changer'
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/06/10/10greenwire-company-calls-new-small-nuclear-reactor-a-game-45123.html

New Reactors Must Handle Plane Strike
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/18nuke.html

The Three Stages of Technology

2009-06-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

Robert Heinlein wrote a juvenile science fiction novel in 1952 called "The Rolling Stones" where he described the three stages of technology. The first stage is a crude, simple and unsatisfactory gadget. He used an ox cart and a rowboat as examples. The second stage is an extremely complicated gadget or group of gadgets that get much better performance, but are difficult to design, build and maintain. As an example of the second stage he used the automobile. That was in 1952 and I would be inclined to characterize our current automobiles as an even better example of second stage technology. The Space Shuttle is also an excellent example of second stage technology.

The third stage of technology is a simple efficient design. His example was the atomic powered rocket ship of the novel. The power plant was 100% efficient and had no moving parts.

I bring this up because there are signs that nuclear power is starting to move from the second stage to the third stage.

I have been reading the marketing literature for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design. They brag about how unprecedented levels of safety have been achieved though the use of simple passive safety systems instead of layers of complicated active systems. The NRC apparently agrees. Their assessment rates the AP1000 over 80 times safer than current systems.

Westinghouse goes into great detail about many less components are used in the AP1000:

50% fewer safety-related valves
80% less safety-related piping
85% less control cable
35% fewer pumps

The reactor is designed to be built in modules that can brought to the construction site by rail and assembled on site. This will reduce cost and improve quality.

Note that the Chinese have plans to have 100 AP1000 reactors operating or under construction by the year 2020. The Republican energy plan is to build 100 reactors by 2030.

I'm not a shill for Westinghouse. The AP1000 is considered a Generation III+ design. There are Generation IV reactors which will be much better. The difference is that the AP1000 has already been approved by the NRC. The AP1000 isn't the best reactor we can built. It is the best reactor we can build now.

The Chinese are developing Pebble Bed Modular Reactors (PBMR). These also break new ground in passive safety design. They are walk-away safe. If the reactor has a total loss of coolant, the pebbles expand, the reaction weakens and finally shuts down with no damage. This has actually been tested.

This design can also be adapted to use Thorium for fuel. I don't want to go into the details now, but Thorium has a lot of advantages over Uranium as a fuel.

Lastly I would like to mention SSTAR, a small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor program at Lawerence Livermore. This design can be up to 500 tons and produce up to 100MWe. An SSTAR is prefueled and can be shipped by rail, barge or even a large truck to the operating site. The reactor is designed to operate from 20 to 30 years on the initial fuel load and when the fuel is consumed the reactor is replaced and sent back for recycling.

Since there are no fuel rods being shipped to refuel the reactor, that means there are no fuel rods to be diverted into nuclear weapons programs, which reduces the proliferation risks. Since the reactor is plug and play, it doesn't need a lot of infrastructure to get it up and running, which makes it ideal for third world countries. 1.6 billion people in the world don't have access to electricity and STAR type reactors would answer a crying need for electricity, desalination and hydrogen production.

I don't think we are going to repairing nuclear reactors in our backyard anytime soon, but the future for simple mass produced reactors is very hopeful.

References:

The Rolling Stones by Robert Heinlein 1952. Chapter 4: Aspects of Domestic Engineering

Wikipedia Article on Westinghouse AP1000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000

Article on SSTAR
https://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug04/Smith.html

Small nuclear power reactors
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Small_nuclear_power_reactors

American Energy Act
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-6566

Energy from Thorium
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/

How Dangerous are Motorcycles?

2009-06-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

I happened to look at motor vehicle accident statistics the other day and noticed that the NHTSA now gives stats on the number of fatalities per 100 million passenger miles for motor vehicles and motorcycles. I was interested, since I looked for these numbers back around 1990 and couldn't find them and attempted to compute my own figures.

The reason I was doing this, is I wanted to calculate how much more dangerous is was to ride a motorcycle than to drive a car. A little Googling and I found a copy of the numbers I posted in rec.autos.driving in 95. The obvious problem with what I did then was that I didn't have any conversion for vehicle miles to passengers miles and I just assumed 1 person per car. I looked around and found a number in commuting statistics of 1.3 people per car and plugged that in.

Here are my numbers and the NHTSA stats:

	Fatality Rate Per 100 Million Vehicle Miles Traveled
Year	Motorcycles	Automobiles	Ratio
83	46.18	1.77	26
84	49.84	1.77	28
85	47.79	1.70	28
86	44.79	1.72	26
87	38.37	1.65	23

Year	Motorcycles	Automobiles	Ratio
1997	20.99	1.64	13
1998	22.31	1.58	14
1999	23.46	1.55	15
2000	27.67	1.53	18
2001	33.17	1.51	22
2002	34.23	1.51	23
2003	38.78	1.48	26
2004	39.79	1.44	28
2005	43.77	1.46	30
2006	39.00	1.42	27

The first thing to notice is that the motor vehicle safety record consistently improved from 1983 to 2006. The fatality rate dropped by 20% during that period.

The motorcycle results aren't so happy. The results from 87 to 97 dropped from 38 to 21, but then climbed back up to 39 per 100 million miles in 2006. This means that by 2006 you were 27 times as likely to be killed driving a motorcycle as a motor vehicle on a mile per mile basis.

Some people would protest that comparing motorcycles to all vehicles is inappropriate and that subcompact cars would be the closest equivalent. The NHTSA doesn't break their passenger miles data by motor vehicle type, but they do have rates per 100,000 registered vehicles. All motor vehicles are 15 per 100,000, while subcompacts are 17 per 100,000. That would reduce the danger ratio above from 27 to 24.

Nothing I have written above should be inferred to mean that I think motorcycles should be outlawed or even to require helmets. I tend to be of a libertarian persuasion and think people should be left alone if they aren't bothering anyone else. Besides hospitals always need more organ donors.

If any of my motorcycling friends should read this and wondering if I'm implying that they are stupid and/or insane: the answer is yes.

References:

Re: safety in cars, speed limits, and motorcycles
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/usenet-arc/sub00073/msg00001.html

NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts 2007 Data: Motorcycles
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810990.PDF

NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts 2007 Data: Overview
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810993.PDF

NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts Research Note January 2006
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809979.PDF

Traumatized Salmon

2009-06-12T15:16:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about something else today, but I read an article in the NY Times today titled "As Wind Power Grows, a Push to Tear Down Dams" The article discusses a push by environmentalists to destroy 4 hydroelectric dams on the Snake river in Oregon. They claim that the dams interfere with salmon migration and are traumatizing the salmon. They also said that the dams aren't necessary since many windmills have been built and can be backed up by building natural gas plants.

I decided to go work the numbers on that for a bit. I checked and the 4 dams have a total capacity of 3 GigaWatts. This means the dams have a capacity of 26.3 Terawatts-Hours a year. Dams never run at full capacity, but at a typical 42% capacity factor, these dams would produce 11 TWH.

Oregon has 2 Gigawatts of Windmills. Windmills in the United States run at about 24% of capacity. That means that these windmills should produce about 4.2 TWH or about 38% of what the dams produce. The really big difference is that the dams can turn the power up or down as needed. Windmills can't.

Now consider; these dams don't produce carbon dioxide. If you leave these dams alone and go shut down a coal plant instead that would reduce carbon dioxide production by 11.6 Megatons per year. If you do like the envionmentalists are saying and built natural gas plants instead, you would indeed avoid a lot of pollution that a coal plant produces, but you would still be producing 7.3 Megatons of carbon dioxide a year.

As far as I can see, it doesn't make sense to shut down any hydroelectric dams until we have shut down every coal, natural gas and fuel oil electric plant in the United States.

References:

New York Times Story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/business/energy-environment/12bonneville.html

Alternate Link
http://www.ocala.com/article/20090612/ZNYT01/906123002?Title=As-Wind-Power-Grows-a-Push-to-Tear-Down-Dams

Wikipedia Article on Windpower
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Annual_generation

Wikipedia Article on Hyroelectricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity

Wikipedia Article on Snake River
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_River

Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2emiss.pdf

Straining At Gnats

2009-06-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

One thing that ticks me off is when people bring up the problem of disposal of nuclear waste as why we can’t use nuclear power. This bugs me because our best hope for dealing with global warming is to switch to nuclear power for electricity generation. We have 300 gigawatts of coal power plants in the United States that we really need to replace with nuclear power to reduce our carbon dioxide production and the air and water pollution produced by these coal fired plants. Below is a table of amount of waste generated by a 1000 megawatt coal plant compared to a 1000 megawatt nuclear plant per year. The numbers are roughly correct, but there a lot of variables depending on the kinds of plants, how they are operated and even what kind of coal they burn. I express the amounts in tons per gigawatt capacity and also pounds per capita to put it on a more human scale. I'm assuming about 13,000 kilowatt-hours per person per year.

Coal Plant
Pollution	Tons per GW	lbs per person
Carbon dioxide	7,400,000	21958
Ash	240,000	712
Sludge	386,000	1145
Sulfur dioxide	20,000	59
Nitrogen oxide	20,400	61
Carbon monoxide	1,440	4.3
Particulates	1,000	3.0
Hydrocarbons	440	1.3
Thorium	13	0.039
Uranium	5	0.015

Nuclear Plant
	Tons per GW	lbs per person	Ratio to CO2
Nuclear Waste	23	0.068	321,739
After Full Reprocessing	1.2	0.003	6,434,783

Nuclear power produces about 1 ounce of nuclear waste per person per year with no fuel reprocessing. The bottom line here is that for each pound of nuclear waste we produce, we could be preventing the release of 322,000 pounds of carbon dioxide! The United States doesn’t do any recycling of spent nuclear fuel. 95% of the spent fuel is Uranium or Plutonium that can be recycled and used for more fuel. France uses partial fuel reprocessing and only produces about 3/10ths of an ounce of waste per person. Better methods exist for reprocessing fuel, which should allow us improve the ratio of carbon dioxide to nuclear waste to 1,000,000 to one! What do you think is the real waste disposal problem: 1 oz of nuclear waste or 11 tons of carbon dioxide?

References:

America's Nuclear Waste and What to Do With It.
http://www.ppionline.org/ndol/print.cfm?contentid=254827

What is nuclear waste?
http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/waste.html

Environmental impacts of coal
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Environmental_impacts_of_coal

Hundreds of Coal Ash Dumps Lack Regulation
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/us/07sludge.html?_r=1

Can Coal and Clean Air Coexist in China?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-coal-and-clean-air-coexist-china

Freeman Dyson Interview on Environment 360

2009-06-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

I just read an interview with Freeman Dyson on Environment 360. You can check it out here:

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

I became interested in Mr. Dyson after reading the article about him in the New York Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html

The first thing that comes out in E360 that Mr. Dyson was a little too modest about his environmental credentials. It turns out he was working on these problems back in the seventies.
Russell Seitz has posted a copy of a paper Dyson wrote about controlling carbon dioxide back in 1976.

http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/files/Dyson_Energy_1977.pdf

The interesting point of the article is where he talks about working with climate modelers in Oak Ridge in the seventies. Back then it was actually both biologists and physicists trying to understand how the world works. At some point the physicists took over and the biologists went away.

It is important to keep in mind that when you look at climate models today, that you looking at models of a dead planet and not a living one. Maybe that explains why the Waxman climate bill I mentioned below is cutting down trees and burning them for fuel instead of planting more trees to sequester CO2.

http://joelupchurch.blogspot.com/2009/06/waxman-climate-bill-and-war-on-trees.html

Waxman Climate Bill and the War on Trees

2009-06-06T22:34:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the Waxman Climate bill and I saw some complaints about the bill not letting them harvest trees from federal land for biomass. My first reaction was: "What do they mean, trees?" I went to look for a copy of the bill and found it here:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2454/text

Take a look at it and search on "biomass". I discovered you can cut down trees and burn them for energy and get carbon credits for them.

I must have missed something, since I thought the point was to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A live tree is a carbon sink. It takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and converts it to trunks and branches and roots and stuff puts out oxygen for us to breath. Cutting down a tree and burning it and putting the carbon dioxide that it sequestered back in the atmosphere and getting a credit for doing it is perverse.

We should be planting more trees, not cutting them down and burning them for fuel. A tree can sequester carbon for hundreds of years and by then the problem will be solved. We will be out of fossil fuels if nothing else.