Polluting the climate

There are a number of more or less feasible ways in which humans may influence climate, both locally and globally.

An interesting theory published by Professor Qing-Bin Lu back in May makes the claim that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once widely used as refrigerants, cleansers, aerosol propellants and foam-blowing agents may have affected the climate as greenhouse gases as well as damaging the ozone layer.

The chemistry and physics behind CFC-induced ozone layer damage are fairly well established, although Professor Lu thinks the ozone-destroying reactions are initiated by cosmic rays rather than the usual explanation based on solar uv photolysis.

Whatever the initiating pathway to ozone damage, the Montreal Protocolcame into being in 1989 and appears to have been successful in controlling and reducing the use of CFCs linked to that damage.

However, Professor Lu claims that those same CFCs also warmed our climate because they happen to be powerful greenhouse gases.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B.

CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

So we have yet another climate theory, but an interesting one because it seeks to account for both the late twentieth century warming from about 1970 to 2002 and also the recent warming hiatus from about 2002 to the present, data which the CO2 theory fails to explain. According to Professor Lu, as we phased out those CFCs, the warming stalled in spite of a continued rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Although the paper received some publicity at the time, such as here, here, here and here, it now appears to have sunk below the mainstream horizon. Which is a pity, because if nothing else Professor Lu’s work suggests we are some way from understanding basic climate drivers, let alone classifying them in order of importance.

In climate science, the elephant in the room is surely uncertainty.

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Would you notice?

From Bloomberg Businessweek

Xerox is now saying that some of its scanners can alter numbers in documents, even at the highest resolution setting. It blames a software bug for which it does not yet have a fix. “We continue to work tirelessly and diligently to develop a software patch to address the problem,” the company said in an Aug. 11 statement.

The problem came to light when German computer scientist David Kriesel scanned a construction plan on a Xerox machine and noticed that it changed numbers on some of the room measurements.

Would you notice such a thing? I'm not sure I would.

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UK carbon capture

Click Green reports:-

 
National Grid has successfully completed test drilling of a carbon dioxide storage site in the North Sea – a major milestone in delivering a storage solution for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Early indications are that the undersea site 65 kilometres off the Yorkshire coast is viable for carbon dioxide storage and will be able to hold around 200 million tonnes permanently. This is equivalent to taking ten million cars off the road for 10 years.

The drilling is a major milestone in its Don Valley storage work programme funded by an EU grant to advance CCS in Europe. The findings are significant as this type of storage site is common in Europe.

If we take that figure of 200 million tonnes of CO2 and compare it to a reported 35.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted globally in 2012, we may easily calculate that the National Grid CO2 storage project would accommodate global CO2 emissions for about two days. So after two days it would be full.

One might ask if that two days respite represents good value for money in terms of CO2-induced global temperature changes. Good value for the well owners no doubt, but good value for us?

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Re cycling

We’ve just returned from a week in the caravan at Minehead, Somerset. We use Minehead as a base for walking in Exmoor and the surrounding area. Not quite as rugged as Derbyshire, but a most attractive area for walking.

Withypool to Tarr Steps and back via Knaplock is a fine circular walk if you are ever in the area.

One thing we notice about these caravan jaunts is how many caravans and motorhomes have a couple of bikes stowed somewhere conspicuous.

Another thing we notice is how rarely we see any of these cycle owners actually cycle off somewhere. The cycles are unloaded from the car roof or the back of the motorhome right enough, but after that brief burst of activity they seem to lie around as a mute sign of good intentions.

Can’t do that with walking boots I suppose.

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Polkerris

We were lucky: a young couple having an in-car heart-to-heart vacated their space for us at the Rashleigh Inn. We'd gone there to catch the westward view over the bay, where the BBC Weather site had forecast a clear sunset.

It was a gray evening and the tide was out. Adults and children wandered over the harbour beach and wall. A wraith of mist stood on the sea over by Charlestown, as though someone had lit a bonfire on the water.

 

In we went and ordered a pasty, which turned out to be locally made and excellent. I nicked chips from my wife's plate. We sat at a long table under a large portrait of a sixteenth century Spaniard in his fine clothes and chain of authority, his gilded helmet beside him. A shih tzu and a Jack Russell-terrier cross fidgeted at our feet, while their middle-aged owners examined a property online and discussed ideas for refurbishment and building a new house on the back lot. At the bar counter, an old man with a bent back sat open-eyed and unmoving, while the evening swirled about him.

 

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NS&I to hit pensioners on Armistice Day

"Tens of thousands [of] customers with old National Savings & Investment savings accounts will see returns cut in November, it emerged today.

"The changes affect savers who took out an NS&I Savings Certificate before 1996.

Roughly £745m is held across 967,000 of these accounts, according to NS&I. The government's savings arm told The Telegraph that the return on 89,057 accounts, typically held by older savers, will fall from November 11, 2013."
 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/10233444/NSandI-reduces-rates-again-hitting-90000.html

The Telegraph also says:

"NS&I was created in 1961 as the Post Office Savings Bank to encourage saving and attract deposits for the Treasury to use running the country. These two tenets remain today. The simplest way to raise money is to offer alluring rates to savers. However, NS&I is bound by rules that force it to balance the interests of three parties: the Government, savers, and the banking industry.

"A flood of money going into NS&I coffers has upset this balance and the Government has ordered NS&I to stop taking so much money. As a result it has cut rates and accounts to dissuade savers. The latest version of NS&I Savings Certificates is no longer on sale."

Yet again, the Treasury shows that it has forgotten its own history, or feigns to have done so. As I have shown here and to my MP, both the Government and the Opposition expressly recognised a social obligation to pensioners to protect them from inflation, when Index-Linked Savings Certificates were first introduced in 1975. This was made clear in exchanges in both the Commons and the Lords (please see the link just given, for details).

I don't know whether the choice of Armistice Day for these new changes to take effect, is a deliberate insult to the elderly, some of whom may still recall the last World War, or simply another example of the crass, oblivious obtuseness that I am coming to expect from the finely-honed minds of the Treasury.

At least there is the option for existing holders to switch to new index-linked certificates - but the rest of us are excluded from making fresh purchases. And this still leaves open the question of how RPI may be manipulated in future to minimise returns to savers.

I read some general trends here: the Government is quietly abandoning its duty to keep inflation down, its grip on the public finances is slipping, and the public (rushing to NS&I for safety) can see that the Emperor has no clothes.

One commentator on the Telegraph article (1066goldberg) says buy physical silver; another (oldkingkole) says he doesn't understand the logic; I think I do.

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Not enough O2 in the H2O?

Adam Nieman: "Global water and air volume" (Science Photo Library)

Professor Jason Box is continuing his research into the effect on Greenland snow melt of particulates from fossil fuel burning and forest fires, and this set me wondering about how much atmospheric oxygen is being locked up by the same processes.

O2 levels have varied radically during last 600 million years:

(from Wikipedia article "Atmosphere of Earth: Third Atmosphere")

- as corroborated by analysis of ancient gas bubbles trapped in amber.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper in 2008, Peter Tatchell said that research by Professor Robert Berner suggested "humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago", though I can't track down the original statement and suspect Tatchell may have misunderstood. (A paper by Berner on oxygen in the Phanerozoic era can be read here.)

Tatchell appears to be on firmer ground voicing concerns about air quality in cities, though what's in the air is more worrying than what's absent, as this article from last month's Mail Online India edition says. That said, cities that are prone to temperature inversion layers (e.g. Los Angeles, Beijing) may find that not only is smog locked in, but oxygen not replenished from the surrounding area as fast as it is being consumed.

Globally, there seems to have been a very small decline in atmospheric oxygen since 1990, according to an 18-year longitudinal study by Dr Ralph Keeling. According to a post on the Climate Emergency Institute website, the decline is even less than Keeling had expected, and it's possible that increased CO2 is stimulating the growth of vegetation.

Certainly the self-styled "Rational Optimist" Matt Ridley claims greenery is increasing, but I am inclined to take his professional bullishness with a pinch of salt. Surface spread as seen by satellite misses the third dimension: the UN FAO estimates (2012 forest report) that forest cover has dropped by around a third in the last 10,000 years, and the loss has accelerated from an average of 360,000 hectares per year since civilization began, to 5.2 million annually over the last decade.

Which brings us back to the carbon dioxide-global warming debate. CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" but there are so many other factors affecting the Earth's surface temperature that I don't think anyone can say which way the thermometer is going to move. However, if the sea continues to warm up there is a danger that the level of dissolved oxygen in the oceans will be reduced. A study reported last year in Science Daily says that 15% of the seas are "dead zones" and suggests that an increase of a couple of degrees - as has happened since the end of the last Ice Age - can have significant effects. Again, industrial pollution and waste dumping exacerbate the damage.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Oxygen_Depletion


The Tatchell article also refers to a claimed 30% drop in oceanic oxygen-producing phytoplankton in the thirty years since 1980, though this is disputed. Even if true, our gas tank will keep us going for the foreseeable future: the Earth's atmosphere has a total mass of some 5 quadrillion (10¹⁵) tonnes, a fifth of which is oxygen. There's so much that the CEI article concludes "even when fossil fuel reserves (mostly coal) are exhausted, the maximum potential loss in oxygen is only small (Broecker, 1970)."

Further, as this 1994 paper by Duursma and Boisson says:

"Oxygen concentrations are ... the consequence of larger terrestrial and aquatic loops in which factors of temperature, light, nutrients and co2 play a role; for longer periods, elements such as sulphur and iron are involved. Hence the present level of 20.946 vol. % of atmospheric oxygen is merely temporary, and will change in the course of millions of years. The question of an optimum concentration for sustaining life on earth is equally time-dependent; but bearing in mind that these changes occur over periods of the order of millions of years, evolutionary processes are likely to keep pace with oxygen changes."

Those evolutionary processes may or may not have a place for humanity in the long run, but we have plenty more pressing threats to worry about. One of which is that the health and productivity (for us) of the seas may be compromised if warming continues and subsurface oxygen is depleted.

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Driverless trucks and their social implications

"Mish" reports on the development of automated trucks, with what appears to be econohawkish glee - oh, the savings we'll make.

But this will be replicated not just in blue collar jobs but the white collar middle class that until recently felt their college degrees and head-expertise insulated them from the uncertain and lower-paid employment of their socioeconomic inferiors. Even fund managers might easily be replaced by machines, as I understand arm-waving, shouty stock market traders are being right now.

The debates over State benefits and the redistribution of wealth are likely to become more lively in the years to come, and people who used to take one side may surprise themselves by crossing the floor.

Besides, when few have a job, how will the demand for goods and services be affected? Business owners need not be complacent, either.

Is the future in community policing and shopping at LIDL?

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Wood gas: energy efficiency and financial economy

The previous post on wood-burning motorcycles may seem jokey, though there were some 200,000 woodgas-burning vehicles operating in Northern Europe in WWII (see History section).

In terms of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI, or EROI), biofuels generally seem very poor:

(source: Wikipedia)

But as this site points out, wood gas has some advantages: "Converting biomass to a liquid fuel like ethanol or biodiesel can consume more energy (and CO2) than the fuel delivers. In the case of a wood gas car, no further energy is used in producing or refining the fuel, except for the felling and cutting of the wood. This means that a woodmobile is practically carbon neutral, especially when the felling and cutting is done by hand."

It can even make sense in the more elastic terms of money: the UN Forestry Department did a study in 1986 and looked at power generation for a sawmill, using wood waste generated on site so that there was no purchase cost. The savings were significant:

As the sawmill example shows, there is plenty of mileage in intelligent problem-solving at the local level, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Long-term and big-picture planning are needed, but subsidies and other kinds of central government interference can skew cost-benefit analyses and result in misallocation of resources.

Of course, one could wonder why we zoom about so much in the first place:

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Peak bog rolls

As concern continues over future energy shortages, let's go back down Memory Lane to 1974...

January: bread and toilet rolls

September: sugar

... and, although we had about 1,000 years' supply in the UK, salt.

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London in the 1960s

See this Flickr collection - and contribute if you like. (htp: Dark Roasted Blend)

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Wood-burning motorcycle

htp: Dark Roasted Blend

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Update on bee deaths

According to Michael Snyder, about a third of US bees were wiped out this year. He goes on to discuss suspected causes and give a long list of important crops that require insect pollination.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Peak Oil, EROEI and the Muffled Drum

An interesting thing happened last month. The Oil Drum, a well-regarded website + blog, announced it was ceasing operations and archiving itself for posterity. Well, everything has its day - we can all list blogs that were thriving a few years back but are no longer with us.

Some have suggested it was the extraordinary shale-based renaissance of US gas and oil production that did for the Drum. Probably not. But, fairly or unfairly, the Drum was associated with 'peak oil', which at its simplest is a view (or theory or doctrine or whatever) that global oil production - as a function of oil-in-the-ground - is doomed to peak, after which we start 'running out of oil'.

At its simplest, it is Malthusian hogwash. Of course, there are more nuanced versions than that, and the Drum shouldn't be tarred with the brush one would use for countering hogwash. Much more important is the concept of EROEI - energy return on energy invested, which has been another Drum favourite. And this concept really does bear careful consideration. Declining EROEI could be the end of civilisation as we know it for, in the immortal words of James Lovelock - "civilisation is energy-intensive". Better believe it.

So - no more drum-beat. But you'll not stop hearing about EROEI.


This post appeared first on the Capitalists@Work blog


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Are homicide and inequality inversely related?

http://www.libertarianprepper.com/the-sinister-roots-of-socialism/gini-index-usa/

 

 http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

 

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Who's Who in the UK Government

See the full-sized list here (pdf).

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UK News media "among most corrupt in the world"

Transparency.org's 2013 interactive Global Corruption Barometer lists only 4 countries (out of 107) where the media are perceived to be among the most corrupt institutions: Egypt, Australia, New Zealand - and the UK.

Less surprisingly, political parties in about half of the 107 countries are also perceived to be corrupt. And that includes the UK.

Here, it's getting worse. When I first looked at Tranparency's surveys in 2008, the UK's overall perceived-corruption score had dropped from 8.4 the year before, to 7.7 (10 represented squeaky clean). The scoring is slightly different now - out of 100 - but for 2012 the British figure is 74, which I assume translates to 7.4 under the old system (the US scores 73).

Admittedly, these surveys are about the perception of corruption, and news-fed democracies may perhaps tend to be more cynical nations. But perceptions matter, and this decline in public trust, also shown in dwindling electoral turnouts, threatens the legitimacy and stability of our system of government.

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Interest rates will trigger the meltdown - Hugo Salinas Price

In King World News (2 August) Hugo Salinas Price alerts us to the threat of interest rate rises, which he describes as "fatal" and leading to worldwide "massive bankruptcies".

I'd known that derivatives are a huge market; what I hadn't realised was that the overwhelming majority of the contracts are related to interest rates.

The graph below is a visualisation of data from this Wikipedia article on the derivatives market:

Theoretically all the bets net off against each other, but we've seen what happens when a counterparty defaults (Lehman etc). Now consider that the annual GDP of the USA is only 3% of the notional value of interest rate contracts alone.

Frightening.

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Trees in the mist

Ronald Reagan is widely quoted as having said trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.

Not true of course, but not entirely without foundation either. Trees and other vegetation, particularly conifers, emit terpenes, aromatic chemicals whose generic name is derived from turpentine. The delightful aroma of pine resin in conifer woodlands comes from chemicals such as α-pinene and β-pinene.

Yet according to the National Physical Laboratory :-

• In addition to anthropogenic emissions, the earth’s natural vegetation releases huge amounts of organic compounds into the air.
• An estimated 1300 Tg C of terpenes a year are emitted, 10 times more than anthropogenic emissions.

 As far as climate is concerned, the NPL has this to say:-

• Terpene emissions are expected to rise sharply as global temperatures rise.
• As carbon dioxide levels increase, the earth will warm and higher levels of terpenes will be emitted.
• This will increase cloud formation, which will increase the optical thickness of clouds resulting in an increase in the reflection of sunlight back into space.
• Terpenes constitute a significant potential for feedback mechanisms in the climate.
• Terpenes also mediate the generation of ozone in the lower atmosphere.

 Dramatic stuff - even somewhat over-dramatic. Yet all this does not imply Reagan was correct because terpenes are not pollutants. They may be involved in the photochemical reactions which give that attractive haze over distant forests, but haze isn’t smog and doesn’t have the same effect on lungs and mucous membranes.

Without oxides of nitrogen from, for example vehicle exhaust emissions, tree terpenes alone would not cause the notorious photochemical smog which first appeared in Los Angeles in the 1940s and subsequently other large, sunny cities.

To my mind, this is why electric vehicles such as trams make sense in large cities, especially those where photochemical smogs are a problem. The issue isn’t CO2 emissions as many now seem to suppose, but old-fashioned air pollution such as oxides of nitrogen, unburned fuel and particulates. Sunlight just adds to the problem but that was there long before we decided to whizz around in metal boxes.

Electric vehicles are not pollution-free modes of transport of course. They are effectively powered by whatever is used to recharge their batteries, but any polluting effects are moved away from the city to the power station and subject to simpler and more stringent regulation.

Reagan pointed the finger at trees, climate alarmists point to CO2 and as so often a fog of dramatic misdirection hits the headlines.

Anthropogenic fog?

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World Tweet Like A Celeb Day!

Why wait to become famous to act like it? Let's make August 1st Tweet Like A Celeb Day and load up the Internet with our garbage.

Rules:

1. Tell everybody what you're doing, as often as possible - but only the unimportant stuff
2. Retweet everyone else's rubbish
3. No libel, insults etc

I have an extra rule, employed by the famous: to be a Twitter winner, you need at least as many followers as the number you follow. So I will only follow those who follow me, plus anybody who retweets my stuff.

Good luck!

UPDATE (2 Aug 2013)

Well, that was a damp squib! Mind you, I can't blame anybody, for I got bored talking about myself in very short order - how on earth do celebs manage it? So tiring.

On the plus side, at least one Twitter follower has delisted me, but I can't be bothered to find out who.

Who reads tweets anyhow? If you follow a lot of people then each message soon gets pushed lower down as the list lengthens. You'd have to be online practically all the time. Is this service tailor made for iPhone owners with OCD?

Thanks to Bill Quango and Paddington for their comments.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.