Posts tagged with CO2

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Roger Revelle’s 1980 Discussion of CO2 and Climate Risks

By Andrew C. Revkin

Roger Revelle, one of the pioneering researchers in the study of the human influence on the atmosphere, carbon cycle and climate, gave a prescient lecture on carbon dioxide, climate and the oceans in 1980 that was recorded by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now surfaces via the Web site Climate Science TV.

Revelle is best known for the comment he added late in the drafting of a seminal 1957 climate paper co-authored with Hans Suess: “Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.”

In part one of the video of his talk he explores the basics:

Part two describes what was clear about carbon dioxide’s impacts and energy trends 40 years ago, but also the “morass of uncertainties,” many of which remain unclear today:

For example, Revelle explores the role of clouds and water vapor. “We don’t really know whether clouds will be good or bad, whether they’ll be a negative or a positive feedback,” he says. (Sound familiar?) while adding that the water cycle, overall, will intensify and that “precipitation overall will also increase.”

In the third video excerpt (below) he stresses how the slow nature of transitions in energy technologies requires prompt attention to address a long-term risk Some of his points on nuclear power and other technologies are dated, but the lecture is well worth reviewing when you have time. It would also be a great classroom resource.

Here’s part of the transcription produced by the folks at Climate Science TV: Read more…

Can the U.S. and Australia Slake China’s Coal Thirst and Still Claim CO2 Progress?

By Andrew C. Revkin

Nov. 19, 10:59 a.m. | Updated

I often try to step back and take the point of view of the atmosphere in considering claims of progress on curbing emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities. It’s a sobering practice, but helpful if your goal is to chart what will, and won’t, make a big difference in limiting warming as human numbers and resource appetites crest in coming decades.

I conducted this exercise a few days ago. In reading a fresh assessment by Eric de Place of planned American coal exports to China (noted via Climateprogress), I was reminded of a batch of reporting I did recently on Australia’s new carbon plan in light of its vast coal exports (300 million tons a year now, nearly all to Asia) and plans for substantial growth (5 percent a year through 2020).

map of coal exports Click to expand graphic, which accompanied a 2010 news article on expanding global coal trade.

It was jarring to see the country’s current leadership and climate campaigners hail Australian adoption of a domestic carbon tax and cap, given the vast carbon leakage.

Below you can read some of the input I received on Australia’s booming exports of coal (and carbon dioxide emissions) and how they relate to the challenge of stabilizing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere some time this century. As was explored here before, one question is, “When coal flows between countries, who ‘owns’ the CO2?”

It is findings like these that cause me to take a different stance on climate progress than Joe Romm, who demands that anyone seriously engaged in assessing climate policy pick a number — either for a safe target for stabilization of carbon dioxide concentrations or temperature rise.

To me, choosing a number — 350, 450 or 550 parts per million, 2 or 3 degrees (F. or C.!) — is essentially meaningless for our generation, especially given the trajectories for emissions in China and India.

The task on emissions is twofold — to bend the curve of gas releases using regulations, incentives, education and standards, but (more importantly, to me) also to build the intellectual infrastructure and innovative, globally-collaborative culture that will be required for the next generation to take that curve down toward zero even as humanity’s energy needs continue to rise. My emphasis on the second component derives from all the biases toward the quick fix that are built into the human brain, political institutions and culture.

I’ll be filing a related batch of new input next week on California’s greenhouse-gas emissions plan, which I hope will help convey why both advancing today’s cleaner energy technologies and practices and boosting basic science and inquiry are essential to building an energy menu that works for the long haul. Click here for a foretaste from Nate Lewis of Caltech (video), who heads the Energy Department “innovation hub” on artificial photosynthesis.

Here’s the Australian exchange, which is deeply relevant to discussions of next steps within the borders of the United States: Read more…

CO2 on the Up and Up

By Andrew C. Revkin

To my eye, this animated graph, produced by the federal Earth Systems Research Laboratory, is one of the best attempts to put the recent human-driven surge in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere into long-term context:

This version, posted on my YouTube channel, trims the initial rise to get to the visual take-home point. Here’s the full animation from the earth systems lab, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. An even more comprehensive version including shifts in related parameters has been posted on the administration’s Carbon Tracker YouTube channel.

The agency also recently released the latest update of its greenhouse gas index, which distills the full heating influence of all human-generated greenhouse gases down to a single number.

When all greenhouse gases are considered together, the agency calculates that the human contribution to the global greenhouse effect has increased 29 percent since 1990.

Of course that still leaves big questions unanswered – including the multi-trillion-dollar question: how sensitive is the climate system to this “forcing”? The durably wide range still goes from catastrophe to substantial, but manageable, risk.

As a result, I hardly expect such visuals to shift many views, particularly given that responses to the science pointing to substantial, enduring greenhouse warming are shaped far more by divergent values, and feelings of risk, than the data.

And there’ll always be new lines of argument from professional doubt disseminators and determined blog commenters, challenging the need for a significant push to cut greenhouse gases.

For instance, this camp has made much of the recent pause/hiatus/plateau in global temperatures. The weakness in looking at short time scales was revealed nicely in a simple and revealing animated graph, created for the Skeptical Science blog, showing how self-described climate skeptics were “going down the up escalator.”

Nonetheless, such illustrations have value in fostering understanding of the basic parameters of what’s happening to the global commons (in this case the atmosphere) as a starting point for considering next steps.

Scant CO2 Benefit from China’s Coal-Powered Electric Cars

By Andrew C. Revkin
CO2 emissions from China's electric vehiclesFrom Green-Weiskel et al, “Electric Vehicles in the Context of Sustainable Development in China.” China’s plan to build millions of electric vehicles will have little impact on the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, a new analysis concludes, because so much of the country’s electricity is produced by burning coal. The graph shows what the carbon dioxide emissions would be from an electric vehicle, a Nissan Leaf, in various Chinese provinces (bars at left) compared to emissions from a similar, but gas-powered Nissan model, the Tiida.
electric vehicles made in ChinaDoug Kanter for The New York Times Chinese leaders plan to make the country one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles. (Video report.)

Much has been made of China’s big push to build and deploy 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2015. The move will help cut smog and oil imports. Less has been made of the scant impact this is likely to have on the country’s emissions of carbon dioxide, given its enduring reliance on coal for most of its electricity. Here’s a “Your Dot” contribution describing the situation from Lucia Green-Weiskel, who has worked in China for the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation and co-authored a report on electric vehicles there for the United Nations.

She explains that in all but three grid regions in China, electric vehicles produce more CO2 per mile because of the coal source for the power than the equivalent gasoline-powered car: Read more…

A Closer Look at CO2’s Long Goodbye

By Andrew C. Revkin

Sept. 30, 10:04 a.m. | Updated
There’s been a steady stream of distracting commentary here and elsewhere positing that carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas at the heart of concerns about a growing and hard-to-reverse human influence on climate, is far more ephemeral than climate scientists assert.

The assertion is that because individual molecules of CO2 leave the atmosphere within a few years, claims of a building threat from the heat-trapping properties of this trace gas (amplified by feedbacks) are overblown.

If this were the case, of course, there’d be no merit to the popular metaphor of a bathtub filling faster than it’s draining (see Dot Earth and National Geographic, e.g.).

If it were true, it would pose a big challenge to the piles of research pointing to a millennium-scale impact from the buildup of the gas.

There are plenty of gaps still being filled in the picture of global atmospheric change and the carbon cycle. But the evidence is robust that the buildup of carbon dioxide since the 1800s is due to human activities, and that the risk is cumulative.

The durability of this talking point among those fighting a move to post-CO2 energy sources in part derives from the shorthand that’s migrated into popular discourse on the nature of this gas. I’m as guilty as anyone of such shorthand, as a Google search for “‘long lived’ ‘greenhouse gas’ revkin nytimes” will show. I do think that more careful use of language can lead to progress in climate debates. While I don’t expect the “wmar’s” of the world to abandon this line of argument, I do think it’s helpful to describe why it’s a distraction.

I was glad to see Michael MacCracken, a climate scientist I’ve known and consulted since the mid 1980s, weigh in to clarify what’s really going on with carbon dioxide, and why the gas is cumulative and a climate concern. His comment is reposted below as a “Your Dot” contribution.

[Sept. 30, 10:04 a.m. | Update | David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council sent a comment on the policy significance of the long impact of human-generated carbon dioxide that was worth posting as a standalone document.]

First here’s a helpful NASA video providing a general portrait of carbon dioxide’s journeys in and out of the climate system: Read more…

Biggest Coal Company and Coal Country Collaborate on Mega Mine

By Andrew C. Revkin
China coal useThe New York Times China’s coal appetite.

A newly announced partnership between the world’s biggest private coal mining company and coal-burning country cuts against recent efforts to paint China green because of its push on manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels. All of its efforts on renewable energy come atop ongoing expansion of its use of coal.

In a news release issued today, the coal company, Peabody Energy, gushingly describes the company’s partnership with the government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Communist Party on a plan to develop a surface coal mine that will produced 50 million tons of coal a year “over multiple decades.” The news is summarized well by James Areddy and Simon Hall in The Wall Street Journal.

I sent the release to a few experts on coal and carbon dioxide for their reactions. David Victor, the University of California, San Diego, political science professor and author of “Global Warming Gridlock,” noted some subtler aspects of the announcement that point to ever more efficient coal use in China, but also unrelenting growth in coal use — and carbon dioxide emissions. Here’s Victor’s reaction:

I think the really big story here — from the perspective of the industry — is that China is in the midst of a massive consolidation of its coal industry and a bunch of other efforts, including a larger role for best practice foreign operators like Peabody, that are designed to maximize output of coal and lower the costs, which have skyrocketed. All that points in the direction of making coal more competitive than it has been in the past. Barring a big change in technology and regulation on CO2, that trend is hard to square with widely discussed goals for stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. If it is any consolation, the average efficiency of coal plants in China has been rising decisively—that doesn’t bend down the emissions curve, but it slows the growth.

Here are a couple of descriptions of the pace of growth in coal use from the Peabody release:

The Xinjiang Region is China’s largest administrative region with vast reserves of coal estimated to account for approximately 40 percent of China’s reserves. The government expects Xinjiang’s coal output will increase from approximately 100 million tonnes in 2010 to more than 1 billion tonnes.

China is the world’s fastest-growing economy and the world’s largest energy user. The nation is expected to bring online 600 gigawatts of coal-fueled electricity generation by 2035 according to the International Energy Agency, which would require more than 2 billion tons of coal each year. This year alone, China is expected to increase its coal-fueled power capacity by 50 gigawatts, representing several hundred million tons of additional annual coal use.

Here’s the reaction from Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Chicago who has weighed in on Dot Earth on questions raised by the ever growing flow of coal exports to China from industrialized countries — notably the United States and Australia:

We have no control over the coal China mines on its own land, but there’s no reason we (and Australia) ought to be bending over backwards to sell them coal we do have control of. Obama has authorized expanded coal mining in Montana, and there will be a push to expand coal export terminals for exports to Asia.

Bigger things are already happening in Australia. We in the developed world can decide to leave this coal in the ground, if only we had the courage to do so. Every tonne of coal left in the ground is one less tonne in the atmosphere/ocean contributing to long term climate change. It’s pointless to pearl-clutch (oh golly) over China’s mining and say there’s nothing we can do in the face of a big bad thing like THAT.

Every tonne counts, and any tonne of carbon we keep out of the atmosphere is an improvement, whether or not it offsets China’s coal mining. For that matter, even in China one has to look at the fact that their substantial investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency means that at least their emissions are increasing at a much lower rate than they might be.

So, the fact that China is expanding coal mining has zero relevance to the climate benefits to be had by reducing our own emissions. A tonne saved is still a tonne saved. What IS gruesome, though, is that the first world sends coal to China to burn to make the junk we buy from them, and then we hand-wring about how China is burning so much coal it’s hopeless for little old us do do anything about CO2 emissions.

Here’s more on these issues:

The Coal Age Continues

Big Coal Booming on Earth Day

Tracking Economy, CO2 Emissions Hit New High

By Andrew C. Revkin

The International Energy Agency has reported that global emissions of carbon dioxide from energy use, tracking the recovering world economy, hit a new high of 30.6 billion metric tons of the gas last year. (Emissions from deforestation and activities like cement manufacturing are not included.) That’s 5 percent above the previous peak, measured in 2008.

The agency added that 80 percent of emissions in 2020 will be coming from power plants that have already been built or are being constructed now.* Most of the new construction and growth in emissions are in developing countries.

Here, in one of Adam Nieman’s experiments in visualizing global environmental change, is what four seconds of worldwide emissions of CO2 would look like if you could track the gas by its volume measured in United Nations towers:


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In recent days agency officials have noted that other factors besides economic recovery are likely to amplify the challenge of reining in emissions, among them a retreat on nuclear power in the wake of the ongoing crisis at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex. A recent Wall Street Journal piece focused on the emissions impact of Germany’s retreat on nuclear power.

In a distributed statement, Fatih Birol, chief economist at the energy agency and the director of the annual World Energy Outlook, said that trends in emissions meant the world was running out of time if leaders were serious about meeting targets pledged in recent sessions of climate treaty negotiations.

[May 31, 4:55 p.m. | Updated * This sentence has been fixed. A reader, Ric Merritt, noticed that I garbled this point when I originally wrote “80 percent of the growth in emissions projected through 2020.” Thanks for the heads-up, Ric.]

A Defense of Acting on Ephemeral Sources of Heat

By Andrew C. Revkin

[1:01 p.m. | Updated At the end of the post I’ve added a very useful reaction from Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University.]

Last week I posted a “Your Dot” contribution from Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist concerned that policy makers and the public keep in mind the primacy of carbon dioxide emissions if they are serious about limiting the chances of propelling disruptive human-driven global warming.

A reply has come in from Drew T. Shindell, the NASA atmospheric scientist who was a leader of the team that wrote a new World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Program report on the merits of cting to curb black carbon and ozone. (Ozone, besides being a powerful greenhouse gas, is a beneficial shield against radiation high in the atmosphere but a harmful pollutant near the ground). That report prompted quite a bit of coverage, including in The Times.

Here’s Shindell’s argument, which notes, among other things, that action on “easier” targets like ozone and soot can build confidence and institutional capacity that could be applied to carbon dioxide down the line: Read more…

Tough Climate Math in the Face of CO2 and Energy Forecasts

By Andrew C. Revkin

It’s hard to find projections for both global energy demand and emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning that don’t have a sustained upward trajectory for decades to come. The latest such forecasts were issued on Wednesday by Exxon Mobil, at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, and by BP. I’ll focus more on the BP report because it’s posted online, while Exxon’s is still awaiting publication.

Here’s a core graph from the BP analysis, which the company says is not the result of a scenario, but of its judgment based on history, trends in energy and environmental policies (or the lack thereof), markets and supplies:

The moral of the story, in essence, is that “future energy” — at least through the next couple of decades — is largely the same as current energy, with gains in efficiency and growth in adoption of renewable sources and nuclear power still not substantially blunting growth in the combustion of fossil fuels. Read more…

China’s Power Surge Ends (for Now)

By Andrew C. Revkin
China's power generation Click image for larger version. A graph compares patterns of growth in power generation in China since 2002 (YOY means “year on year”) and shows a steep drop since the fall. (Credit: Richard K. Morse, Stanford University. Data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics)

The extraordinary growth in power generation in China in recent years, which quickly vaulted the emerging industrial powerhouse to the top of the global list of carbon dioxide emitters, has collapsed under the weight of the global economic implosion — at least for now. Emissions of the main human-generated greenhouse gas are surely tracking the reversal in electricity output, given that the vast majority of the country’s electricity comes from burning coal. But those data lag the power statistics.

Researchers at Stanford University who closely track China’s power sector, coal use, and carbon dioxide emissions have done an initial rough projection and foresee China possibly emitting somewhere between 1.9 and 2.6 billion tons less carbon dioxide from 2008 to 2010 than it would have under “business as usual” if current bearish trends for the global economy hold up.

China had seen slowdowns in the growth in electricity supplies recently, often because of shortages of coal or the ability to get the fuel where it was needed. But the sharp decline in the last few months is new, said Richard K. Morse, who studies coal and power trends and their implications for climate. I’ll be adding more here shortly as he and others at Stanford, including Gang He and David G. Victor, analyze the numbers and their implications.