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nigelj at 06:59 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfoxh @24, Savorys claims about how much carbon grasslands soil can be made to sequester by certain types of rotational grazing are probably exaggerated. This website did an article on his work a year or two ago, that demonstrated this exaggeration with reference to published studies.
That said, there is published evidence grasslands can be made to sequester at least some additional carbon with the right rotational grazing eg Nordberg. The worlds grasslands grazed by cattle are often metres deep in carbon rich soil, which suggests something is going on. I suspect the truth of how much carbon can be sequestered by rotational grazing is probably somewhere in the middle between the various claims. However open grasslands grazing like this has low cattle density to work properly, so it likely means fewer total cattle numbers globally than presently.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please take this discussion to the appropriate thread. https://skepticalscience.com/holistic-management-rebuttal.html
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:34 AM on 11 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
There is more to be addressed regarding agriculture than the impacts it has on climate change or the potential for agricultural practices to be changed in ways that help reduce the climate change harm that has already been caused.
A more holistic view regarding the issues is presented in the University of Stockholm led development of the "Planetary Boundaries" evaluation. Key points from that evaluation related to agriculture are the ways that developed agricultural activity can be seen to be significant reasons that global human activity has already exceeded Planetary Capacity regarding Biochemical Flows (specifically the Nitrogen Cycle) and Biodiversity.
That understanding of planetary boundaries is understandably a major aspect of the basis for the Sustainable Development Goals. The latest annual report regarding the Sustainable Development Goals effort, Human Development Report 2020, discusses the details of the Planetary Boundaries (Note: Although climate change Planetary Boundary impacts are not as significant as other boundary impacts at this time, it is understood that the developed systems need significant change to keep climate change impacts from doing more harm to the future. The HDR 2020 focuses a lot of attention on Climate Change impacts because more climate change makes it more difficult to achieve the other SDGs).
The most important understanding is that the challenges to the development of a sustainable improving future for humanity are mainly getting the "highest negative impacting people" to be less harmful, and to get the "Supposedly Superior People" to be more Helpful, especially helping the less fortunate.
That understanding leads to the awareness that the behaviours of richer people as leaders are key considerations. The people who are wealthier have the ability to be the least harmful and most helpful. Those among the richer in the global population, which is the majority of people in the "supposedly more advanced nations", who are not acting that way, including the leadership they vote for politically and what they encourage economically (how they spend their money), is a detriment to the future of humanity. And anyone using their wealth to influence popular support contrary to achieving the corrections required to develop sustainable improvements for the benefit of the future is behaving most harmfully, even if it isn't "illegal" (which exposes the reality that Law and Order and Regulation can be harmfully inadequate or incorrect when powerful interests influence and get to compromise that type of stuff).
10 to 12 billion people can be decently sustainably fed with current technology. The ways that the systems that have developed fail to do that is "The Problem". And over-consumption and food waste by the "Supposed more Advanced, the Supposed Leaders, are serious aspects of the systemic problem).
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michael sweet at 21:31 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Swampfox:
I read a lot about Arctic Ice, sea level rise and renewable energy. I do not have time to also keep up to date on agriculture. Therefor I do not read the literature you read on agriculture. It seems you do not read much since you have cited no references in your rants.
If you want to make a scientific argument you must cite your references for everyone else. You are simply claiming you alone know what should be done. Your claim of authority seems pretty slim to me. Try finding some references so we can check your claims.
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swampfoxh at 21:16 PM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
We have all read the same literature, it doesn't need constant citing. The F&AO numbers don't include many items needed in determining animal ag's footprint, like the footprint of refrigeration. I'm not a ranter, I'm a climate science writer and a faculty member of ccl.org. the F&AO has a vested interest in keeping the numbers low, they are a "cow" interest group. I'm an omnivore, so I don't have a bias about cows, but bovines pose two major problems: 1.445 billion of them, nose to tail, would circle the earth at the equator about 100 times, along with the human race, shoulder to shoulder, another hundred times. That is an impact that needs to be reckoned with, but is an attention that is being ignored.
Regen Ag has its own intractability, along with the Savory "bovines forever" solution. We all know the last ten ice ages created the twenty (now less) feet of the "Great American Desert", not the Buffalo. The buffalo theory is invalidated by that animal's need to stay near water while avoiding wolf packs in the tall grass prairie. Also, antique inventories of the buffalo hide industry of the 19th century show less than 3 million carcasses, so Savory's estimates of herd strength are highly inflated. The very idea of a bovine eating grass, taking materials from that grass for its own development, invalidates the returning value theory of soil Regen, unless, of course, the animal died and rotted on the prairie, returning its store of leached nutrients to the ground. This is a much longer story, so I won't take up anymore of your time, its apparent that some of you don't want to be reminded that most every solution posed to fix the climate problem has caveats, although the science of the "what" and "why" we have about the climate problem is pretty solid.
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nigelj at 08:44 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Typical systems available to stop icing on wind turbine blades:
Moderator Response:[RH] Shortened link.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Yes the basic reason for the Texas blackout was failure with gas and nuclear power. Basically Texas had failed to insulate supply pipe etc despite having similar problems in the past. They just didn't want to spend the money although other states have. Texas grid is also independent so they couldnt import power and this is because of further cost saving and ideological reasons. I found this commentary about a week ago:
yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/the-climate-lesson-from-texas-frozen-power-outages/
As the commentary proved, the actual problem with wind power in the Texas power outage was not its electrical performance per se. In fact I recall seeing some information elsewhere that it was producing higher than expected output. The real problem is some of the blades iced up. However technolgy exists to stop this happening. Its possible to fit this to both new and existing turbines. The underlying problem was again ERCOT not spending the money.
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michael sweet at 04:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Eric,
The amount of power from wind and solar is predicted 24 hours in advance. The remainder of power is supposed to be produced by thermal sources (fossil fuel and nuclear). Wind performed as expected. Solar outproduced forecasts. Thermal power collapsed. You want to keep all your bets on thermal?? In the future there will be storage that provides energy on windless nights like happened in Texas. Some proposed energy systems use electromethane as storage to power existng gas plants (Connelly el al 2016, Williams et al 2021). Keep in mind that an identical problem occured in Texas in 2011 (before wind and solar were installed) and the Texans decided not to do anything to prevent reoccurance. Are you blaming the 2011 failure on wind?
Poorly designed thermal power plants caused the failures in Texas. Blaming wind and solar for improperly designed thermal plants does not make sense.
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jhnwlk at 02:32 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
Watch the video Eric and listen carefully.
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Nick Palmer at 01:48 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfox wrote that animal agriculture is "the major contributor to GGEs". No, it's not. I suspect they have watched the highly deceptive (and wrong/dishonest) film 'Cowpocalypse'. swampfox asserts that they have have followed skepticalscience.com for 8 years so they should have seen the article about the subject which states that the actual figure is around 11%.
skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm
The F.A.O. estimate that the actual figure is about 14.5%
http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/ -
swampfoxh at 00:29 AM on 10 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Moderator. I'm not trying to disrupt the orderliness of this conversation. I have been following SkepSci for eight years. I use it for my lectures on Climate Change: Impact of an Outlaw Species" which I have delivered to thousands of people over the last 7 years. It's not outrageous, as some assert, that industrial animal agriculture or current plant agriculture is the major contributor to GGEs, nor it is outrageous to tag the emissions footprint of 8 billion humans as the principle cause of the climate problem. Really, the climate scientists are their own problem. We find the evidence, present it to the politicians, they distort it to fit their own narratives and the human race ends up fiddling while Rome burns. The climate scientists need to put their foot down and start demanding policy changes instead of meekly slipping away into their labs and relocking the door. Scientists need to run the climate mitigation show...if they don't start running it, it will never get done...it's not getting done now.
The main reaction to my lecture is, "Gosh, I didn't know all this was going on."
That should tell contributors to SkepSci how ineffective their research has been, how little influence they have. What good is their science if it never reaches the public, if it never frightens anyone into action?
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints and off-topic snipped. Others have pointed you to a post better-suited for your conjectures about animal agriculture.
Time to move on.
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Eric (skeptic) at 00:16 AM on 10 March 2021Why renewable energy was not to blame for the Texas blackouts
The video downplays the failure of wind. Click on Wind Integration Report: http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/windandsolar Table below has date, avg wind (weather), peak wind (weather), wind power at max load and max wind power on 4 days in Feb..
15 18.4 30 5,350 5,461
16 6.8 16 4,415 4,732
17 9 15 3,556 3,882
18 14.5 21 6,634 7,080The peak power numbers are all below the average (2019) Feb wind power of 9,000 MW. The wind dropped, but the wind power produced dropped even more. Peak wind production dropped too so storage would not help. The bottom line is in the report: 30 GW of wind capacity and about 4GW of wind production when power was most needed. The low production to capacity ratio shows wind cannot be relied upon.
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John Mason at 20:46 PM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
I'm sure Greenland was affected during the Eemian given the sea level data.
The East Antarctic ice-sheet is less than 40ma old, dating from approximately the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. -
DK_ID at 09:49 AM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
@2, you are correct but I didn't think the changes over the last 2 my had much impact on the East Antarctic ice sheet and ocean sediments should be around for over 100 my.
However, there are problems with the impact theory. There are deposits that seem to indicate a bolide impact but studies of paleo-indian population density don't really support the theory. Also, you may know more than me, but I think the 1st evidence found for the YD was from Greenland ice cores. Greenland has, likely, been affected by past interglacials.
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John Mason at 07:44 AM on 9 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
A big problem with the Icehouse climate is that each glaciation typically does away with the physical evidence for both past glacials and interglacials. The effect's not total but it's widespread nevertheless.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:22 AM on 9 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
I'm alway skeptical of any claim that includes something like "feeding all the people." Over 80 million acres are devoted to growing corn in the US. I'll leave to Red Baron the calculations to determine how much carbon that could store if used differently than in the extreme industrial fashion required by corn growing. Of all that corn, 60% goes directly to ethanol production and feed stock, another 10% to dry distiller grains with solubles (which requires further energy input), then another 11% to other processings. Other processings include high fructose corn syrups, an addition to human diet that has no value whatsoever from the nutrition and health point of view, and is arguably detrimental to health.
This means that over 80% of the use for corn has been artificially created to find avenues to an overproduction so severe that the stuff is not worth enough for farmers to make a living. Corn farmers have been subsidy dependent for literally generations. This entire system is total nonsense, from any angle: economic, social, environmental, thermodynamic, agricultural. It is complete madness.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
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michael sweet at 22:32 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Since this is a scientific site it would be helpful if people supported their arguments with citations and not just empty assertions. Long, unsupported diatribes, especially doomer messages, are not very helpful in advancing the discussion. Scientists have not yet given up on reducing carbon pollution and feeding the current population of the world.
See Jacobson et al 2018 and Connelly et al 2016 for possible solutions to the carbon problem in providing enough energy for adanced societies. Red Baron has previously posted extensive links suggesting a large amount of meat can be produced without a carbon disaster. Perhaps carbon could even be sequestered. I disagree with some of his conclusions but he has demonstrated that his position can be defended with citations.
Swampfox: what peer reviewed studies can you produce to support your wild claims? I note that you have not even cited a newspaper article in support of your rants. Why should I believe you instead of Red Baron?
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RedBaron at 19:13 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
@Nigelj 17,
One of the issues we have with studies like the Nature study you posted and Richards' citation is context.
You can claim it is exaggeration, but actually more important to be understood is that there are fundamental problems using the industrial ag infrastructure for regenerative ag that limits the rate of sequestration substantially.
Richard is using numbers from regenerative ag practised in a way not limited by the current industrial ag (green revolution) and associated secondary industries. Your Nature study details improvements on industrial ag, but without changing the basic models. It is not suprising that the current paradigm is not ideally suited for sequestering carbon and falls significantly short of what many farmers brave and lucky enough to work outside the support of that model have been able to do.
Adding cover crops between monoculture commodity crop harvests is certainly beneficial, and using no till with covercrops between commodity crops even better yet. But as much better as this may be, it is nothing even close to the potential of a native tallgrass prairie. And THAT can bypass all the whole commodity crop infrastructure and easily sequester orders of magnitude more carbon per year.....And also at the same time produce more food per acre than now.
But you really need to make pretty big changes to the whole food system to make that sort of future a reality.
Don't think that you and Richard are as far away as the numbers you parry about seem. Truth is you are simply looking at two different things, yet describing them as accurately as you can.
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nigelj at 18:51 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Swampfox @15
"why wouldn't we just go with outlawing conventional plant and animal agriculture and fossil fuels? We know nobody will change their habits unless forced to do so by government fiat, so why not go for the jugular right now?"
It would be nice and clean and simple, but is probably just not politically viable. No political party to my knowledge has proposed this because they are probably scared they would loose too much support in the polls, because not everyone wants to go that far. And you cannot simply outlaw fossil fules because we dont have an alternative fully in place. It would have to be done in a phased way, but you know that. And of course there is pressure on the government from the huge industrial farming lobby and fossil fuel industry, and these are big campaign donors.
However certain other things do promote change. Its proven that carbon taxes help (look it up on wikipedia and read the studies) and renewable subsidies provably help.
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nigelj at 18:38 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Richard at 14
"If 10% of all agricultural land across the planet were to be farmed using proven, relatively simple, cheap and healthy Reg Agriculture principles, that would sequester approximately 46.g Gt of CO2/yr. That is more than the approx. 25.6 Gt that is currently emitted and so we could begin to bring down the Keeling curve.
These comments contain errors. They make uncited claims. Read my comment @1 based on a published, peer reviewed meta study. Not sure how you could have even missed it. Paraphrasing the study, soils can be made to sequester about 1.9 gigatonnes of carbon a year (which is approx 9 gigatonnes of CO2). And total emissions is approx 37 gigatonnes per year, easily googled. As per the study, this sequestration process requires virtually all the worlds croplands to be used.
I get so tired of exaggerations. That is not to diminish the obvious value of regenerative agriculture, and the criticisms of industrial agriculture look roughly correct. Regenerative agriculture is a good thing for several reasons. Over selling the concept just seems like it could backfire and will give ammunition to the critics.
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swampfoxh at 18:08 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Nigelj already points out that population can't shrink fast enough to clear the 2 or 3 degree increase, yet some commenters maintain that Regen, CCT and other remedies are useful endeavors...even though they will be resisted by that very large (billions) population. So if we do these things and population still thwarts the 2 or 3 degree goal, what's to follow?
Moderator Response:[DB] Again, time to move on from this line of discussion.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
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swampfoxh at 17:49 PM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
The rules of Regen Ag require a massive and coercive change in human behavior. Still, very few scientists are addressing Animal Agriculture's negative impact on any chance to implement Regen Ag. Meanwhile, CCS offers another mirage undertaken by the fossil fuel industry to avoid stranded assets and have sold a bill of goods to the public that CCS will solve the larger emissions problem. If we are going to discuss solutions that require an "ought" followed by a statutory requirement, why wouldn't we just go with outlawing conventional plant and animal agriculture and fossil fuels? We know nobody will change their habits unless forced to do so by government fiat, so why not go for the jugular right now?
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Richard13699 at 11:42 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
For all his technological brilliance and extraordinary engineering prowess, Elon is better to concentrate on further refining his Tesla empire and leaving the question of 'carbon capture' to the farmers who are operating their farms along Regen Agriculture principles.
The capacity of the soils to capture and hold carbon (and sufficient depth) is effectively infinite. As long as there is atmospheric CO2, N2, water, sun and chlorophyll, then plants and their mycorrhizal symbiotes will continue to build soil carbon.
The problems is that current agricultural practices that stem from the well intended but ultimately flawed thinking of the Green (agribizz) revolution, are actually inhibiting photosynthesis and slowly degrading soils worldwide.
Some of the problems.
1.Heavy machines compact the soil and prevent atmospheric N2 from getting to the roots.
2. Deep ploughing destroys the mycorrhizal fungal networks that are vital to the process.
3. Inorganic N2 compounds are added that actually inhibit the chemistry of carbon storage.
4. Inorganic N2 run of is bad and N2 creates N2), a potent GHG.
The less agrichemicals that are used, the healthier the plants, the animals (including humans) that eat the produce, the farmers who farm the land.The more regen agriculture, the more healthy soils that hold carbon and water.
If 10% of all agricultural land across the planet were to be farmed using proven, relatively simple, cheap and healthy Reg Agriculture principles, that would sequester approximately 46.g Gt of CO2/yr. That is more than the approx. 25.6 Gt that is currently emitted and so we could begin to bring down the Keeling curve. All that stands in the way of this are the vested interests of 1) agribizz which makes approx. $250 – 300B/year from feeding the current problem 2) technobizz that claims giant vacuums can process the planet’s atmosphere, as in some Sci Fi novel. -
swampfoxh at 07:17 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Not suggesting we kill anybody. Merely showing that whatever we do can't really solve the problem unless the population falls to a half billion and industrial animal ag is outlawed along with go.ssil fuels being left in the ground. We can see that population size can't change fast enough, so while we are "mitigating" damage to a hospitable climate, we are "exterminating" ourselves...and we all recognize that the carbon footprint of 8 billion consuming "stuff" and emitting wastes will overwhelm and bury all of our remedies. Carbon Capture is all bunk science since we already don't know what to do with the CO2 we have, let alone what to do with the CO2 we still want to kick out into the atmosphere, just so we can continue burning fossil fuels.
Surely no one believes that sequestering CO2 in the ground is expecting it to stay there. Surely, plate tectonics is still operable on Earth. When you think about that, we should remind ourselves that nature already sequestered fossil fuel materials in the ground...then we dug it up.
And when we think about mitigation efforts, we should consider that most of the planet's humans are not going to cooperate. We might be able to engineer a reduction in some emissions, but we already know that large numbers of people aren't going to let us do it...like they are not letting us do it now.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please move on from this line of discussion.
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nigelj at 06:31 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
A global population of 500 million is not going to happen fast enough to solve the climate problem. Killing billions of people is too evil and stupid to contemplate, and even if the global fertility rate fell to zero tomorrow (which it obviously wont) population size still wouldnt change fast enough to keep warming under 2 - 3 degrees. Consider the demographics.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:33 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Of course, any CCS technology runs into the question of how much it costs, in comparison to not emitting the CO2 to begin with.
An early effort at full scale is the SaskPower coal-fired plant in SE Saskatchewan (Canada). Adding the technology to an existing power plant, it reduces efficiency, only part of the CO2 is permanently stored - and it is being used to increase the extraction efficiency of nearby fossil fuel deposits - and the economics haven't been quite was aws originally claimed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:39 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
swampfoxh,
A better solution is to have leadership (all of it, in business and politics) held to account for achieving and improving on all of the Sustainable Development Goals and everything like them that is being worked on related to fixing-undoing the harmful unsustainable things that have developed and developing sustainable improvements for the future of humanity (like nuclear non-proliferation, and COP-IPCC actions to end climate change impacts). Anyone in a leadership role impeding that effort should be removed from their position and everyone their harmful leadership actions "helped" should be penalized to remove the gains obtained from the harmful pursuits of benefit.
As for global population. If the highest impacting portion of the population was trimmed off the total sustainable global population could be 10 to 12 billion people based on current technology, with higher numbers possible with the development of better sustainable ways of living.
If you really are interested in understanding what is required for a better future for humanity, including population considerations, I recommend:
- Read Jeffrey D. Sach's "The Age of Sustainable Development" or take the MOOC of the same name. That book (and MOOC) present the evidence-based understanding of the Sustsainabel Development Goals.
- Read the following report recently published in The Lancet "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study". That study concludes that the global population is likely to peak at less than 10 billion. And it concludes that if the Sustainable Development Goals are met the peak population will be lower.
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Nick Palmer at 01:26 AM on 8 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Hey swampfoxh, most climate scientists (the guys who are smart enough to figure out the climate and its potential trajectory) reckon we can solve this problem without going to the extreme lengths you suggest needs implementing...
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swampfoxh at 22:56 PM on 7 March 2021Guest post: Why avoiding climate change ‘maladaptation’ is vital
There is no chance that mitigation efforts to reverse the climate problem can take into account any affected group, all groups are adversely affected because all groups live here on Earth. Earth is where the climate problem is, and all human Earthlings have contributed to this problem. We tag the problem as Anthropogenic, leaving out the rocks, trees and other plants and animals as culpable parties...we even leave out the bovines because their numbers and impact are because of humans. There will not be a solution to the climate problem, anyway, because humans are incapable of controlling their numbers. The complete elimination of fossil fuels and animal agriculture will not cure the climate problem because we humans will not meddle with procreation. In the end, their will still be a few hundred million left on the Planet at the very end of history...they will have to just "go on" "without".
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swampfoxh at 19:26 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Looking back on global history, no organism before humans had utilized fire to control his living environment. The human requirement for heat became a human requirement for propulsion and power which became a human requirement for digging up fossil fuels and eating animals. So as long as there are humans, and lots of them, the climate problem can never be solved.
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swampfoxh at 19:12 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Why don't we just face the reality that only three things need to be done to fix the climate problem: stop burning fossil fuels, outlaw industrial animal agriculture and reduce population to somewhere around 500 million. Certainly. As long as we have the carbon footprint of 8 billion humans and 1.445 billion bovines, nothing we do will change the trajectory.
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nigelj at 16:18 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Enhanced rock weathering has potential at two billion tons of CO2 per year. The required source rock is abundant. Sounds relatively benign and environmentally friendly, compared to crazy ideas like BECCS.
energypost.eu/enhanced-weathering-crushed-rocks-spread-on-farmland-can-capture-billions-of-co2-year/
However direct air capture technology does still sound useful, and appears to already be proven. Although storing the CO2 undergound intuitively sounds challenging.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:42 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
I share Bob Loblaw's concern about partial Carbon Capture related to fossil fuel burning. It is likely to just be the newest unsustainable harmful way of doing things. Even a system that theoretically captures all created CO2 is likely to suffer from the "reality gremlin" (a term made-up just as I wrote this). There will likely be a nasty reality difference from the theoretical performance of such a system. It include things like fugitive emissions (unintended escape) that are almost impossible to eliminate from any built system.
I would add the concern that any Carbon Captured needs to be as certain as possible to be locked away (very likely locked away is not good enough). This concern would also apply to CCS that is being claimed as a credit against GHGs from fossil fuel activity. An aspect of this concern is that pumping captured CO2 into underground features that are "Hoped to be permanent storage" is potentially limited to things like salt caverns in geologically "quiet (very little quake activity) regions".
The understanding needs to be that fossil fuel use actually has to be rapidly reduced and, in addition, there needs to be systems that take CO2 out of the atmosphere even if there is no profit to be made from such systems. And those systems taking CO2 out of the atmosphere need to be sustainable - no harm done by their operation or they just become a new harmful unsustainable way of doing things. And sustainable Carbon Capture systems need to start operating as soon as possible, no waiting for the "lowest cost system" to be developed. And they should be paid for by the least deserving among the wealthy who obtained wealth or other benefits from fossil fuel use through the past 30 years (when the wealthy should have been leading the way to Carbon-Zero living).
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RedBaron at 14:35 PM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Two things:
1) There is more carbon missing from agricultural soils worldwide than extra in the atmosphere. So any techy sort of carbon capture that sequesters it permanently out of the biosphere certainly could be highly highly dangerous in the long term. Being locked into the sort of industrial agriculture, (with heavy use of fertilizers made from fossil fuels and vast areas degraded by biocides), spreading around the world is certain doom in the long haul. We collapse the biosphere carbon cycle and nothing we do will matter at all.
We actually need the carbon, but back in the soil where it belongs.
The primary issue with doing this however, is determining rate. That part is highly controversial for a complex wide variety of reasons.
I will be putting together a team to go for that prize though. Because if we can get the rate high enough, on enough land, it can help meet the IPCC guidelines.
2) Elon Musk is also involved in cutting emissions with Tesla, and battery/solar systems. So the criticisms regarding cutting emissions that were mentioned in the video are NOT warranted at all.
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Bob Loblaw at 06:53 AM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
Robin:
My view is that any CCS technology that basically captures all the CO2 emitted from a fossil fuel plant would be acceptable, but CCS technology that only captures partial emissions is only helpful in the short term and bakes in CO2 emissions for the life of the technology.
Yes, emissions are reduced somewhat with partial CCS, but then you have the investment in that technology that is a paid-forward cost. The holders of that technology will not be happy if they are told they have stranded assets that must be elimated in the next step towards zero emissions.They will fight that tooth and nail, much as the fossil fuel industry has been fighting for decades.
So, in favour of CCS for complete capture. Reservations about partial CCS - especially if it represents long-term infrastructure investment.
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DK_ID at 05:52 AM on 7 March 2021Peter Brannen's Paleo Proxy Twitter Thread
I love paleo and am truly enjoying Peter Brannen's Atlantic article. Thanks for directing me to that. I'm not done (slow reader) but do have one comment. His reason for the Younger Dryas, the generally accepted reason, is not the only explanation. One problem with Lake Agassiz spilling into the North Atlantic and shutting down the AMOC, thereby causing the Younger Dryas, is that other interglacials should have followed a similar pattern, but the brief return to glacial conditions is absent from the earlier records.
Another possibility is that a large comet struck North America at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. If so, it not only initiated the return of ice but ended the Clovis culture. Maybe such a strike might have disturbed the lake, leading to its premature exit? I forget where I 1st read about the impact theory but is was after the 91 references in the Wikipedia article.
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robinp1k2 at 01:24 AM on 7 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
I regard Carbon Capture technology as necessary as the IPCC report suggests. But at this point I feel continued research in large-scale and cheap DAC (direct air capture) technology is a good plan - it will likely take decades for this technology to mature. It's an insurance policy in case we are not able to cut emissions rapidly enough to stay under 1.5 or 2.0 C. I do not want to see more CCS (carbon capture & sequestration) research because I view it a solution that enables us to keep burning fossil fuels. Let me know if you think otherwise... I'm not a scientist and I just want us to get to net zero!
Robin
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nigelj at 18:43 PM on 5 March 2021Is Elon Musk right about Carbon Capture?
This study is relevant: "Global Sequestration Potential of Increased Organic Carbon in Cropland Soils"
www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15794-8
The research study reviews the literature and says (parphrasing) soils can be made to sequester up to an additional 1.85 gigatonnes carbon per year assuming the proper forms of farming are used (no tilling, mulching, crop rotation, biochar, etc.) and scaled up globally to include all or most croplands. Imo this number seems quite significant given global carbon emissions each year from fossil fuels are approx. 10 gigatonnes. It might be possible to do better of course, but this is a study of what is currently known by way of field trials.
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Dawei at 15:17 PM on 5 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Great intro. My story: I started checking New Research back in 2019 and haven't missed a week ever since. By far the best part of this site.
I save every paper with an observed, negative impact on humanity into a database. To my knowledge no such database exists anywhere else. I've added over 70 papers to my database thanks to this list and it's great to be able to get the "latest and greatest" from here.
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michael sweet at 11:02 AM on 5 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
Jamesh:
Your first question relates to waste heat. The thread for waste heat is here. If you look at this post you will find a response I posted in 2010 to someone else who didn't understand waste heat. Read the waste heat thread. Your questions have already been answered.
Your second question relates to the measurement of energy in the environment. Professional scientists know how to measure all the energy in the environment. In your example the energy can be measured by the temperature change of the water. The evaporation can be measured. The graph of increasing ocean heat content (posted for you by the moderator on another thread but now lost since you posted off topic) is measured this way. The local temperature change from artifical lakes is known and the temperature change from increasing evaporation due to irrigation is also measured and known. The heat absorbed by melting ice is known. There is no hidden energy.
We all start out not knowing how measurements are made. As we gain experience we learn how more and more things are done. I recommend that you assume scientists have measured anything you can think of. That will be correct most of the time.
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jamesh at 07:01 AM on 5 March 2021Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9, 2021
I found doug-bostrom's posting very helpful inasmuch as it focused on several issues that can be discussed in a frendly atmosphere. The first is the warming of our invironment in the US in the years since the end of WW2. at the end of the war we had a population of 14o million. Housing developments were built on what was farm land. Power plants were built, both nuclear fossil fuel. The interstate HWY system was built. plus a lot of secondary roads. Dams were built for the purpose of generating electricity. The Marble canyon dam created the enormus Lake Powel. I don't know the impact of Lake Powel, I leave that to the experts. The St. Lawrence Seaway project was built to genrtate electricity. New power lines were built to transmit all the new power. At least 30 pct of transmited power is lost to the environment. We built shopping centers, high rise buildings, waste water treatment plants which were designed to use the aerobic process, drinking water treatment plants. solid waste disposal methods which were very energy Americans had to pay for all of the above energy intensive projects, so to call them deniers is unfair. The next issue I want to deal with is the measurement of energy in the environment. We have heated up our invironment, and I assume it can be decteded by sattelites, but there is hidden energy which can be computed but not detected. To prove my point I chose to pick a municipal reservoir used for drinking water. Such reservoirs are closely monitored for PH, temp. etc. The water is soft and the goal is to keep it that way. Said reservoir recieves a certain amount of solar radiation every day, which can be estimated. Once the energy is adsorbed by the water it is essentialy in storage, we cannot measure it, and it doesn't matter where we try to measure it, we cannot see it. If we know the temp. of the water we can calculate how much energy is lost through evaporation. When the evaporation process takes place, we still cannot takr a direct measurement of the watervapor. The watervapor will eventually cool and release it's energy. So it looks to me like we have an energy transfer system to which our instruments are totally blind.
Moderator Response:[BL] Referring to the blog post author's name in your comment does not make your comment on-topic.As far as I can tell, none of the rest of your comment has anything to do with any article referred to in the blog post.
You have been warned on multiple occasions before. take your comments to appropriate threads. Read those threads before you start commenting.
Warning #2
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:48 PM on 3 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Jamesh,
As michael sweet has suggested, claiming to be an engineer and therefore more "Open-minded" is something you should delve into a little more to be sure it is true about You, and make it truer about you.
I am also an engineer, with an MBA, and decades of work experience. And I question your claims.
Moderator Response:[BL] Let's try not to get lost in the "what is someone's background?" question. Jamesh's statements about climate science issues can stand or fall on their merits. His claim to be an engineer is irrelevant, and let's just drop it.
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MA Rodger at 10:56 AM on 3 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
gerontocrat @9,
Meanwhile there is still the JAXA VISHOP web page which has in recent days glitchless updates of Arctic SIE.
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gerontocrat at 07:12 AM on 3 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Just to let people know that the daily sea ice area and extent data from NSIDC has not been successfully updated since Feb 19. Methinks they have a problem somewhat bigger than the odd glitch that happens from time to time.
Moderator Response:[DB] NSIDC is working on it:
"For those following sea ice on our site: sea ice processing is currently having problems. Daily Sea Ice Index/Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis values after February 19 are erroneous. We are investigating the issue and will correct it as soon as possible."
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michael sweet at 07:07 AM on 3 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Jamesh:
The statement "CO2 in water does not behave like most other gases" does not relate to the fact that CO2 can force global warming. Most gasses like O2 and N2 dissolve only is very small concentrations in water. By contrast, CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid H2CO3. Carbonic acid and its derivitives (HCO3- and CO3-2) are very soluble in water. Thus much more CO2 to dissolve in water than N2 and O2. The formation of carbonic acid when CO2 dissolves in water causes ocean acidification and is a very serious problem all by itself.
Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to warm up. This has been known by scientists since about 1850. Gasses that stay in the atmosphere for a very long time, like CO2, are said to force the increase in temperature since increasing CO2 forces the atmosphere to warm. Releasing water into the atmosphere, for example from the chimney of a coal burning power plant, does not result in significant increase in atmospheric temperature. The amount of water in the atmosphere is controlled by the temperature of the atmosphere. Any added water simply falls as rain in a few days and the temperature is not affected. By contrast, CO2 released today will linger in the atmosphere for centuries or much longer.
Dr. Mann's 1998 paper uses proxies from around the world to estimate past temperatures. Most are from remote areas. Your statement "measured on the ground temps in industrial areas" is simply false. The concept of climate forcing was introduced long before 1998. If you want to keep your discussion to "the facts" you need to learn the facts first. As I pointed out above, scientists have known since the 1850's that CO2 can force the temperature of the atmosphere to increase.
It seems to me that you are copying your arguments from some other web site. Can you tell us which web site you are getting your "facts" from? They seem to be the arguments that were shown to be incorrect 20 years ago. If you tell us where you are getting your misinformation from we probably can refer you to posts that debunk that site specifically.
Some of the posters you are arguing with have PhD's in hard sciences (I only have a Masters degree in Chemistry). They have decades of experience dealing with uninformed arguments against Global Warming. Suggesting that as an engineer who appears young you know the facts better than older scientists who have been around the block is not a strong place to argue from. I suggest that, instead of challenging other posters and suggesting you alone know the answer, you ask questions to try to find answers you do not know.
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jamesh at 03:08 AM on 3 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
I have 2 final comments that I believe ot be on topic (please keep in mind that I am an engineer by training and experience and we tend to see the big picture; it's not easy to focus on individual issues) My first comment relates to Bobs posting #2; Item #4. The statement that "CO2 in water does not behave like most other gases" addresses a question that has bothered me for a long time; that is how can CO2 as an ordinary GHG force global warming. Thank you Bob for a clear explanation. I assume SKS on in agreement as are associated scientists. The second comment is just an observation. The comments above focused mainly on ocean temteratures whereas Dr Mann's paper dated 01 April 1998 delt with measured on the ground temps in industrial areas and he did introduce the concept of climate forcing and CO2's ability to force climate change is related to it's ability to perform as a super GHG
Moderator Response:[BL] Regarding "on topic".Dr. Mann is not mentioned anywhere in the list of articles in this post, or any of the previous comments. You are continuing to place comments in locations that are not appropriate. As michael sweet has replied, I will leave your comment intact, but if you continue to do this your comments will be deleted, in part or in whole. The relevant part of the Comments policy is:
All comments must be on topic. Comments are on topic if they draw attention to possible errors of fact or interpretation in the main article, of if they discuss the immediate implications of the facts discussed in the main article. However, general discussions of Global Warming not explicitly related to the details of the main article are always off topic. Moderation complaints are always off topic and will be deleted
Your posting pattern continues in the same style as before, where you throw out short, erroneous statements of previously-debunked myths. The relevant part of the comments policy is:
No sloganeering. Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted. If you think our debunking of one of those myths is in error, you are welcome to discuss that on the relevant thread, provided you give substantial reasons for believing the debunking is in error. It is asked that you do not clutter up threads by responding to comments that consist just of slogans.
Comments that match the sloganeering definition are also subject to deletion, in whole or in part.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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Bob Loblaw at 08:36 AM on 1 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Phillippe, MA, and OPOF.
I have no problem with your "not even wrong" descriptions.
The biggest problem with jamesh's posts here is that they are glib, incomplete, vague throw-aways. It is hard to discuss his posts, or guess where they would be on-topic, because they are so devoid of any real, meaningful content.
And when he is pointed to possible topics, or his errors are pointed out, he just stops interacting and goes to a different thread with a different topic.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:21 AM on 1 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Another approach to the claims made-up by jamesh would be to ask what change has occurred in the planetary mechanisms they refer to that can explain the many observed changes in the planet's climate system (and explain all the other climate system observations).
There already is a robust explanation for the observed changes in the climate system. And it continues to be fine-tuned rather than significantly altered by new investigation and observation. A viable alternative would have to be as good at explaining all the observations to date.
A lack of a verifiable explanation would potentially make jamesh a misleading marketer or conspiracy theorist (either making up the misleading stuff or allowing themselves to be fooled into parroting it), unless they are able to present a well reasoned explanation for why they make-up the claims they do.
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Klemet at 05:36 AM on 1 March 2021Veganism is the best way to reduce carbon emissions
@Rob, I agree with you concerning the more "radical" elements of the vegan community. Knowing some of them personnaly, I think that as many activits that go "too far", most of them do have good intentions; but nuance and good communication is always important with such issues.
Concerning dietary choice, I agree that being an heterotrophic life form (contrary to autotrophic ones), we are stuck with a choice of "who do we eat" instead of "what do we eat", as you nicely pointed out. However, I still have trouble thinking of "who we eat" as a stricly personal choice that involves no responsability. Indeed, why would killing and eating another human, out of any survival necessity, be a "personal" choice ? And if this is not, why would killing and eating a cat or a dog for mere habit or pleasure be a personal choice, as they are so close to us in term of sentience and emotional capabilities ? And if this is indeed not, why is killing and eating a pig or a cat - animals as smart and sensitive as cat and dogs - because we are used to it be a personal choice ? Hence, if there is no responsability to who we eat - and so, who we kill - and why, then I always end up thinking that this opens the door to a moral justification for many despicable actions. If I eat pigs for habit and pleasure, who am I to judge someone that kills a cat out of sport ? And would it be ethical - or even possible - to only translate those questions in monetary costs ? Wouldn't it allow the richier to act immoraly, as they can afford it ? (Maybe that's already the case, sadly.)
But that's just the stricly individual question of killing an animal; environmental and health impacts might also imply a responsability toward others. If it's pretty irresponsible to take the plane instead of a train, wouldn't it be irresponsible to eat beef (the most impact-heavy meat) instead of a plant-based meal ? And again, would taxation only result on rich people being able to be the most irresponsible ?
I think that I can still understand your view, though. Telling people what to do and how to think isn't very effective, and incentives like taxation might have a more subtle and persistent effect on these issues. But I don't think that this is enough to tackle the more pressing ethical questions related to who we eat - and that activism, even if "radical" (an adjective very dependant on the epoch), might have a role to play to solve this.
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MA Rodger at 04:55 AM on 1 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Philippe Chantreau @3,
I would tend to agree with the "not even wrong" catagorisation.
As well as being tiny, the heat flux from seabed into abyssal ocean is also difficult to measure because it is very variable and dependent on geology with perhaps a third of the net 30TW flux through the oceanic crust due to venting (those volcanoes the troll happily concentrates on).
Averaged out, such a net flux would provide perhaps +0.09ºC to the sea bed, an insignificant amount at the surface but less ignorable in the abyssal ocean.
While the effects of the resulting tiny abyssal warming will depend on the location and will always be tiny on an oceanic scale, they do play what is described as a a "non-negligible role" in eroding abyssal stratification and enhansing ocean circulation.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:36 AM on 1 March 20212021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9
Jamesh @ 1: I have to disagree with Bob and classify this mini Gish gallop of yours in the "not even wrong" category. You contradict yourself and the, well, facts.
It is a fact that the temperature profile of oceanic water shows decreasing temperature with depth. If the oceans were dissipating by convection heat communicated to them by their floor, they would show very different temperature profiles. But they don't, because the energy communicated to them that way is so small that it can't even be measured. That's only one part of everything that is wrong with your argument. It makes no sense whatsoever.
It also shows that you could not be bothered with even the most basic effort of verification to see if what you thought held water, although there is an illimited amount of knowledge at your fingertips.
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