climate fuels
stoat | November 21, 2013That's what the Graun says.
Timmy says Complete and total bollocks here. Or, if you prefer a more measured version he says Fossil Fuel Companies Do Not Cause Carbon Emissions, We Consumers Do.
Timmy is right. The Graun is wrong.
The Graun says
Climate change experts said the data set was the most ambitious effort so far to hold individual carbon producers, rather than governments, to account.
But it isn't. Its an attempt to shift the blame off us lot so we can all relax and spew out yet more CO2 and say "oh no, its not our fault, look, the Graun says its all the fault of those nasty fossil…
stoat | November 1, 2013 Another round in the carbon wars. If you make money by producing coal, then the chances are that you'd like to keep doing so. Hence The Warsaw Communiqué (full PDF). I think its good that the World Coal folks feel the need to do some PR and push the idea of "clean coal"; they must be a little bit worried that someone is going to try to lean on them, so they'll get their words in. But, many of their words are silly. Not that many of them are wrong; just pointless.
They start playing nicely:
Recognising international consensus on the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, in…
stoat | September 9, 2013 A report for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. MacKay is Sustainable Energy – without the hot air person, and a rather infrequently updated blog. He's a pretty sensible chap and the new report is a challenge to all the folk who go around unthinkingly saying that shale gas emissions mean that its worse than coal (and for the people who think at least a bit, but rely on Howarth, they provide some reasons why Howarth may be wrong). At least, if you don't agree, you'd better have a good reason.
More on global temperature spectra and trends
From Moyhu. Interesting stuff: removing ENSO…
stoat | August 13, 2013 I follow David Hone, though not the details. He's really keen on CCS, and has (I think) a strong commercial interest in it succeeding. But there is no real answer to "its not commercially viable" - and I think it remains non-viable even at plausible CO2-price levels ($80 / tonne is Sternish, no?). So, inevitably, sigh, the talk turns to regulation (um. Does that ring any bells?).
The latest is Can a technology specific policy exist in a carbon market? I didn't have the patience to read it all. Just reading a little bit of it is enough to convince me that this is not the right way to go. What…
stoat | May 6, 2013That's over at P3. But I've seen it elsewhere. The idea is that because we'll need to keep unburnt oil in the ground to hit (or rather, to not hit) a 2 oC commitment, a pile of oil companies are wildly overvalued, leading to... well, who cares what it leads to, because it doesn't matter.
Via AS I find Tol saying
As soon as the “market” expects that new regulation will seriously devalue an asset, its price drops. Bubbles only arise if the “market” is misinformed. The “market” is by no means infallible when it comes to pricing risk, but an expectation of “not much climate policy any time soon…
stoat | March 13, 2013 All over the world (my path: Timmy -> Torygraph -> google -> Nude scientist -> JOGMEC press release -> JOGMEC) there is excitement about "Japan cracks seabed 'ice gas' in dramatic leap for global energy". Which is indeed interesting, but not quite as dramatic as suggested. Because as the pic of the flare makes clear, this is a very small flow. If you read the press release, is clear this is still experimental:
Methane hydrate (*1) receives attention as one of the unconventional gas resources in the future. During the period from FY2001 to FY2008, which is Phase 1 of the “Japan…
stoat | February 25, 2013Or so says Marginal Revolution (via Timmy). I repeat it here to wind up all the people who continually tell me how wonderful fuel efficiency standards are. Prediction: no-one will change their minds.
a gas tax provides immediate, direct incentives for drivers to reduce gasoline use, while the efficiency standards must squeeze the reduction out of new vehicles only. The new standards also encourage more driving, not less.
Context: people keep telling me, whenever the subject comes up "but look how fuel efficiency has increased over the last 2-3 decades, it must be due to fuel efficiency…
stoat | February 16, 2013There is a nice article by DM at Planet3.0 on the Keystone XL pipeline. I almost didn't bother read it, 'cos I'm a bit bored by all that, but I'm glad I did because he gets it quite right in an illuminating way:
The anti-keystone movement, or more generally the entire anti-tar-sands movement, is trying to reduce our GHG emissions by attacking the supply side of the equation. Essentially the strategy boils down to getting governments and corporations to turn their backs and walk away from huge sums of money...
So what is the alternative?
What if instead fighting a never-ending battle against a…
stoat | January 11, 2013 Or so says Richard Van Noorden, in Nurture.
But that's not right. What hobbles CCS is that its uneconomic: so why would you do it?
I'm being a bit unfair: at least according to the article, CCS would be economic at the same subsidy cost as feed-in tariffs for wind and solar. But the great thing about solar, for example, is that it becomes economic at the individual-roof scale with current subsidy. No planning permission, quick and simple installation, buildable in small chunks, individual voters see a profit (and the others who haven't got it and don't see a profit because they're funding it…
stoat | September 11, 2012I've been sniffy about CCS before (its just not economic) but as about the only way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere whilst letting us continue burning fossil fuels in our merry thoughtless way it inevitably appeals to the BAU crowd. David Hone reports on a A CCS project for Canada which is at base dependent on a $15/t (t CO2? t C? Not sure. The report he cites actually just says "$15" but that makes no sense; from context, I think they mean t CO2) tax on CO2 emissions. Interestingly, the threshold for being taxed isn't absolute, just Approximately 100 entities with annual emissions exceeding…
stoat | August 10, 2012 Says the FT:
The UN has called for an immediate suspension of government-mandated US ethanol production, adding to pressure on Barack Obama to address the food-versus-fuel debate in the run-up to presidential elections. Most US ethanol is made from corn. The dispute over ethanol promotion pits states such as Iowa that benefit from higher corn prices – and in some cases are swing states in the election – against livestock-raising states such as Texas that are helped by lower corn prices. The UN intervention will be seized upon by state governors, lawmakers and the meat and livestock industry…
stoat | June 25, 2012 Well, sort of. Via Timmy I find Will Hutton bemoaning the failure of yet another GW-type summit, Rio-20. We all knew it was going to fail: had I thought there was any question about it, I would have offered to bet heavily on its failure (in fact, so little do I care that I haven't even looked to see if it has failed. But I assume so...). But there would have been no takers. Nonetheless the pointless waste of time took place, which merely demonstrates how broken our politics is. But we knew that too.
Hutton correctly identifies at least one problem, but fails to see the obvious solution:…
stoat | May 4, 2012Interesting picture, stolen from Early Warning.
In case it isn't obvious its the price of coal (mostly stable) and gas (much more spiky, but currently below coal) per Mbtu.
Refs
* The Future of Natural Gas - Rutt Bridges at Climate, Etc.
stoat | April 13, 2012Or so says reuters and a whole host of others repeating the same story. The source is draft ELECTRICITY GENERATION POLICY STATEMENT from the shouty Scottish government. You won't be surprised to hear that I don't believe a word of it (I've been pretty sniffy before), but lets read on. Oh, but first, why so sniffy? Because, its not economic (if it was, we'd all be doing it, der). Nor do I see any sign of it becoming economic in the next 10-15-20 years. But who knows, I could be wrong. Lets read on...
They say: The Scottish Government's policy on electricity generation [nd: this is indeed about…
stoat | January 20, 2012And, since I've been cwuel to the septics, I suppose I ought to have a go at the greenies, for balance:
A false balance is abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.
-- Proverbs 11:1
So (h/t KZ) the Grauniad says:
Open letter to Sir Mervyn King says overexposure to high-carbon assets by London-listed companies risks creating a 'carbon bubble'... The huge reserves of coal, oil and gas held by companies listed in the City of London are "sub-prime" assets posing a systemic risk to economic stability, a high-profile coalition of investors, politicians and scientists has warned…
stoat | December 22, 2011
We've finally got round to having solar PV panels installed. As you can see form the picture above.
The price of solar has been coming down, but still it isn't economically viable without subsidy for us. However, the subsidy makes it clearly economically beneficial (to us) so combined with a guess that the ecological payback, which is far less clear, might be acceptable too, we went ahead. What finally tipped us into doing something was (a) the government announcing the end of the fat subsidy regime (of which more anon) and (b) a local group organising an installation firm for the village.…
stoat | November 24, 2011 Prompted by David Hone ("bonkers", says NB :-). But it says something that I've been thinking for a bit, and haven't seen anyone else say:
Arguably, we are in a time where underlying global energy demand exceeds supply. This isn't to say they are out of balance as that is not possible, but it says that if there were more energy then global economic growth would be even faster. This condition could well persist for a long time given population growth and the rapid expansion of several major economies - with more to follow. A direct implication of this thinking is that the production of all…
stoat | June 3, 2011In the comments to Romm Echoes Groundless Cell Phone/Cancer Fears? we've degenerated into an argument about the safety of nuclear versus solar power ("which do you think has killed more people: radiation from Fukushima, or solar-voltaic installers falling from ladders?" was my question. It is a trick question, of course, because no-one has died from Fukushima as far as I know. But the correct question, of course, is deaths per unit of 'lectric generated). MV, beng something of a spoilsport (just joking, don't worry) pops the bubble by pointing to someone who has actually worked some numbers…
stoat | May 21, 2011 From the department for shooting fish in a barrel, David Appell has a nice post pointing out that Singer has been a bozo for years, predicting (in 1981) massive future declines in fossil oil use.
This may be a good place to link to another of DA's posts, US Emissions to Stay Below Pre-Recession Peak Until 2028 which makes an interesting combination with Early Warning on US vehicle miles.
More Singer-is-a-bozo stuff
This is, as I said, shooting fish in a barrel. So I'll just make it an update to this post rather than a new one. DA went to a talk by Singer that was riddled with errors. One bit…
stoat | August 31, 2010If you read SEWOTHA (which I highly recommend you to do; and read the book, not just the blog, which has gone a bit quiet recently) you'll discover the idea that the only really viable way of getting *all* our energy needs in a sustainable way is from solar power plants in the hot deserts - in the case of Yorp, North Africa / Sahara; in the case of the Americas, the hot dry bit in the middle whatever it is called (they are due to the Hadley circulation, so pretty well everyone has one not too far away).
Anyway, someone else has now noticed the idea and Science has a piece on it, mostly…