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ReadyToJumpDown |
Statistics don't support "decade of cooling" | ||||||||||||||||
MickyScars |
Deal-Breaker for Climate-Change Treaty May Be Obama’s Congress | ||||||||||||||||
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Deal-Breaker for Climate-Change Treaty May Be Obama's Congress
By Alex Morales and Kim Chipman http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=ahGP9j31GiEw
"America is back" at the United Nations negotiating table, Democratic Senator John Kerry declared after the November election. Danish climate minister Connie Hedegaard said U.S. emissions policy moved forward 35 years overnight. Instead, Obama may send empty-handed envoys in December to the table in Copenhagen where 192 countries will try to assign emissions reductions because Congress has given him no mandate. With the European Union, Japan and Australia ready to pledge cuts of more than 20 percent only if other nations follow suit, the stage is set for promises to collapse. "How can we expect other major players to move their position until they know that in the end the U.S. is also going to deliver?" Hedegaard, chairwoman of the UN talks running from Dec. 7-18, said in an interview. The possible domino effect, along with a continuing split between the U.S. and China, erode chances for a strong treaty, negotiators and political scientists say. "It is unlikely that an agreement which would be meaningful is going to be finalized" in the Danish capital, Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in an interview. When Obama picks up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December, he'll be an hour's flight from where more than 10,000 envoys, UN officials and lobbyists will be meeting to conclude an agreement on slowing climate change, a challenge the president has said the U.S. will "lead the world" in tackling. Obama Undecided Obama hasn't decided whether to make an appearance, administration officials said. Environmentalists say he's a likely no-show because stalled climate bills in Congress mean the U.S. may have little to offer, threatening to unravel prospects for a global deal. "If this were a play getting ready to come to Broadway, we would say: 'Well, we aren't sure of the financial backing or the orchestra and, guess what, the lead star says he might not sing,'" said Peter Goldmark, director of the climate and air program at New York-based Environmental Defense. There are other stumbling blocks beyond the U.S. Industrialized nations are still split with developing countries such as China, the largest greenhouse-gas producer, over transferring clean-energy technologies to poorer nations and over climate-adaptation aid. Bali Road Map Yet the heart of a climate deal is to get nations to slash heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming. That was the UN's principle conclusion in a 2007 declaration made in Bali, Indonesia, that proposed a "road map" for forging a new treaty in Copenhagen two years later. Obama has said he'll push to cut U.S. emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Moving on his lead, the U.S. House passed legislation in June to create a cap-and-trade system that would limit gas emissions and create a market in pollution permits. Today, Senate committee hearings are set to begin in Washington on a comparable measure. Congressional leaders, embroiled for months in the debate over health-care legislation, made no promises that the full Senate will take up the climate bill before 2010. The moderate Democrats and Republicans "we are counting on" to back climate-change legislation are preoccupied with overhauling the U.S. health-care system, said Bob Simon, chief of staff of the Senate Energy Committee. Having no Congressional mandate will make it "extraordinarily difficult" to commit to a target in treaty talks, U.S. lead negotiator Jonathan Pershing said Oct. 9 at the last negotiating round in Bangkok. Too Many 'Ifs' If the U.S., the second-largest emitter, could deliver, other countries might firm up their commitments, Brice Lalonde, France's lead negotiator, said in a telephone interview. He pointed to carbon-reduction pledges by many developed nations that are conditional on a deal being reached in Denmark. "Look at all the commitments which are conditioned by 'if,'" Lalonde said. "Take out all these ifs and we've got an agreement." Only if other nations take similar steps will Japan and Australia cut their emissions 25 percent by 2020, they said. Commitments by New Zealand and Switzerland are also contingent on a wider deal. And the 27-nation European Union has pledged a 20 percent greenhouse-gas cut by 2020 from 1990 levels and will ramp that up to 30 percent if comparable action is taken by other developed nations. China Factor Developing nations, whose emissions are growing faster than in richer countries, might be motivated to talk about when they can 'peak' their greenhouse gases before starting to cut them, if they got a clear stance from the U.S., Lalonde said. India, Brazil and Mexico also may be looking to the world's biggest economy for action before fully committing, said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group. The U.S. climate position avoids giving too much economic leeway to China, a growing industrial competitor that rejects binding emissions targets. China says that as a developing nation the priority is to pull its people out of poverty. The two nations release 40 percent of global emissions. Even so, Chinese President Hu Jintao has said that his country will cut emissions in proportion to economic growth by a "notable" margin by 2020. Avoiding Another Kyoto "It's fair to say that the Chinese are holding back on putting forth a number in terms of their greenhouse gas intensity target until they have greater clarity on what the U.S. is going to do," said Schmidt. "If the U.S. put forward a number and gave a clear signal of what it would do, I think China would follow minutes after that." American negotiators say they don't want to bring a deal back home to the Senate, the only U.S. body that can ratify a treaty, and get it rejected. Former President Bill Clinton's UN envoy Peter Burleigh signed the Kyoto Protocol accord in 1998. Neither Bush nor Clinton sent the treaty to the Senate. The 100- member chamber said at the time it would reject an accord that didn't make requirements of developing nations such as China. "We don't want to repeat the Kyoto experience of having a number where there's nothing behind it," Obama's climate envoy, Todd Stern, said Oct. 18 in London. By avoiding Kyoto, the world's biggest energy consumer was allowed to increase emissions by about 16 percent from 1990 through 2007, UN data show. Kyoto demanded a 7 percent reduction from the same base year to the 2008-2012 measurement period. Hostage to Congress "Are we going to be forever hostage to the U.S. Congress?" asked Bernarditas Muller, a negotiator for the Philippines who helps co-ordinate the G77 group, an alliance of 130 developing nations. Just as in the 1990s, Congress is concerned over losing jobs to low-cost economies with no emission rules, and members are considering setting duties to be paid on their imports. "The negotiations need to move forward on what we do with leveling the playing field on manufacturing so that a country that acts responsibly on CO2 emissions doesn't lose jobs to those countries that don't," said Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. Uncertainty over the U.S. position "is causing countries to hold back what they might do as well," said the NRDC's Schmidt, who's tracked international climate negotiations since 2000. "It's having a big ripple-on effect for the rest of the negotiations." Obama and many world leaders probably will send underlings to the Danish capital instead of traveling themselves as the chance of countries breaking a deadlocks are slim, said Eileen Claussen, head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. "There is a lot of pressure on the president to go," Claussen said. "But it's hard to imagine heads of state going to Copenhagen and
ending up with a political declaration that says: 'It's really hard and we are going to take another six months to do it.'"
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One Crude Dude |
Global Heat Boomerang | ||||||||||||||||
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Yo more scientists come out of hiding for global cooling. Global Heat Boomerang
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dpwozney |
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brentns |
Monckton on Glenn Beck video now available | ||||||||||||||||
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In case you missed it live, Christopher Monckton spent an entire hour on the Glenn Beck program today on the topic of global warming, skepticism, and the
Copenhagen Treaty
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/30/monckton-on-glenn-beck-video-now-available/ |
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brentns |
Critics call Gore a global-warming profiteer | ||||||||||||||||
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WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving
technology from the venture capital firm where Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Gore's firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of "smart meters" in homes and businesses. Gore and his partners decided to back the company. The deal appeared to pay off last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. More than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Few people have been as vocal as Gore about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes. Critics, mostly on the political right and among global-warming skeptics, say Gore is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiteering from government policies he supports. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is. In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades. "I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all of the time I was in public service," Gore wrote. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6699833.html |
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brentns |
Gore’s Dual Role in Spotlight: Advocate and Investor | ||||||||||||||||
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Former Vice President Al Gore thought he had spotted a winner last year when a small California firm sought financing for an energy-saving technology from the
venture capital firm where Mr. Gore is a partner.
The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. It came to Mr. Gore's firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley's top venture capital providers, looking for $75 million to expand its partnerships with utilities seeking to install millions of so-called smart meters in homes and businesses, The New York Times's John M. Broder writes. Mr. Gore and his partners decided to back the company, and in gratitude Silver Spring retained him and John Doerr, another Kleiner Perkins partner, as unpaid corporate advisers. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts. Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years. Silver Spring Networks is a foot soldier in the global green energy revolution Mr. Gore hopes to lead. Few people have been as vocal about the urgency of global warming and the need to reinvent the way the world produces and consumes energy. And few have put as much money behind their advocacy as Mr. Gore and are as well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes. Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire," profiting from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in. Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, asserted at a hearing this year that Mr. Gore stood to benefit personally from the energy and climate policies he was urging Congress to adopt. Mr. Gore says that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is. "Do you think there is something wrong with being active in business in this country?" Mr. Gore said. "I am proud of it. I am proud of it." In an e-mail message this week, he said his investment activities were consistent with his public advocacy over decades. "I have advocated policies to promote renewable energy and accelerate reductions in global warming pollution for decades, including all of the time I was in public service," Mr. Gore wrote. "As a private citizen, I have continued to advocate the same policies. Even though the vast majority of my business career has been in areas that do not involve renewable energy or global warming pollution reductions, I absolutely believe in investing in ways that are consistent with my values and beliefs. I encourage others to invest in the same way." Mr. Gore has invested a significant portion of the tens of millions of dollars he has earned since leaving government in 2001 in a broad array of environmentally friendly energy and technology business ventures, like carbon trading markets, solar cells and waterless urinals. http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/gores-dual-role-in-spotlight-advocate-and-investor/ |
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Just Jon |
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http://www.warroom.com/
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Dennis Erectus |
From Lahore to Copenhagen: The Disconnect Between US Foreign Policy and US Rhetoric on Carbon Dioxide | ||||||||||||||||
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Posted on Nov. 03, 2009
From Lahore to Copenhagen: The Disconnect Between US Foreign Policy and US Rhetoric on Carbon Dioxide
Last Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan telling the Pakistanis to burn more coal. Today, President Barack Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House to assure her that the US will stand with the European Union on cutting emissions of carbon dioxide. The juxtaposition of those two events provides a window into the essential conflict at the heart of any workable plan to deal with global carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time that Obama and top Congressional leaders are claiming that they are serious about cutting carbon dioxide emissions, the reality is that in developing countries like China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Indonesia, carbon dioxide emissions are soaring. A key reason for those soaring emissions: those countries desperately need electricity. And when it comes to generating electricity, coal usually provides the cheapest option. That reality leaves diplomats like Clinton with no choice but to acknowledge the obvious, which is exactly what she did during her meeting with business leaders in Lahore on October 29. Change in CO2 Emissions Per Capita in the Six Most-Populous Countries, 1990 to 2007
Source: IEA, "CO2 Emissions From Fuel Combustion 2009," 90, 91. Available here. Clinton told her hosts that "Pakistan has to have more internal investment in your public services and in your business opportunities." When it comes to electricity, that is abundantly true. Pakistan, with about 170 million people, has just 20,000 megawatts of installed generating capacity. For comparison, France, with about 61 million people, has 112,000 megawatts of electric generation capacity. And make no mistake, there is a direct correlation between electricity use and development. As Peter Huber and Mark Mills declared in their 2005 book, The Bottomless Well, "Economic growth marches hand in hand with increased consumption of electricity--always, everywhere, without significant exception in the annals of modern industrial history." Given that Pakistan will never develop its economy without more electricity, Clinton was careful in how she phrased her message to the Pakistanis - you can almost feel her squirming to get the wording right - but the underlying idea comes through loud and clear. "The more economic development, the greater the energy challenges," Clinton said during her visit to the Governor's House in Lahore. I asked Minister Qureshi whether there had been any prohibition nationally under developing your coal deposits. Now, obviously, that is not the best thing for the climate, but everybody knows that. But many of your neighbors are producing coal faster than they can even talk about it. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact that coal is going to remain a part of the energy load until we can transition to cleaner forms of energy. Clinton's stilted endorsement of increased coal consumption in Pakistan came just a few days before Obama greeted European officials in Washington. Yesterday, Obama met with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in the Oval Office. After the meeting, Obama told the press that it is "fair to say" that the world is "interested in an outcome that can start moving us down the path of a sustainable economy that is not accelerating the potential catastrophe of climate change." Today, during his meeting with Merkel in the Oval Office, Obama stayed on message, saying that Merkel "has been an extraordinary leader on the issue of climate change. He went on, saying "And the United States, Germany, and countries around the world I think are all beginning to recognize why it is so important that we work in common in order to stem the potential catastrophe that could result if we continue to see global warming continuing unabated." So here's the summary: at about the same time that Obama's secretary of state is encouraging the Pakistanis to burn more coal, Obama himself is assuring the Germans and the EU that he is serious, really serious, about reducing carbon dioxide emissions. While few people doubt that Obama, Merkel, and their friends in the EU want to do just that, it is worth noting these facts: despite its much-touted embrace of solar power and wind power, Germany's coal use has not seen a significant decline. In 2008, Germany's coal consumption was almost identical to its coal use back in 1999. Furthermore, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Germany derives more of its primary energy from coal (about 27.7%) than does the US (24.3%). And given its huge coal reserves (the largest in Europe), Germany, like the US, will continue using coal to generate electricity for decades to come. Later today, Merkel will address a joint session of Congress. Here's a prediction: she won't mention Germany's own coal consumption nor will she
talk about Clinton's coal remarks in Lahore. The lesson here is obvious: it's far easier to talk about cutting carbon dioxide emissions than it is to
actually do so and the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen will only provide more proof of that lesson.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not the mineral rights!
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mancovaldez |
Special Report: Beyond Copenhagen | ||||||||||||||||
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Special Report: Beyond Copenhagen
Eat My Carbon 11.03.09, 6:00 PM ET If the world is going to make progress toward the goals to be discussed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, it's pretty clear that carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, must be captured. Fossil fuel produces nearly two-thirds of the world's electricity. All those power plants can't just be turned off. But then what? Once carbon is captured, there are just a few places it can be sent. It can be piped thousands of feet underground into saline aquifers, it can be pumped into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, it can be used to help extract oil and gas, and it could be sent to the bottom of the ocean. All of which is expensive. The cost of pressurizing captured carbon dioxide and injecting it underground or to the bottom of the ocean could be about $100 a ton. And that's not including the legal and insurance outlay it might take to convince (or force) local residents to allow it to be stored underneath them. "That means you've taken $100 and shoved it underground," says Paul Woods, chief executive officer of Algenol, a Florida start-up that is developing an algae-to-ethanol technology. "It's much cheaper to capture it and give it to algae. It's not a little cheaper, it's a lot cheaper." Like most other plants, photosynthetic algae feed on carbon dioxide. Using energy from sunlight, plants separate the carbon from carbon dioxide and reassemble it into energy molecules like sugars, starches and fats. Dozens of companies like Algenol are trying to get at those energy molecules and use them to push cars and planes around. There are thousands of species of algae, and nearly as many ways of getting algae to produce fuel. Most companies are trying to coax algae to produce lots of fats. The algae are then harvested, and the fat is separated and refined into diesel or jet fuel. Craig Ventner's Synthetic Genomics, which is partnering with ExxonMobil, is trying to engineer strains of algae to produce ready-to-burn fuel. Algenol's algae produce starches and ferment them into ethanol. Instead of being harvested, the algae are kept alive as they pump out fuel. Algenol and Dow Chemical are teaming to build a pilot "bioreactor" at a Dow plant in Freeport, Texas, that will produce 100,000 gallons of ethanol a year. Feeding carbon dioxide to algae isn't quite like storing it underground for thousands of years. But algae proponents argue it at least displaces oil consumption--it prevents carbon that's already been underground for thousands of years from reaching the atmosphere. The problem, again, is cost. Storing carbon underground may be expensive, but so far producing fuel from algae is expensive too. It's tough even to reliably estimate what the future cost will be because both technologies are at such early stages that current costs are astronomical and future costs are based on assumptions that include heavy doses of hope. Still, it would certainly help the algae fuel companies if carbon emitters paid them to take carbon dioxide away. And it would help carbon emitters to have a cheaper place to send carbon dioxide. Another issue: scale. Philippe Joubert, who runs the power division of Alstom, the French maker of power plants and fast trains that is a leader in developing carbon capture and sequestration, agrees that algae could be a good place to sequester carbon dioxide. To a point. "This is a good model, it is absolutely feasible. The problem you have here is the quantity," he says. A big coal plant (1,000 megawatts) produces 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. "There's not an industry that could use that amount of carbon dioxide," he says. "I mean, we could put it in Champagne, too, but they just don't need very much." Woods says stationary carbon dioxide emitters like power plants put out 3.6 trillion tons of carbon dioxide a year in the United States. If everything goes
perfectly for Algenol, Woods says he'd be able to take 300 million tons. But first someone has to be willing to pay him to do it. For that he needs a
carbon market. And that's up to Copenhagen and Congress.
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mancovaldez |
Special Report: Beyond Copenhagen | ||||||||||||||||
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Special Report: Beyond Copenhagen
Bury Our Carbon At Sea 11.03.09, 6:00 PM ET The world's climate cabal gathers in Copenhagen next month to debate what to do with the 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide the human race produces every year by burning fossil fuels. Half of this man-made exhaust is absorbed by oceans, plants and trees. The rest contributes to the atmospheric build-up of greenhouse gas that has climate scientists envisioning global catastrophe. After the Copenhagen attendees talk up wind, solar, nuclear and spray-foam insulation, a bold solution that will inevitably come up is to capture and sequester some of that carbon dioxide deep underground. Geologic cavities in the U.S. alone could hold between 2,020 and 14,220 billion tons of CO2, enough to soak up three to 36 months of national output. Doing so would cost $200 or so per ton of carbon. It would require permits from local, state and federal agencies and would generate a good deal of anxiety for those living above the gas. In 1986, a volcano crater in Cameroon released a CO2 bubble large enough to kill 1,800 people while they slept. What if you could put the carbon where nobody lives? There is a perfect place 70 miles off the eastern U.S. seaboard and two miles below the ocean floor. It's a porous sandstone formation, trapped under a mile of hard shale, that stretches from New Jersey to Georgia. The section off the Jersey shore alone is capacious enough to store several hundred billion tons of CO2, enough to take on all the power plants within 155 miles of the coast from Maryland to Massachusetts for the next 100 years. Those very round numbers come from Daniel Schrag, a 43-year-old Harvard University geophysicist and MacArthur fellow. Schrag uncovered the sandstone field's potential after studying data from test gas wells drilled 30 years ago. When Schrag's idea to pipe carbon there was written up in 2006 in Harvard's magazine, the executives from a small but scrappy engineering firm called SCS Energy of Concord, Mass., called Schrag up to hear more about it. SCS Energy, with eight employees (not including Schrag in the post of scientific adviser), aims to start injecting CO2 into this undersea rock by 2016, and to make a profit. That would be a huge feat to pull off, given the engineering and regulatory hurdles. The plan includes a $6 billion 750-megawatt coal-fired power station in Linden, N.J., right across from Staten Island. That's a bold location--no one has built a coal-fired power plant anywhere near New York City in 30 years--but makes perfect sense. The Northeast offers the best prices to a seller of peak power, as long as the generator can solve the pollution problem. SCS' planned power station uses an established technique called coal gasification that heats coal and partially combusts it in pure oxygen to make carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Adding water turns the carbon monoxide into CO2. The 4.5 million tons of CO2 produced annually by the plant would be piped out to sea and injected into Schrag's sandstone. The hydrogen will be used to power a turbine during times when the price of electricity is high and to make ammonia or urea for fertilizer when it's low. It's an elegant solution. A typical generator that sells only electricity is highly inefficient with capital. It loses money most of the time, making up for that only during the few times a day or few days of the year when prices spike well above generation cost. SCS' Linden plant would stand a better chance of making money all day long. And, by promising to capture 90% of its carbon, SCS Energy can get away with burning the cheapest but dirtiest source of baseload fuel (coal) in the most expensive retail electricity market in the country. The money it makes from fertilizer would offset the additional electricity needed to strip out the carbon, compress it and pump it out to sea. The capital costs, to be sure, are quite high: $8 a watt, against something more like $2 for a Midwest coal plant that sends carbon into the atmosphere. If a government-mandated market for pollution offsets ever materializes, the 26-inch pipe hauling away carbon would be able to handle not only the plant's own waste gas but another 10 million tons from other sources in New Jersey. Disposal fees from the latter are supposed to generate $240 million per year. The Waxman-Markey climate bill making its way through the House has a $90 a ton credit for early carbon sequestration projects. "That would make the project wildly profitable, as this project is already profitable [on the books] without any subsidy," says Schrag. It's not going to get done without some help from taxpayers. SCS Energy co-founder James Croyle, who spent decades as a project finance banker, will seek some piece of the $1.8 billion in loan guarantees the federal government is offering for coal gasification projects, or a piece of the $3.4 billion the stimulus bill earmarked for carbon capture research and development. Croyle also is awaiting some kind of price for carbon and figures his plant can achieve a 20% return for its investors over a 20-year period just based on what he calls a "reasonable" price for carbon, something in the $20 range. Carbon capture and storage on a large scale is still more theoretical than real. A study from the Belfer Center at Harvard University estimated it would cost $120 to $180 for every ton of CO2 put away by a power plant retrofitted with carbon-capture equipment. That could double the retail price of electricity. The process lacks any clear regulations or permitting process. The International Renewable Energy Agency, a trade group of solar and wind manufacturers that would rather see no carbon produced at all, calls it a "fata morgana" until at least 2020. For the past 13 years, Statoil of Norway has been re-injecting 3,000 tons of CO2 per day into sandstone half a mile below the Norwegian North Sea, but the impetus to continue that project came from Norway's steep carbon tax of $60 per ton. American Electric Power's 1.3-gigawatt coal plant in New Haven, W.Va., began burying 1.5% of its carbon dioxide under a cap of dolomite 7,800 feet below the Ohio River. The plant needed to install a separate 20-megawatt generator just to do the job. The technology comes from French industrial firm Alstom. Denbury Resources, an oil and gas company, is seeking customers for a 500-mile pipeline to take CO2 from coal-fired generators in the Midwest to inject in its oil and gas fields in Mississippi. The U.K. government wants to award $1.5 billion to kick off Britain's first big coal-capture project sometime next year. Sequestration's critics say the costs are too high and the risks of leaks still unknown. But there may be no other way to meet the year-2020 greenhouse-gas reduction goals most countries set for themselves prior to the Copenhagen talks. The world adds 100 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity every year, much of it in China and India. Coal generates 46% of the juice in the U.S. SCS is working on the permits and is hunting for capital. This privately held firm may be small, but it managed to get a natural-gas fired power plant
completed in New York City in 2006. Maybe, despite what the wind and solar lobbyists are saying, the carbon project is something more than a batch of marsh
gas.
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brentns |
Climate Insurance Is in the Cross Hairs as Negotiators Prep for Copenhagen | ||||||||||||||||
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Advocates for nations vulnerable to climate change are accusing the United States of trying to "kill" a prominent global warming provision that would
create a massive insurance program for countries that face rising destruction from natural disasters
The controversial measure -- which currently is part of the voluminous draft treaty text leading up to international climate talks in Copenhagen -- seeks financial payments for countries that might slip underwater sometime this century, as well as for those that increasingly suffer from drought, floods and cyclones. The program could cost the United States and other developed nations billions every year, and perhaps amount to an admission that Americans are largely responsible for warming the world. That is considered a legal pitfall that might raise questions on the scale of slavery reparations for African-Americans or financial apologies to Native Americans, some observers say. http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/11/05/05climatewire-climate-insurance-is-in-the-cross-hairs-as-n-14798.html |
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brentns |
British Law Elevates Climate Change Belief To Same Status As Relgion | ||||||||||||||||
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AL Goreans can delight that their green beliefs are now an official religion, in the eyes of the law. One day on from the climate change spiritualists knocking
at the door, global warming belief is granted the legal status of a religion.
The messenger is Tim Nicholson, 42, from Oxford, former head of sustainability at property firm Grainger plc. He tells Mr Justice Michael Burton that he was made redundant in July 2008 due to his "philosophical belief about climate change and the environment". Mr Burton rules that "a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations". http://www.anorak.co.uk/229668/media/global-warming/british-law-elevates-climate-change-belief-to-same-status-as-relgion.html |
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MickyScars |
Nyet Nyet | ||||||||||||||||
Russia Still Dragging Its Feet on Climate ChangeRussia doesn't seem to care two bits about global warming, and it's not hard to see why. Most Russians would probably be happy if the country was a little warmer. Officials even joke that once climate change has run its course, people may start pouring into Siberia instead of trying to escape it. If the polar ice caps melt any further, Russia would be able to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean, where it's believed to have huge fossil-fuel reserves. For the rest of the planet, however, the picture is not so cheerful. To say that Russia is hesitant about tackling climate change is putting it mildly. The last time the world tried to get the country's cooperation on the issue was in 1997, during negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol (the international treaty on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions). Because Russia is the world's third largest source of emissions after the U.S. and China, the accord would have failed without it. So the treaty was written in a way that would allow Russia to keep polluting as much as it wanted and grant the country billions of dollars in emissions allowances to sell to other countries that needed to meet their Kyoto commitments. (Read about getting air traffic under control.) As a U.N. official who participated in the talks put it, "Russia got the sweetest deal: free money, no restrictions." But apparently even that wasn't enough. It took another seven years of painstaking negotiations - and promises from the West to help Russia join the World Trade Organization (WTO) - to get the country to ratify the deal. How the world will persuade Russia to take an active part in the upcoming climate-change summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 2 remains to be seen. Scientists say this is the last real chance that global leaders have to deal with global warming before its effects become irreversible, and this time around there are few obvious carrots with which to bait the Kremlin. (Russia has since abandoned plans to join the WTO.) And Russia has already indicated that it is not putting a high priority on the talks. In June, President Dmitri Medvedev announced the country's emissions targets, which would effectively see Russia spew 30% more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2020 than it does today. "We will not cut our development potential," Medvedev said at the time. Then, at a preliminary round of climate talks in Copenhagen in late October, Russia sent an even more disappointing message. The head of the country's delegation, Mikhail Zelikhanov, a parliamentary deputy for Prime Minister Valdimir Putin's United Russia Party, questioned the basic premise of the fight against climate change. "Scientific circles in Russia and elsewhere still do not have a united opinion on the causes of global warming," Zelikhanov told the group of lawmakers from 16 countries in the hall of the Danish parliament. He suggested that an international panel be created to study whether or not global warming was the result of human actions and whether it could be stopped by cutting pollution. Zelikhanov is part of a growing chorus of global-warming skeptics in Russia. At a climate conference in St. Petersburg in 2007, Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, told experts that a process of "global cooling" was in fact taking place. As evidence, he cited the paintings of the 16th century Dutch masters, whose warmly colored landscapes, he said, showed that temperatures were indeed higher back then. And last month, the state-run Channel One television station aired a documentary called The History of a Deception: Global Warming, which claimed that a media conspiracy had invented the idea that pollution is to blame for climate change. None of this bodes especially well for the success of the December summit. "It will not be possible to finalize an agreement without the participation of Russia," says Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen, who is spearheading the negotiations. "We will need to engage Russia in this dialogue." This might be possible through concessions, though. Last month, Denmark put itself on Moscow's good side when it became the first country to approve the construction of Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea. On Nov. 2, Rasmussen received a sign of support from Putin on climate change, albeit a slightly vague one. "Are we ready to support Danish efforts to promote the ideas of the post-Kyoto period? Yes, we are," Putin said at a joint press conference with Rasmussen. A European official involved in the negotiations says Russia's fear of isolation may also compel it to cooperate. With the U.S. and China taking the lead in the climate-change summit and Brazil and India playing an active role, Russia would be the largest polluter and the only major power not helping to solve the crisis. "They won't want to be the bad guy," says the official, who spoke last month in Copenhagen on condition of anonymity. But another member of the Russian delegation at the October talks left little room for optimism. Elena Chistyakova, chief adviser to the parliament's foreign affairs committee, says Russia may sign the treaty - and that's it. "[Russia] will drag out the ratification as long as they can. And if they ratify it, then they'll drag out the implementation," she says. "There's just no political will." Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1929071_1929070_1934785,00.html |
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MickyScars |
U.S. Senate panel approves Democratic climate bill | ||||||||||||||||
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U.S. Senate panel approves Democratic climate bill
* Senator Boxer hails "great signal" to Copenhagen * Republicans boycott committee vote * Senator Baucus says opposes 20 pct carbon cut target (Adds reaction in paragraphs 6-9) http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idAFN0511502820091105?rpc=44
Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ignored a Republican boycott and used their majority to approve the legislation that would require U.S. industry to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. "I think this is a great signal for Copenhagen that there's a will to do what it takes to advance this issue," committee Chairman Barbara Boxer told reporters after her panel voted. The committee vote also came as international negotiators held a contentious climate change meeting in Barcelona, their final session before the Copenhagen summit starts Dec. 7. But Democrats are likely to fall far short of their goal of passing legislation in the full Senate before Copenhagen as Boxer's bill lacks enough support for full approval. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated as much. While he applauded the environment panel's vote, he said, "There is much more work yet to do to obtain broad support" for a bill. Tuesday's election, which saw conservative Republicans capture governors' seats in New Jersey and Virginia, could embolden some Republicans to ramp up opposition to climate change legislation. "This bill will send energy costs racing upward and put the brakes on any hope of economic recovery," said Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican. "Once the American public starts paying for these special interests, Democrats may not have much to hope for in future elections either." Some environmental groups praised the Senate panel's action on the bill. Eric Haxthausen, director of climate policy for The Nature Conservancy, said it "helps clear a path forward on climate and energy legislation." The Union of Concerned Scientists urged that the 20-percent carbon reduction goal not be weakened. Senator John Kerry, who co-authored the committee-approved bill with fellow Democrat Boxer, is leading an effort with some Republicans and the White House to draft a compromise. With all seven Republicans chairs empty in the Senate environment panel's hearing room, 11 Democrats voted to approve the bill. Only one Democrat, Senator Max Baucus, who chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee that also will review climate legislation, voted no. AREAS OF COMPROMISE Before casting his vote, Baucus said he was committed to passing a bill to tackle global warming. But he said the goal of cutting carbon emissions from utilities, factories and oil refineries by 20 percent by 2020 was too high. Baucus said he would seek a 17 percent goal, with a "trigger" to hike it up to 20 percent if other countries "play by the same rules" in cutting their carbon emissions. A climate bill that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June sets a 17-percent target for 2020. Baucus' vote against the bill reflects the difficulties ahead in crafting a measure that would have to attract the 60 votes needed for passage by the Senate. Other senators from Midwestern and Southern states heavily reliant on coal will seek their own changes, which could upset liberals now supporting the bill. There is widespread expectation in the Senate that for any climate control bill to pass, it will have to contain new government incentives for expanding U.S. nuclear power-generating capacity and offshore oil drilling, along with money to help develop clean ways to burn coal, which is abundant in the United States. There were scores of amendments to Boxer's bill that environment committee members wanted to debate and vote on before approving it, but they were unable to because of the Republican boycott. Under committee rules, at least two Republicans had to be present to debate and vote on changing the bill. Boxer delayed work on the legislation for two days, saying she was giving Republicans the opportunity to collect more information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and to offer their own amendments. But Republicans did not take her up on the offer and by Thursday, Boxer had lost patience with the delay. (Editing by Xavier Briand)
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One Crude Dude |
Hockey Stick Spurs Novel Analysis | ||||||||||||||||
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Hey! That's cheating. They can't just pick what data they like and kick out the data they don't like.
OCD Hockey Stick Spurs Novel Analysis
The "hockey stick" graph has been both a linchpin and target in the climate change debate. As a plot of average
Northern Hemisphere temperature from two millennia ago to the present, it stays relatively flat until the 20th century, when it rises up sharply, like the
blade of an upturned hockey stick. Warming skeptics have long decried how the temperatures were inferred, but a new reconstruction of the past 600 years,
using an entirely different method, finds similar results and may help remove lingering doubts.
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DurangoBill |
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Wikipedia has a graph showing the temperature record compiled from multiple independent sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years
The bottom line is that the "Hockey Stick" graph has been proven to be essentially right. The Global Warming Deniers will continue to invent their fantasy graphs, but it's important to remember that the Global Warming Deniers continue to live in fantasyland. Bill |
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brentns |
Climate catastrophe cancelled | ||||||||||||||||
dpwozney |
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http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543
"U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Hearing Statements Date: 12/06/2006 Statement of Dr. David Deming University of Oklahoma College of Earth and Energy Climate Change and the Media [trimmed] I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period'. The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the 'Little Ice Age' took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the High Middle Ages. The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be 'gotten rid of.' ..." [ continued at this link ] |
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DurangoBill |
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More information that confirms that the original "Hockey Stick" graph was essentially correct.
From: Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (2006) Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=3 "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years." Bill |
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