Top StoriesMay’s sharp fall in jobless numbers added to the greenness of the ‘recovery’ (or less bad) thesis; overnight June’s unemployment figures were so awful that they could have stunted at least, the wavering shoots.
Fighting global warming — now where’s that magic bullet?
|
The temptation for our politicians to look for magic bullet technological solutions to global warming is great. The notion that a technological deus ex machine will spare us from having to adjust our consumption patterns – and therefore spare politicians voter angst — continues to fascinate (Freeman Dyson recently advocated genetically-modified carbon-eating trees). For a country like Australia that relies on coal so heavily both for power generation and exports, the temptation has proven to be overwhelming. The Howard Government, when it finally stop denying climate change was occurring, succumbed to it in joining the Bush Administration in the “Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate”, aimed at promoting a technological solution to global warming. None of the proponents of geosequestration argue it is a magic bullet, but it has attracted serious government support. The Otway carbon capture demonstration project has received tens of millions of dollars in support from the federal and state governments, and the Federal Government is providing $50m to support another demonstration project at Biloela in Queensland. Earlier this year, Resources Minister Martin Ferguson announced the introduction of a regulatory framework for geosequestration, and a tender by the end of the year for sea-bed carbon capture projects. And Ross Garnaut in releasing his draft report last week cited carbon capture as one of the key technologies that could ease the impacts of an emissions trading scheme on the coal-based power industry. Technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum, of course. It has to be funded and researched, with projects and concepts chosen from many competing priorities. Once developed, it has to be commercialised and marketed and, if it is to be successful, must prove effective and appealing. Ideally, government involvement in any of those stages should be kept to a minimum. Picking technological winners is hard enough for the private sector to do, let alone governments. And in the absence of incentives and signals to develop and adopt new technology, investment in it is likely to be wasted. New and improved technologies – for alternative fuel, greater efficiency in existing energy systems, and carbon capture – will play a role in carbon abatement. But it is unlikely to be one or even several technologies. It will be hundreds or thousands of small systems that fit the differing needs of businesses and consumers, and for which there is an economic case for adoption. Geosequestration may have a role as one of these, but in the absence of an emission trading scheme that will create incentives for its adoption, its development and adoption won’t happen in any time frame likely to save us from cooking the planet. Its encouragement by governments – using taxpayer funding – should be approached sceptically. Will geosequestration play a role as one of many small mechanisms to address climate change – or is it a politically convenient device for politicians – especially those representing coal-dependent regions — scared of confronting voters with the real price of change? Crikey has asked three key players in the climate change debate – the Australian Coal Association, the Australian Conservation Foundation, and Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne, to discuss the role geosequestration can play in Australia’s efforts to significantly reduce its carbon emissions. Today, Dr Peter Cook of the Cooperative Research Center for Greenhouse Gas Technologies discusses the general concept of carbon capture and the operation of the Otway Project. |
|
|
19 Comments
There is already a proven carbon capture and sequestration process - photosynthesis. Prof Garnaut made the following comment in his interim report - “The most significant opportunities may be in the area of improved carbon sequestration through better management of soil carbon.”
I wonder just how much carbon could be sequestered if $50million was spent on promoting biological means rather than the current unhealthy obsession with unproven technology.
There are 2 critical aspects to addressing global warming and reversing desertification.
1 – reduce future emissions – for this TECHNOLOGY is absolutely essential.
2 – absorb the current excess legacy loadings already in circulation – for this BIOLOGY is absolutely essential.
http://www.soilcarbon.com.au
Soil Carbon: You left off a further two points. 3. Spend a trillion dollars bribing all the churches, ESPECIALLY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH to agree to a one child policy. 4. Saw Africa off at the Suez Canal.
Once people start to want their own answer to our problem-unless one is an Andrew Bolt, who says the whole thing is a Furphy-to be accepted above everyone else’s ideas. Then the lethal line. Either everyone does it my way or there will be no way I’ll accept someone else’s way. Sound grotesquely way-out? It shouldn’t. It’s called John Howard’s answer to the Republic syndrome.
Already we have goons like Victoria’s very, very own John Brumby circling around like a pack of hyenas.
Bernard: I don’t wish to be pedantic but, isn’t it meant to be ‘deus ex machina’, or are you being frightfully witty and I don’t get the allusion?
Last night I tried something funny. I turned our level of carbon emissions per person into people. We are filthy in this nation with each person emitting about 23 tonnes per annum or 63 kilos per day. That means that basically every day of the week we put one average sized person into the atmosphere or 7,665,000,000 per annum. Just think about that.
And when our electricity was privatised in Adelaide consumption fell dramatically as prices rose.
One thing journalists who bloviate and opionate forget is that coal is carbon anyway. By burning it we make CO2. If it can be captured successfully and solidified we have a new resource.
That is basic biology.
Now to the journalists. Matthew Warren is very sarcastic today clearly hoping we have forgotten that he was stooge for the NSW Minerals Council for years which translates into “hack for the coal polluters”. Chris Uhlmann doesn’t believe in climate because they cannot predict the weather for next Friday. Grade 5 kids are capable of knowing the difference between climate and weather but perhaps the seminary fried Uhlmann’s brains while he was talking to his imaginary friend.
Why are there so few science journalists in this country? Why do we have to have the likes of Milne and his poison pen bringing things down to nonsense.
In Adelaide today it winter. Just today. It might be the only day of winter we have because we haven’t had a cold, wet winter since 2000 and we haven’t had a wet winter since 2005. Our rainfall is 4 inches below average again this year yet vintners are stealing billions of litres of water from the Murray rather than plant seasonal crops.
It is criminal behaviour that has gone unchecked for a century - we are slowly getting the point but what do we do?
Bray like mindless donkeys at Kevin Rudd.
Venise - intrigued, I checked my copy and I apparently wrote “machine”. So I typed “machina” and saw that Microsoft auto-corrected it. Call it deux ex software. Microsoft knows best.
Marilyn: The reason there are so few science journalists in this country, is the same as why are there so few anythings in this country. Historically, The Liberal Party and the National Party, or a coalition thereof have been in power for a far greater period of time than the Labor Party. And one of the truly revolting things about their policies is to drag everyone down to the same foetid level as themselves. This they have achieved with stunning success. “Give the peasants as much footy, cricket, formula one car racing, olympics for the brain- dead, Catholic youth day jamborees and quaint and antiquated circuses called The Commonwealth games. Never discuss ideas, especially if the answers contain words of more than two syllables. Always support the farmers, even when they have been the origins of all our problems, and grovel in front of QEII and her nauseating and dysfunctional family. Finally, NEVER FORGET that Australians are a fifth rate people.
Bernard: Thanks Bernard, I thought my brain was out to lunch.
Cheers
Venise
Bernard, you are gonna hate me…I think it’s deus, not deux. ‘Bye, Venise
Marilyn,
I feel a need to correct you also. Converting gasseous CO2 into solid as a resource is not basic biology, it is nonsense, that totally violates the laws of thermodynamics. By oxidising Coal (basically pure carbon) into CO2 we liberate a lot of energy, and make a gas which is MUCH bigger than the original coal. To use that CO2 again for anything useful, all the energy we’re going to get out of it has to be put back in. It’s useless as CO2 and definitely won’t burn. It’s also not a solid, but a gas, and will need to be pumped and pressurised at an enormous energy cost to sequester it anywhere.
EB
Also Bernard, I’m a bit slow on the uptake today, but where do I get to hear what Dr Cook has to say about CO2 capture? Is it in the podcast?
EB
There’s an interesting parallel here in the now-boring subject of the road toll. Casualty rates are now one-fifth of their peak in the 60s and 70s on an exposure (ie per km travelled) basis. This hasn’t happened by accident. It took a sustained policy focus over decades and at times a good deal of political courage. Most of you have probably forgotten just how hard some people fought against things like compulsory seatbelts and random breath testing. Innovation on safety technology has played a huge part but only because governments and the community created the demand for it.
In 1970 the Melbourne Sun (which then sold more papers than it does today) ran a campaign called “Declare War on 1034.” 1034 was the road fatality figure in Victoria in 1969. It played a huge role in preparing the political ground for the hard decisions that needed to be made. It may be wishful thinking, but it would be nice to see one of our major media groups have the courage to take a similar leadership role now. After all, we may not be killing ourselves at quite the same rate but what are we doing to the planet.
It’s later in the email, Evan.
Anna Bligh in Queensland is also putting funds into carbon capture and sequestration, $900 million in central Queensland but she also thinks it is OK to expand our coal exports as she says if we do not burn it it is not an Australian contributiuon to climate change. In NSW the Premier is much the same. We are the largest exporter of coal in the world and both Queensland and NSW are going hell bent to double it. As an engineer I would surprised if we found an economic way to capture the CO2 from the hot flue gas and then compress it and pump it underground and keep it there. I suspect that it will be along time before it is available to produce so called clean coal. I think if we stick to this or the nuclear solution then the planetis doomed.
Rapid ecosystem collapse: We warmed 0.2C/decade the last two decades. Warming will probably double by mid-century, causing all ecosystems to be rapidly destroyed.
“Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming” — Leemans and Eickhout (2004), “Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,” Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228
Having trouble reading the above scientific quotation? Here is a simpler way to think about it:
“Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them.” — Dr James Lovelock’s lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. ‘07
There is a very inexpensive simple way to immediately cool the Earth: just put a small amount of aerosol into the air to dim the sun. We won’t be able to stop rapid ecosystem collapse without geoengineering.
Bernard Keane has interesting twist on the angry ‘Gods’ of Nature raining retribution on mankind. Last Friday we had the coalitions’s ‘Keanely predicted’ response to the Interim Report: “Garnaut followed by frog plague and death of all firstborns!” and today it is the man-made false idol “Deus ex machina” that he derides.
Dr. Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a climate scientist and sceptic had an interesting take on this in The National Review recently:
“It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops. Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the wrath of the gods of nature”
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MDExMTEwZWVjZmI5MGFmNzgzYmM1MWVmNTc0MDMyYTU=
CO2 is a natural gas that we produce and Nature ‘fixes’ trough trees and foliage.
If we are believe the threat of global warming then all options to decrease CO2 production and increase ‘fixing’ or sequestration need to be fully canvasses but funnily enough they are not……….
The Garnaud Interim Report has immediately devalued a national asset: our coal reserves and the industry that flows from those reserves. The rubber has already hit the road.
Venise, I assume that your suggestions on the catholic church and Africa is sarcastic as both those suggestions are pretty offensive
.
M, i think you hit on a good point about the road toll as there is a lot that governments can do from behind the scene by changing building codes (thermal standards etc, energy efficiency standards (appliances etc), fuel efficiency etc.
And Brad, you make a good point about the migration rate of the biosphere being over run by the warming it will experience but i believe your support for aerosols should come with a foot note. While the idea of aerosols being used to cool the earth does have some merit in a pure physical sense. There are loop holes, such as that aerosols only cool where the sun shines which means it works the most at the tropics and least at the poles. While CO2 warms the most at the poles and least at the tropics, and for all hours of the day. So there is a miss match. Then there’s also the fact that introducing aerosols will have massive effect on global circulation. The eruption of Laki on Iceland led to a weakening of the monsoon in India and playing with aerosols would lead to similar problems. Basically what you are doing is saying we’re going to continue our experiment with co2 on the earth and add in another experiment of sulphur on the earth. It is not out of the question but should not be thrown around lightly.
Orfeo
Orfeo: So you think that over-population hasn’t had anything to do with climate change? Or do you think it’s reasonable for the Catholic Church to preach to all it’s mentally challanged followers, the need to reduce the world’s population in order to prevent further mass-starvation. Not by encouraging the mentally-challanged followers to keep on breeding without practising a bit of birth control? And any other religion which is stone-age in it’s regarding women as animals to be ready to re-produce a child a year is just as evil. Of course, shock, horror, dismay. You might make it mandatory for men to have a vasectomy after the first child. As a Catholic I daresay you would find my suggestions offensive. Certainly my suggestion to saw Africa off at the Suez Canal is a practical impossibility. However, just how much more of the starving millions which are breeding there last? Ten, twenty years? How much longer can the West afford to support a thousand Africans per every one person of the West. How typical that the Catholic Church doesn’t accept that aid given to African countries will find about 95% goes straight into the pockets of the gold-frogged uniformed dictators. Even more typical is how the Holy Roman Catholic Church ordered the Australian Government to not send aid if it contained birth-control information. As for bribing the Catholic Church. Well you can become a knight of the Catholic Chiurch if you fork over enough money. Remember the Kennedy family in America? They were always buying minor Catholic nobility.
The latest ploy by the Pope is to suggest that a sort of economic forum of the West can be created, under the aegis of the Catholic Church, the better to direct aid to the starving. How much easier for the Catholic Church to hand over some of its own obscene wealth.
Orfeo: if you thought there was any hint of sarcasm in my comments, you are as deluded as Cardinal Pell.
If non Catholic men were as guilty of loving the bums of little boys as are Catholic laymen and their spin merchants, in the form of befrocked priests and Cardinals, they would be flung into prison so quickly it would make your head spin. But because it’s the Holy Roman Catholic Church they can behave as they wish. And who was the first to fly to the defence of Cardinal Pell. None other than the Jesuit politician himself. Tony Abbott, the man who had had so much success in banning RU487, the so called abortion pill.
How dare the Catholic Church impose its will on the people of our “SECULAR” nation. And how dare you be offended by someone who hates your religion with a hatred, equalled only by the sanctimonous, rotten, putrid and total lack of any ‘moral imperitives’ laughingly referred to as dogma as practised by the Catholic Church. One day you will all be known as the scabrous jackels you are! Have a lovely Gymkhana wont you?
Orfeo: So you think that over-population hasn’t had anything to do with climate change? Or do you think it’s reasonable for the Catholic Church to preach to all it’s mentally challanged followers, the need to reduce the world’s population in order to prevent further mass-starvation. Not by encouraging the mentally-challanged followers to keep on breeding without practising a bit of birth control? And any other religion which is stone-age in it’s regarding women as animals to be ready to re-produce a child a year is just as evil. Of course, shock, horror, dismay. You might make it mandatory for men to have a vasectomy after the first child. As a Catholic I daresay you would find my suggestions offensive. Certainly my suggestion to saw Africa off at the Suez Canal is a practical impossibility. However, just how much more of the starving millions which are breeding there last? Ten, twenty years? How much longer can the West afford to support a thousand Africans per every one person of the West. How typical that the Catholic Church doesn’t accept that aid given to African countries will find about 95% goes straight into the pockets of the gold-frogged uniformed dictators. Even more typical is how the Holy Roman Catholic Church ordered the Australian Government to not send aid if it contained birth-control information. As for bribing the Catholic Church. Well you can become a knight of the Catholic Chiurch if you fork over enough money. Remember the Kennedy family in America? They were always buying minor Catholic nobility.
The latest ploy by the Pope is to suggest that a sort of economic forum of the West can be created, under the aegis of the Catholic Church, the better to direct aid to the starving. How much easier for the Catholic Church to hand over some of its own obscene wealth.
Orfeo: if you thought there was any hint of sarcasm in my comments, you are as deluded as Cardinal Pell.
If non Catholic men were as guilty of loving the bums of little boys as are Catholic laymen and their spin merchants, in the form of befrocked priests and Cardinals, they would be flung into prison so quickly it would make your head spin. But because it’s the Holy Roman Catholic Church they can behave as they wish. And who was the first to fly to the defence of Cardinal Pell. None other than the Jesuit politician himself. Tony Abbott, the man who had had so much success in banning RU487, the so called abortion pill.
How dare the Catholic Church impose its will on the people of our “SECULAR” nation. And how dare you be offended by someone who hates your religion with a hatred, equalled only by the sanctimonous, rotten, putrid and total lack of any ‘moral imperitives’ laughingly referred to as dogma as practised by the Catholic Church. One day you will all be known as the scabrous jackels you are! Have a lovely Gymkhana wont you?
Orfeo: So you think that over-population hasn’t had anything to do with climate change? Or do you think it’s reasonable for the Catholic Church to preach to all it’s mentally challanged followers, the need to reduce the world’s population in order to prevent further mass-starvation. Not by encouraging the mentally-challanged followers to keep on breeding without practising a bit of birth control? And any other religion which is stone-age in it’s regarding women as animals to be ready to re-produce a child a year is just as evil. Of course, shock, horror, dismay. You might make it mandatory for men to have a vasectomy after the first child. As a Catholic I daresay you would find my suggestions offensive. Certainly my suggestion to saw Africa off at the Suez Canal is a practical impossibility. However, just how much more of the starving millions which are breeding there last? Ten, twenty years? How much longer can the West afford to support a thousand Africans per every one person of the West. How typical that the Catholic Church doesn’t accept that aid given to African countries will find about 95% goes straight into the pockets of the gold-frogged uniformed dictators. Even more typical is how the Holy Roman Catholic Church ordered the Australian Government to not send aid if it contained birth-control information. As for bribing the Catholic Church. Well you can become a knight of the Catholic Chiurch if you fork over enough money. Remember the Kennedy family in America? They were always buying minor Catholic nobility.
The latest ploy by the Pope is to suggest that a sort of economic forum of the West can be created, under the aegis of the Catholic Church, the better to direct aid to the starving. How much easier for the Catholic Church to hand over some of its own obscene wealth.
Orfeo: if you thought there was any hint of sarcasm in my comments, you are as deluded as Cardinal Pell.
If non Catholic men were as guilty of loving the bums of little boys as are Catholic laymen and their spin merchants, in the form of befrocked priests and Cardinals, they would be flung into prison so quickly it would make your head spin. But because it’s the Holy Roman Catholic Church they can behave as they wish. And who was the first to fly to the defence of Cardinal Pell. None other than the Jesuit politician himself. Tony Abbott, the man who had had so much success in banning RU487, the so called abortion pill.
How dare the Catholic Church impose its will on the people of our “SECULAR” nation. And how dare you be offended by someone who hates your religion with a hatred, equalled only by the sanctimonous, rotten, putrid and total lack of any ‘moral imperitives’ laughingly referred to as dogma as practised by the Catholic Church. One day you will all be known as the scabrous jackels you are! Have a lovely Gymkhana wont you?
Orfeo: I’ve had a long day. I’m afraid I have little regard for the Catholic Church. But I didn’t have to be quite so severe, honestly :). As for it reprinting it twice, I swear this wasn’t me. I do rant on but I’ve certainly learned enough about a computer not to accidentally keep re-pressing the submit button. I mean, it had to have been me. I just can’t imagine how it happened. For the past two days I”ve been unable to submit an article on the deplorable Brendan Nelson and his wretched, multiple stances on the environment. Having lost patience after the error anouncement turned up after the fouth attempt, I’ve spent hours trying to find ways to get it through. With no success. If it is suddenly accepted there should be about 20 reprints. It’s so late at night I can’t believe it. I will never be able to accept the CC but if I’m that rude again you have my permission to try to pull me into line.
Cheers
Venise.