Category: Climate science

How Kiwi know-how can save the world

This a guest post by Kevin Cudby, the author of From Smoke To Mirrors, reviewed earlier this week by Bryan.

I started researching my new book, From Smoke to Mirrors, back in 2007. I had been following alternative energy stories, and I was inundated with blogs and press releases from hucksters peddling silly ideas that would do nothing but separate investors from their savings.

So, in late 2007 I set out to document the strengths, weaknesses, and costs of all the options. I kept in mind that hydrocarbon liquid fuels (petrol, diesel, jet fuel, and fuel oil) underpin key elements of human civilisation, such as food production and distribution. Although the relative importance of cars, trucks, aircraft, and tractors might change over time, it will only be possible to eliminate liquid-fuel-related greenhouse emissions if we can find practical alternatives for every vehicle and machine. Forty percent of New Zealand’s liquid fuel is used on non-road applications, so it would be pointless to fix road transport and ignore agriculture, construction, aviation, and all the other non-road liquid fuel users.

 

My engineering background helped me sort the practical options from the vacuous nonsense. It had been a while since I’d worked with battery technology, and I enjoyed ferreting out detailed technical information about the latest rechargeable batteries, information their promoters would rather keep secret. I learned, for example, that battery-powered farm tractors would be about as practical as concrete helicopters. Then I moved on to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles—which, from the practical perspective, are looking pretty good. But hydrogen tractors are almost as impractical as battery-burners.

We know about practical processes for converting softwood chips into electricity, hydrogen, hydrocarbon fuels, and ethanol

It is clear that energy forestry is New Zealand’s most practical option for hydrogen, and for hydrocarbon fuels. New Zealand scientists knew about this possibility way back in the 1970s, though the technology for making trees into fuel was still being developed. Now, we know about practical processes for converting softwood chips into electricity, hydrogen, hydrocarbon fuels, and ethanol. No matter which technology New Zealand uses for road transport, our energy forests would occupy pretty-much the same amount of land. Researchers have calculated that the “energy profit” (or EROEI) of fuels made from wood chips will be better than that of our existing fossil fuels.

Perhaps the most exciting discovery, for me, was that radiata pine forests offer so many environmental side-benefits. I knew from personal observation that the native undergrowth in a 25-year-old radiata forest is far more luxuriant than the undergrowth in a 25-year-old stand of regenerating kanuka. But I am not a biologist, so I had to listen to the experts. I learned that converting steep low-quality grazing land into energy forests would improve biodiversity by creating habitat for a wide range of native species, from fungi to kiwis and falcons (the bird, that is). And I learned that foresters do not use fertiliser, and that third-generation radiata forests in the Central North Island are doing as well, or better, than the original plantings.

It seems New Zealand foresters have invented a biomass production process that can operate indefinitely. The technique has been thoroughly proven over many decades of real-world practice. We can share this expertise with other countries, which means Kiwi know-how can help knock a very large dent in anthropogenic greenhouse emissions.

There’s an excellent chance New Zealand will have the world’s cheapest renewable petrol and diesel

Even more exciting, there’s an excellent chance New Zealand will have the world’s cheapest renewable petrol and diesel. I’m guessing many New Zealanders will be very excited about that, especially considering what I learned about the future of conventional cars and trucks. Talking to overseas engineers, I learned about simple, practical engine and transmission systems capable of more than halving the fuel consumption of conventional road vehicles, without downsizing them, and without relying on battery hybrid systems.
So, although renewable petrol and diesel will be somewhat more expensive than today’s fuels, the improved efficiency of future vehicles will more than compensate.

We can be almost certain that sometime between now and 2030, the global economy will hit serious problems with the supply of liquid fuels. That is because fuel supplies will increasingly come from synthetic fuel factories. It can take up to six years to design, build, and fully commission a synthetic fuel factory, regardless of whether it makes climate-neutral fuel, or fossil fuel. Multi-national energy companies will be able to maximise their profits by delaying construction of synthetic fuel factories until prices begin to skyrocket. We know this will happen, but we cannot say exactly when it will start to affect global fuel prices. A growing number of analysts think it will happen before 2030, and the real pessimists think it will happen before 2020.

However, by 2040, if New Zealand gets stuck in and builds the necessary infrastructure, we can reasonably expect freight costs, and vehicle running costs, to consume a smaller fraction of the family budget than they do today.

There is no sign of any practical alternative for hydrocarbon liquid fuels for non-road applications. But these applications account for nearly half of New Zealand’s liquid fuel consumption.

So, while car and truck manufacturers are playing around with every technology that can turn a wheel, New Zealand should climate-neutralise its supply of essential, non-road fuels. This will keep us busy well into the 2020s. By then, thanks to advanced fuel injection and exhaust treatment systems, tailpipe emissions from conventional vehicles will be insignificant compared with pollution from tyre wear. All road vehicles have tyres, so environmental concerns will not influence our choice of cars and trucks. We’ll use whichever technology is the most practical.

From Smoke to Mirrors outlines a transition plan that takes account of these and other factors. I did not invent the transition plan. Associate Professor Susan Krumdieck did that, leaving it up to people like me to flesh it out and show why it is practical. Krumdieck proposed a direct attack on the problem’s fundamental origin. Fossil fuels cause greenhouse emissions, and greenhouse emissions cause climate change, so Krumdieck says we should simply ban fossil fuels. If you read From Smoke to Mirrors, you’ll see how simple and practical this would be.

New Zealand can do this. In fact, New Zealand should do this. We are a very small country, and if we cannot work together, how can we expect the rest of the world to do it?We need all our political parties to work out a multi-party agreement. This is about banning fossil fuels and developing the infrastructure to fully replace the billions of litres of fuel we’ll need by 2040. Left-right political questions, such as whether to build roads or railways, would be outside the scope of this agreement.

I’ve met young people who say: “We’re stuffed anyway, so I’m just gonna get as much as I can , while I can, and to hell with having kids.” That’s OK if there is no technical solution, or if the solution involves returning to medieval technology. But I’ve seen enough good technology to know the world will not go there. So, I hope my book will provide hope for those young people who have been led to believe there is no hope. My grandchildren’s generation will be the first to grow up knowing that we can solve this problem, because “From Smoke to Mirrors” makes the solutions readable and easily understood.

New Zealand can be self-sufficient for climate-neutral energy. Other countries can benefit from Kiwi expertise. This is a multi-decade project that could inspire every New Zealander. The question is whether our politicians are up to the challenge.

Gone for good: Arctic Ocean ice free all year by the 2040s?

A few days ago I used a combination of Arctic sea ice volume data from the University of Washington’s PIOMAS model and NSIDC sea ice extent numbers to project that the Arctic Ocean would be effectively ice-free in late summer within ten years. The key to that exercise was the rate at which the volume of sea ice has been declining — 350 km3 per year over the last 30 years for the full dataset, 410 km3 per year over the last 20, and 740 km3 over the last decade at summer minimum. The rate of volume decline has obviously been increasing. Using those numbers to project ice extent in the future is one thing, but they also tell us something interesting about the overall Arctic heat budget — and we can use that to make a rough guess about when the Arctic will become ice-free year round. The answer is surprising…

Continue reading “Gone for good: Arctic Ocean ice free all year by the 2040s?”

Five years (threnody for Arctic sea ice)

Earlier this month the US National Snow & Ice Data Center issued its analysis of this year’s Arctic sea ice minimum — at 4.60 million km2 on September 19, the third lowest extent in the satellite record. However extent (defined here) doesn’t tell you everything about the state of the ice — according to the University of Washington’s PIOMAS ice model 2010 managed to set a new record low for sea ice volume.

In terms of the future of the Arctic sea ice, the volume of ice remaining at minimum is a crucial metric because it represents the size of the heat budget buffer between an ocean with a perennial floating ice cap and one that’s seasonally ice-free. For the Arctic to be ice free in summer, that buffer has to disappear, or become a lot smaller. I’ve been writing about sea ice volume for some time, and considered the overall Arctic heat budget in this post a couple of years ago, so news of the new low volume prompted me to think about what it might mean for the extent metric over the next few years. To do that, I downloaded the NSIDC’s September monthly average extent for the last 21 years, and plotted that against the PIOMAS model’s September average monthly volume (kindly supplied by Jinlun Zhang). Here’s what the data looks like when you plot it on the same chart.

SeaIceData.png

The red line at the bottom, labelled “thickness”, is what you get when you divide volume by extent, and that too has been in decline, reflecting the fact that the loss of volume has been happening faster than the reductions in extent.

Continue reading “Five years (threnody for Arctic sea ice)”

I’ve been wrong before

It appears that the crank pantheon has a new hero: John O’Sullivan — the “world’s most popular Internet writer on the greenhouse gas theory” and the man unafraid of getting everything wrong. The last time we encountered him, he was getting everything wrong about the New Zealand Climate “Science” Coalition’s attempt to take NIWA to court. In his latest piece — Royal Society Humiliated by Global Warming Basic Math Error — he’s getting everything wrong about CO2 and, surprise, his piece is being touted round the crank echo chamber — Delingpole’s blogged it, Morano’s linked to it, and poor old Treadgold’s repeated it verbatim. According to O’Sullivan, an article by an obscure Canadian scientist proves that:

Top international experts prove British numbers on carbon dioxide are wrong. Royal Society blunder grossly exaggerates climate impact.

Oh really?

No.

Continue reading “I’ve been wrong before”

Gambling with nature’s tolerance

Al Morrison, the director general of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation — the government body that manages about one-third of the country’s land area, from World Heritage temperate rainforest in the south to kauri forests in the north (not to mention running world-class efforts to conserve endangered native species such as the kakapo and tuatara) — gave a remarkable speech to Lincoln University last week. It was brave, far-sighted and touched so many right notes that it brought a bright little melody to my weekend reading.

Morrison was giving the university’s 12th annual State of the Nation’s Environment Address, and took the opportunity to discuss the pursuit of economic growth above all else in a country where conservation is a major contributor to that economy. Here are some of the highlights, but the whole thing is well worth a read:

Morrison considers the message from the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment:

We are degrading ecosystems and destroying species to a point where the services that nature provides, that we rely on for our sustenance, and that determine our prosperity, are being run down and out.

If we are to save ourselves from ourselves, then appealing to the intrinsic value of nature is not enough. It is not a matter of giving up that sense of awesome wonder, but rather adding to that, an argument designed to compel the uncommitted.

He explores the case for business to play a role in conservation in its widest sense.

It may seem crass to say that climate change and it’s big cousin, biodiversity loss, create a potential competitive advantage for New Zealand. But connecting the ethics and the self-interest; intrinsic value and economic benefits, helps us better understand that sustainable management of natural resources is not just about nice things to do when time and discretionary resources are available.

It is a necessary investment in the natural capital that sits at the base of our economy. Water, soil, air, nutrient cycles, climate regulation, pollination…these and other services are the natural capital we need to survive and prosper. That reality turns on its head the received wisdom that only rich counties can afford clean environments.

The way we measure economic progress is broken:

When the current recession revealed a collapsing financial system, some 12 trillion dollars was found in quick time across the globe to prop it up. But when nations met at Copenhagen to try and restore a collapsing environmental system, the cupboard was apparently all but bare.

Therein lies the nub of the problem.

The way we conventionally describe and measure economic progress is an incentive to ignore the impacts of unsustainable natural resource use and management, and capture the benefits and subsidies from that with a clear conscience.

We need to move beyond GDP as the measure of the real economy, and beyond growth as the only goal:

If GDP is failing as a measure of environmental sustainability then surely that is a powerful incentive to find a new construct that measures true progress.

It is no easy task to build one. First base is to balance economic, social and environmental considerations and reach a pragmatic compromise. But that’s far from a home run. Living in harmony with nature’s systems; living sustainably, is not apart from the economy, it is a key component of it. Nature’s systems lie at the base of any economy. If they are not functioning efficiently, then the economy cannot function efficiently. If we destroy them, we destroy the economy.

So like or not, our future is inextricably linked to how we tread on our land and oceans, and manage the natural resources that are the key to our surviving and thriving.

And finally:

But there is a lot of work to do to make this a prosperous path for New Zealand. It will require radical change in public policy and management, economic thinking, and business practice. I see enough activity to make me optimistic, but no real sense of urgency. We are still gambling with nature’s tolerance.

It was a brave speech by a senior civil servant who reports to a government committed to growing New Zealand’s by all means possible — including more exploration for oil and mineral resources in the conservation estate. It shows an awareness of the real issues that confront New Zealand and the world, something that seems to be all too uncommon in government anywhere. If you read nothing else today, read Morrison’s speech.

Morrison quoted poet Brian Turner at the beginning of his address, but the Otago poet’s words also make a fitting conclusion.

Under Mt St Bathans

There is majesty in the mass

Light moves, tints the snow;

The wind shakes the sparse grasses;

Water runs, stones rattle unexpectedly

And the land speaks;

None of us are greatly different,

We’re ordinary more than extraordinary

Most of the time. And if there’s one word

For what the sun highlights on the hills,

One word that we should apprehend

And make our own, it is

Decency: and, what’s ever implacable,

And what stone has irreducibly,

Dignity

From: Into The Wider World by Brian Turner

For some reactions to Morrison’s speech, see this piece by David Williams in The Press.